Aug 1, Day 37

Steamboat Springs, CO to Stagecoach State Park Campground
Distance - 22 miles, Avg speed - 7.4 mph

When we went to sleep the night before, we knew we would potentially be facing some serious weather, but as you can see from the Weather Channel photo, the forecast confirmed our fears!  At least the forecast is easy to remember!

The day starts with rolling countryside leading out of Steamboat Springs, where we see and chat to lots of roadie cyclists. We also see the current winner of the most imaginative mailbox seen so far!

Eventually we start the climb up to the Stagecoach reservoir; lots of people are fly fishing here. We cross over the dam and take the short single track along the side of the reservoir.

About a mile along here, Numb Stuff comes to a halt – he has a flat in his front tire. We are mystified as to why this has happened, the bike shop was supposed to have mended the slow puncture he has had in his front wheel since before Rawlins. The front tire proves difficult to remove, but when we finally get it off, we find that the hole is on the inside of the tire. On closer inspection, it appears that the rim tape has become severely dislodged, exposing several spoke holes. We do our usual trick of covering the holes with duck tape and hope for the best. The worst thing is trying to get the tire back on again – it is worse than wrestling with an alligator! It takes both of us to push and pull, scream, shout obscenities at the tire to get it back on, but eventually we succeed.

Only 3 miles further along, the tire goes flat again….. oh no. By now, we are totally exhausted, and we have only done 20 miles of our planned 38. With heavy hearts, we get the stupid tire off again, to find that the duck tape has worn through and the spoke holes have, again, punctured the inner tube. Luckily, the state park ranger passes by and stops to see if he can help. There is a camp site over at the other side of the reservoir which he offers to take us to while we figure out how to cope with the latest drama. We gratefully accept his offer – many thanks to you, Craig!

As usual, Numb Stuff is good at working his way through these set backs. He turns on his cell phone to find he has reception – yay! He calls the bike shop back in Steamboat and manages to get one of the guys there to drive out to our campsite with some more inner tubes and rim tape so that he can fix his front wheel. What he forgot was to ask the guy to bring along a six pack of beer with him! Elliot arrives in super quick time (about 45 minutes), and puts new rim tape on and leaves us with a few new tubes – thanks Elliot!  Dirtbaby is not without her problems – her rear tire feels soft. At the campsite, she takes off the tire to find that the bike shop has put the inner tube on the front wheel that had a slow puncture that she asked them to replace onto her rear wheel. Mystery solved!

After all the trauma of so many flats, and with a storm in the offing we decide to have an early night, but not before sampling Mountain House Rib Chicken and mashed potato, yummy! We are in bed by 5.30pm, however it starts raining and then pouring which continues most of the night and keeps us awake. We manage to stay dry in our tents and are grateful for that!