Day Nineteen - Chains, Rains and Self Contained

What a day! It never did rain last night and it never cooled down much either. We spent most of the night sweating in our little screen house tent. We left camp with four fully inflated tires. Somehow, by the time we got to the road Ricks back tire was flat! Changed the flat and raced on to Kerrville, TX where we had a date with the Bicycle Works Bike Shop (1st bike shop east of El Paso). We were down to our last CO2 cartridge and all of our tubes are patched, some three times. Nine miles from the bike shop, Ricks chain broke and was lying on the road, this is something we could NOT fix, so we flagged down the first pickup truck we saw. Ray stopped, helped load Rick's bike in his truck bed and drove them to the shop and Robin had to pedal there. Flush with new tubes, CO2 cartridges, patches and a new chain, we rode on to Comfort, TX. With ten miles to go the skies got dark and ominous. With three miles to go, the headwind gusts nearly stopped us in our tracks. We made it to camp just before the skies let lose. We met Paul at the office and he took us directly to the Community Room. We are staying indoors with our own kitchen and bathroom. This is such a blessing as it has been raining ever since we arrived (Comfort has been in a serious draught for five years). This evening we are going to stop by Paul's to see his artwork and just happens to be a DQ within walking distance!

As for self contained ( a term used to describe bike touring with no support vehicle or personnel), it's been interesting to see just how much we have depended on the kindness of complete strangers to keep us going.
We are so grateful! God is so good!