October 24, 2009
A day in and around Blois: an unsuccessful attempt to cycle to Chambord
weather: cloudy and rainy
Well, today did not go according to plan.
Breakfast in the hotel was excellent with delicious croissants, and we learned how to use a Cuisinart egg steamer. We planned to get an early start for Chambord (only about 16 km away) with just a daypack each strapped to our bike racks instead of all the weight we've been carrying. We headed out of town and after about two kilometres, Al called out, “You know what I forgot? The patch kit.” (We each keep one in our handlebar bags which were back at the hotel..) We decided it wouldn't matter as we have kevlar-reinforced Schwalbe tires and were going such a short distance. Of course, after about another two km in the middle of nowhere, Al suddenly shouted, “My tire is flat!” and he proceeded to pull out a huge glass splinter from the thickest part of his front tire. We were exceedingly chagrined about not having patch kits, but luckily Al did have a pump, so he pumped up his tire every two or three hundred metres, as we hightailed it back to Blois.
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Al patched the tube—there was quite an obvious hole in both the tire and the tube--and here's where it gets interesting. He couldn't pump the tire back up. He tried and tried with our new pump and it didn't work. Then we borrowed a bicycle pump from the hotel, and that didn't work either. He put in our brand new replacement tube from Bike Friday, and that also didn't retain any air. Neither pump worked and neither tube worked. By this time it was 11:45, and when we asked about a bike repair shop, the hotel owner said there was one about six blocks away that closed at 12:00 for lunch. We raced over there, and the bike mechanic told Al that the tubes had obviously been pinched when Al remounted the tire, and he couldn't pump up the tire either.
Al then realized that the metal tire irons, which he had bought specially for the Bike Friday 20 inch tires, were quite sharp and had possibly punctured both the old and brand new tubes. He bought a new tube at the bike store, just as the noon church bells were ringing, and the rain started coming down. We moved under a bank awning, and Al tried to install the new tube. That didn't work because the valve seating is too wide to fit into the Bike Friday rim, and this was the only 20 inch, 1.5 in tire available in Blois.
To make a much-too-long story a bit shorter, we cleaned up, had some lunch, exchanged the new tube for another patch kit (when the bike shop reopened after lunch), and Al dulled down the tire irons by scraping them on the cobbles. He patched five holes on the old tube and three on the brand new one, and now they both hold their air. Plus we still have an untouched brand new tube that we brought from Vancouver. We missed Chambord, but it's only a building, and it rained hard while we would have been enroute, so it was nice to relax in our comfy hotel room.
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We did go for a walk when the rain let up in the afternoon, and checked out the bike route to the train station as well as the baguette situation at the station for the next day when we'd be catching the train for Tours (St. Pierre de Corps), changing there to the TGV for Bordeaux, where there would be another change to a local train to Toulouse.
Dinner at the hotel again. We had the same vegie terrine as the night before, but different main course and dessert.
Today's ride: 8 km (5 miles)
Total: 251 km (156 miles)
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