Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Another day off in Pontiac, IL

Penny is still struggling with a painful rib* and did not sleep well. It was clear that she needed more rest. Also, the weather forecast for the day was not good, so we decided not to ride today.

The day was not a total washout however. We rented a car (not an easy task in a small town) and drove to Bloomington (Illinois, not Indiana - about 40 miles from Pontiac) with our troublesome front wheel. We found a bike shop able to re-true the wheel but they initially said it would take several days to get to it (this is the peak season for maintenance work by bike shops). After explaining to the shop owner that we were in the midst of a cross-country trip (he was quite envious and said he has always wanted to do the same thing, but said "you'd have to pay me to do it on a tandem") he agreed to true the wheel by the end of the day. And he agreed that a thread locker product (like Locktite) needed to be applied to the threads to prevent the spontaneous unraveling problem from reoccurring. So hopefully that issue is now finally behind us. We were also able to buy a new (spare) tire
to replace the beat up one we were keeping for an emergency spare.

Bloomington, and adjacent Normal, Illinois have a population over 100,000, making them seem like the size of Los Angeles to us as we haven't been in a town of over 20,000 people since we left Pueblo on Day 2 of our trip. We also realized that we had not used a car in over a month (with the exception of the ride that Virgil gave us in his truck from the Katy Trail trailhead to his home in Pilot Grove, MO). "Look honey, they have a Denny's here!"

*We are pretty sure it is a pulled muscle related to the biff on the Katy Trail.