PowerCycle

11/23 Thanks to some invaluable route info on another bicyclists blog (www.tour.tk ) I was able to figure out when I’ll be in Quito. It looks like December 5th will be the date. I’ll plan to fly to Florida on the 8th and stay for a couple weeks. I wouldn’t mind spending Christmas with family this year but that would put me at 3 weeks which is a long time to be off the bike and I don’t want to wear out my welcome.

More broken things to deal with. One of my plastic tire levers broke the other day but I can still pop the tire off with the other one and the built in one on the multi-tool. This is a good thing because Colombian roads are littered with broken glass (see next paragraph for reason) and today brought yet another flat on the front. I changed it but the patch didn’t hold for long so I rode the last few miles into town, stopping every minute to put more air in so I wouldn’t have to repair it again. The extra pump I bought a couple weeks ago came in handy because the one that came with my bike broke. The velcro strip that holds it onto the frame also ripped in half.

Finally, a couple days ago my new insulated plastic water bottle fell out of my hand(?!) and started rolling across the road. Sure enough a huge truck was coming and I watched anxiously as he lumbered toward it. He obviously saw the bottle but, like every other driver in this country, didn’t slow down and show some consideration. Instead he tried to drive around it but, like every other driver in this country, his perceived driving skills were not in fact analogous to reality.

Amazingly the bottle survived being run over and kept right on rolling to the other side. Still on the bike, I checked for traffic and made my way across to get it. The speeding motorcycles coming from each direction also saw me but instead of slowing down they just kept coming and honked to let me know I was in the roadway.

It’s interesting to note that Colombia has just as many driving fatalities as Spain and although they share a similar population, Spain has 681,298 km of roadway compared to 164,257 km in Colombia. More roadway would seem to indicate that more people drive which would theoretically invite more accidents. Or maybe Spain has more actual land; not swamp or mountains so they can build more roads (they have the Pyrenees but those mountains are all the way in the north)? Whatever, I have the conclusion so having facts in inconsequential.

Once in El Bordo and checked into a hotel I paid a visit to the bike shop. They fixed the leak, which makes me lazy I know, but they only charge something like $1 and giving some business to the local bike shop isn’t a bad thing. I bought a fresh box of 24 patches since the ones I’m using haven’t been doing a very good job. They also had a couple Presta adapters that I needed.

Hills were expected today and did not disappoint. None were that bad and the views made it worth it. This might be one of the first places where you can look across the valley floor up at the mountains and not see what amounts to a checkerboard thanks to people chopping down all the trees. It was kind of nice.

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