Day 23,
Just another day in p-a-r-adise…
The night
went absolutely well. I packed up in the morning and spent next few
hours riding around
Then I rode
to the bike shop to fix the spoke. All I actually asked the guy for was to use
his wise script to unscrew the freewheel from the hub.
I already had the freewheel removal tool. After that’s
been done, I put a new spoke outside and swapped the tires, putting new
Michelin on the back and new Wal-Mart tire on the front wheel.
After the
repair, rear wheel was back to normal, so I inflated both tires, washed hand
and in great mood went to search for food. After eating frozen dinner with cakes
from Wal-Mart, I went back to library and spent another few hours in the
air-conditioned building, escaping the hot of the outside.
I posted an
update on bikeforums and answered few e-mails. By
this time it was already nearly
I left
I kept going
on 95 North for another hour and a half and rode back
into the state of
The road was
pretty quite and mostly without hills, going through several little towns.
I approached
a sign of the town called Weiser and an arrow to
local Mc Donald’s in half a miles to the left.
I decided to
pull off the road and stop to fill out the bottles.
After getting
further into town, I immediately liked it so much that I decided not to go any
further anymore, but instead stay here for the night and explore the
surroundings and the town in the few hours before it will get dark.
Weiser is one of
those quite little towns you know nothing about but suddenly enjoy its peaceful
atmosphere especially if you are from the big city. I rode around its downtown
(which is sort of a little park with benches), went back to the local rodeo
stadium and even thought about coming back there in the evening to set up the
tent.
While riding
by the hardware store, I stopped by to check what they had in bicycle department.
There they had a big thorn resistant heavy duty tire for 5 dollars which I
decided to buy as I was more than fed up with constant flats. It was the right
size, 27 x1-1/4 and extremely thick. The packed tire in the box was the size of
the cigarette block and very heavy.
I went to the
grocery store across the street and bought some fruits and a bottle of soda, to
carry water in later.
Well, as I
walked out of the store, guess what I discovered. Yeah, the flat rear tire again. I just put a brand new tire with a
perfectly good tube few hours ago to find out it has to be repaired again. I
turned the bike upside down on the grass lawn and examined the wheel. A little
sharp thorn was sticking through at the middle section of the tread.
This is a
good and quick chance to try to use this new heavy duty tires, at least, so I
got it out of the bag and mounted it in the tire. We will see.
After the
repair, I decided to ride to the north part of town and explore what was going on
there. The road passed local high school and then was going along few very
interesting looking buildings. As I asked few people that were walking around,
it turned out that these buildings (refer to pictures) used to serve as
institute for some kind of special kids and were closed in the 60s. There were
about 4 or five of this buildings and one of them was turned into a museum
while few others few purchased by individuals. About two buildings were now
turned into some kind of apartments and another one was being repaired.
For some
reason, the view of these structures impressed a lot, and I could imagine the
life of the kids living and studying in these buildings many years ago.
Actually, they reminded me of some ghost houses.
I rode
further and stopped by another abandoned structure. As I found later it was an
old food factory that was closed for nearly half of the century.
I took few
pictures of these old classic cars and back yard of the food factory which
featured a cemetery of old fire trucks.
There also
was a strange looking building not far from there which was serving as a
church, but used to be a vegetable processing plant some time ago. There was a
hose on the back of the building, with running water, which served perfectly as
a shower.
Few blocks
from this un-inhabited part of town, was a newly built residential complex
where a middle aged man without a shirt started a conversation with me, while
watching his little son ride the bike around. A man told me that he grew up in Weiser and actually remembers playing around the factory
when he was kid, which was already non-operational. He also said that these
cars were standing there also for several decades.
It’s amazing
that in our time, when people are so mobile and can travel across the country,
continent or the world in short times, there are still people that never been
anywhere further the little area around their town which they spent most of
their lives in. And they don’t experience any urge to leave it and go somewhere
they haven’t been to… So, regardless of how small and connected our world may
seem, there are still remote places with people isolated from the rest of the
busy, running world.
I wished the
man good luck in returned and thanked him for the nice conversation. He was
pretty surprised that I could have come from
I rode back
to downtown of Weiser and started searching for the
place to spend the night. I actually rode back to 95 and decided to continue a
little bit north and maybe see something suitable
there. Meanwhile, I stopped at the gas station to fill up the water bottles and
look at the maps. Few ladies from the counter asked me what I was up to and
another one that just walked in tried to say something more. She, however,
hardly spoke any English and was of some kind of Hispanic origin. As originally
I was asking if there were any parks or campgrounds around, they actually asked
me if I wanted to put my tent up in their yard. I asked how far it was and
since it was only few blocks away, I accepted the offer and agreed to follow
their truck to the house.
When we
arrived there, about four kids ages 5 to about 13 came to the yard and asked me
a bunch of questions about what I was doing on the bike and where I was going.
One of the kids seemed to be surprised that I rode from LA as he knew it was
pretty far from there. I got out my big map of the states and we all looked at
it for few minutes. I set up the tent in the corner of the yard and spent a
nice night in the cool air and on the flat, soft surface of the yard of this
nice people.
Today – approximately
35 miles, few tire repairs and some peaceful time exploring nice historical
town of
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