August 26, 2011
A Swish of Air and Whirling Hiss.
My resent experience of camping is that I am rarely totally hidden from view so supposedly it cannot be called stealth camping. Dog walkers typically come along and I'm discovered, but do they really care, as it is usually woodland where I camp which doesn't belong to anybody in particular, so there is not much they can object to I would think. This morning was a typical canine encounter. I thought no one would see me where I'd camped amongst the trees of a wooded slope up from the cycle-path, but along came a man with a little Jack Russell walking along the path. The man wouldn't of seen me but, the dog whether drawn by it's nose or what led off up the track where I'd pushed the bike up and seeing me let out a hesitant yelp. The man turned summing the dog, seeing me he froze and stared up at my tent. I stared back not knowing what to say nor would I have known what to say. The man then smiled saying something in which I heard "pas problem" .
It rained during the night and it was raining when I awoke this morning, but while lying there in the tent it was hard to tell when the rain had actually stopped as the rain continued to drip of the trees and drum on the tent even though the rain probably had been over for awhile. The morning was better with fleecy big cumulus clouds and sunshine.
I was riding on the cycle-path for an hour this morning when the path was negotiating it's way around a town on the edge of which I spotted a big supermarket. I thought it a good idea as money was getting low to buy enough food cheaply for both today and tomorrow when I'd reach the city of Rennes where I'd surely find a bank from which I could withdraw cash.
There is in France the good environmental policy of supermarkets not providing those plastic bags which get everywhere. It takes the customer to be organize however, going prepared with their own bags with which to carry away the groceries. I myself wasn't organized this morning though. I most have looked a sight coming out of the supermarket with pasta, cans, packets of stuff, a bag of apples, a bottle of coke and so on cradled precariously between my arms and chest and tucked under my chin while clutching bread under my arm. The load was slipping and trying it's best to fall and I'd just about made it to the bike when the apples did escape falling on the ground and rolling under the trailer. The apples were a little bruised but eatable when I gathered them up, and when I put everything in the Bob-trailer bag and cycled away, the bike was visibly weighted down by the load.
A few kilometres out of town still cycling on the grit-surfaced cycle-path which ran between overhanging trees and hedgerows with farmland on either side. Is singing to myself feeling light hearted when suddenly a swish sound came from the back wheel followed by a swirling hiss and the rim bumping abruptly onto the ground. A blowout. Oh no, I said silently to myself not wanting to believe what had just happen. I've no spare tyre, though as there hadn't been a bang, the tyre was perhaps still fine I hoped. It's a long way to the next town in any case if the tyre is unrideable.
I uncoupled the trailer, turned the bike upside-down and removed the rear wheel then set about removing the tyre and taking out the inner-tube checking it by eye and finding a round hole a centimetre in diameter but, checking the tyre for a hole, I found none. Feeling relieved that the tyre wasn't damaged, I took out one of my spare inner-tubes and realised it was a narrow 1.75 section whereas the tyre is 2.3 and really fat at that. The one remaining spare inner-tube is the same. The narrow inner-tube may work for a while in the fat tyre but sooner or later with the rubber stretched out to fill the extra fat tyre, the stress will be too much and the tube will split and blowout. Times like this I wish everything was standard, the same size. It would make life easier. I put it in and pumped it up as I'd no other choice. I put the wheel back in the bike and turned it upright, coupled it back to the trailer and put everything back on ready to go.
I rode on now with apprehension. Approaching noon just as I'd been riding for nearly two hours and was on the lookout for a place to stop for lunch, there came yet another sudden swish of air and whirling hiss, the rim quickly kissing the ground. With much trepidation, I said to myself, why now, after lasting so long.
I fixed it up, this time swapping the front tyre which wasn't as worn to the rear, and put my remaining inner-tube in the former rear tyre now on the front.
Cycling onwards, the path past underneath a autoroute and turning a corner came to a quiet crossroads with a wide plot of grass, the ideal place to picnic. I took out my lunch things and spread them out on the grass. Behind the fence across the road cattle some of them lying down looked on while chewing as I sat eating a pasta salad and then put it down as I had to take off the long-sleeved jersey Is wearing as I felt so warm and then, I saw dark cloud come in and block out the sun and so I'd to put the jersey back on again as I now felt cold. Moments later heavy drops of rain began to pelt me and I scrambled around gathering everything up putting them back in the bag as the cattle across the road rose from the ground and galloped off to the shelter of a tree.
The rain came down hard as I finished my pasta salad in the shelter of a nearby bush. There was a flash of light followed by a boom of thunder and then it rained even harder. It had been raining twenty minutes when the sun came out again shining brightly while it continued raining.
When the rain was over, it had left the cycle-path a soggy quagmire which soon made the bike hard to ride, clogging the chain and with the wet and the drying sunshine further depleting the chain's lubricantion, I had to stop and clean the chain and oil it.
A little later, the rear wheel blew-out for the third time. This time I used a big patch to patch a big hole and after that the rear tyre was going down slowly.
The afternoon wore on with warm sunshine and chasing dark thunder storms. Is looking forward to an early stop after a day in which much had gone wrong. Between fields of maize and fields of crop stubble with round bales there were plots of woodland and so at half past four I came to a clearing where I pitched my tent by a stack of firewood which was useful to sit against. It wasn't particularly hidden as the odd passing cyclist or jogger on the path if they'd have cared to stop would have seen me.
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