Distance: 38.4 mi, Climbed: 935 ft
Completed: 1,211.2 mi, 61,018 ft
After all our recent flats, we needed some more inner tubes, and Joanna’s tires could use more sealant. The two traditional bike stores in Owensboro had recently closed down. The remaining shop was a mobile bike repair shop that comes to your door.
First thing this morning, we met Kevin from Freeride Bike Shop in our hotel’s parking lot. Almost ten years ago, Kevin closed his repair shop and switched to a mobile service. Like his logo states, we come to you. Kevin shared with us that he is a firefighter. He said that pumping up bicycle tires is much easier than the training exercises he went through the day before where he was slinging eight-pound sledge hammers.
First, we asked Kevin to remove the tube from Joanna’s rear tire, patch the hole, and add back sealant to convert the tire back to tubeless. All went well until Kevin went to test the tire by riding Joanna’s bicycle around the parking lot. The hole reopened and sealant started spraying out of the tire while spinning. Pretty to watch, but not exactly what we were hoping for.
Kevin had to fill the hole with a strip of “bacon” – a small rubber strip that can be placed in a puncture to help seal it up. The bacon sticks out of the tire when first installed and gives a bit of thump-thump the first few miles you ride with it, but it eventually flattens out leaving a clean plug. Tire fixed.
Then, I asked Kevin to look at a clicking sound that I had noticed when I turned my handlebars all the way to the right. He said it sounded like there was something in the bearings that holds the steerer tube to the bicycle. He completely removed the fork from the bike, checked the bearings, and found small metal shavings that were probably left over from when the steerer tube was cut. He cleaned the bearings and reinstalled everything. Much better, no sound.
We said goodbye to Kevin and headed out of town on the Adkisson Greenbelt. Owensboro is pretty built up, and it was nice to have the trail to keep us away from the busy traffic.
We rode through Fisher Park, which has a huge softball complex. There were lots of people out playing, and even a few practicing right on the bike trail. It reminded me that I am missing all my softball teams this summer. Sigh…
Once out of town, it was back to Kentucky’s beautiful farm land. We rode on quiet roads with almost no cars. Some were barely wide enough for two cars. I spent the day trying to capture the beauty of what I was seeing on camera, but I could not quite do it justice.
We marveled at the farm equipment we were seeing. If you look at it just right, the massive sprinkler systems that are used to water the fields looks like a T-Rex skeleton. Large grain silos were sprinkled throughout the fields.
As we approached Henderson, the scenery changed to forested roads as we rode past the Green River State Forest. The last part of our trip had us on busy streets as we approached our hotel in the Henderson business district. Another beautiful day out bicycling.
