What a Magnificent Day - then... Oh, No!

Gale and Lisa "tuning" Gale's bike

After a relaxing day yesterday I was anxious to get back on the bike today.  Since I'm the slow poke I started early - 7 AM (we wanted an early start to avoid the heat).  I rode out of the Rocky Point RV Park on Klamath Lake and immediately turned the wrong direction.  I was thick in the woods when the pavement turned to gravel.  I decided to keep going rather than turning back figuring there would eventually be an outlet.  There was - about 1.5 miles later.  Once I got out onto Westside Drive I had a beautiful ride through Winema National Forest.  After about 12 miles the forest ended and there was beautiful grazing land with several herd of cattle.  This scenery continued, with some intermitent forests until we got to Chiloquin.  From Chiloquin we took the Sprague River Road for about 20 miles - spectacularly beautiful.  All of this was over easy terrain with just a few mild climbs (nothing like the Glendale - Powers bike route we did on Tuesday!).
Just as I was about to turn onto Drews Rd. heading towards Beatty, OR I was thinking that this may have been one of my most enjoyable bike rides ever.  Then things changed!

Drews Rd. after you make probably the hardest climb of the day (really not too difficult though) suddenly turned to the worst road any of us have ever ridden.  Every 25 ft. the asphalt was cracked all of the way across the road.  These weren't little cracks either - some were as wide as 3 inches or more!  It felt like you were riding over a railroad track every 25 ft. (sometimes less) for over 10 miles.  I kept thinking that my tires which were just "trued" at Bike Newport a couple of weeks ago could no longer be "true".  Suddenly, as I was riding at about 20 mph my bike came to a dead stop!  I somehow managed to unclip my bike shoes from my pedals and not fall.  I realized I could not turn my back wheel.  Also my red "blinky" light had broken off of my bike.  Of course I was riding by myself at that point and it was starting to get hot.  It was time to see if all of my bike mechanic classes had sunk in and if I would be able to ride the last 10 miles into Beatty.  Thank you Rick!  After looking everything over I realized my rear brake was askew and one of the pads was pushing hard against the wheel.  While I didn't have the tool to actually straigthen the brake with me I was able to adjust it so that it was safe to ride, though I kept the pace fairly slow.  When we finally got settled in the RV park (Juniper Reservoir RV Park near Lakeview - a great RV park!)  I put the bike up on the repair rack and gave it a closer look.  I was able to straighten the brake but discovered my wheel was definitely "out of true".  Unfortunately for me that means a trip to a bike shop as I have internal spokes and though I have 3 sizes of internal spoke wrenches I, of course, do not have the right size one.  That may be just as well though as the bike took a pretty hard beating on that road & it's probably a good idea to have a professional take a look at it.  Lisa looked at her bike and said that it is amazingly ok.  Dana and Gale will go over theirs tomorrow.

It was still a wonderful day!  We rode 70 miles and all felt great after the ride.  I can't believe I'm not at all tired.  Tomorrow will be an easy day also.  I may only be able to ride part of it as I do want to get my bike into the Lakeview Bike Shop to be fixed.  It's safe to ride but it's much better to get it fixed correctly than to let it go until we get near Reno (the next place that would have a bike shop).