Day 315 | riding days can have a few surprises: sometimes not good

40 km | zzOz total: 7,709 km

Why don’t you stay another few days, from Brent.

Nah, I’m raring to go mate, having finally packed everything aboard, the whole rig looking a little unstable with two weeks food stashed. Somehow it’s real puffy, not so well packed, that aspect of my travel will have to improve abruptly.

Everything was in my favour, I’d been commenting to anyone interested, and those not, about Alice’s persistent easterly gale winds. Today, for the first time in as long as I can remember they’d swung around to the west, I’m sailing along at 22, now it’s 25, that’s kmph, a down stretch and things become a little unstable with such a top heavy trailer load at 38 kmph.

Suddenly, ppphhhhht.

I’ve come 16km and destroyed a tube: the valve has split from the tube in the rear tyre. Well, sometimes you get a dud new tube. That happens with the thicker thorn resistant tubes on occasions.

Undo the panniers, take off the trailer, ain’t an easy exercise when fully loaded, disconnect brakes, remove rear wheel, note the small black ants swarming at the feet, change tube, etc, and reverse the process. Pump up tube. Ants quite excited by now.

All good, continue.

After less than 10 km, ditto.

Arrrrrgggghhh. Some weeping and gnashing of the recently patched up teeth this time.

Repeat the tube changeover.

Now down to the last spare tube. I’ll have to go back to Alice for some replacements but if I’m only going to get 10 km out of a tube I’ll need a whole container load, probably won’t be able to get a replacement in Boulia, I’ll need to get to Blackall which is programmed at about Day 23, but I might as well continue onto my camping spot in the National Park about 40 km on and hitch back on Monday.

You can sense how this story is going. I made another 16km before the inevitable happened, down to no spare at all.

No panic, I decide to stop and hitch a ride back to Alice with the full regalia, it’s close to 4 pm.

I flag down the first 4WD, a big rack on the roof, and they reluctantly load everything aboard, slowly warming to my low kilowatt charisma.

I haven’t been so frustrated since I was in the Australian Alps in in the middle of summer before I embarked on this voyage in the pre thorn resistant tube days with a few 800 m vertical drop downhills on narrow steep roads with a big load on 38ÂșC+ days, brakes fully on, the rims heated up, not quite glowing, the rim tape slid around and I received multiple punctures at a time from the spoke holes.

Since then I’ve travelled 5000 km on a few occasions without a puncture and seldom remembering to even add extra air to the ultra thick tube. Tubes haven’t been a problem.

Possible issues: the new Schwable Mondial 2.1” tyre on the back, no rim tape on the rear wheel after the hub and spoke replacement earlier in the summer, or a different not really thornproof tube from that I’m used to, the chunky KMart ones are great.

But smashing out 3 valves in 40 km riding something radical has to happen.

I’ve switched the XR tyre to the rear, the side walls are much more robust than the kevlar style Mondial. I’ll stack up on some new tubes at $17 each and see if I can track down some meaty thorn resistant tubes.

It’s started to rain, ain’t this supposed to be a desert?

And it’s Saturday, shops don’t open until Monday morning.

Seems I’ll be staying a few more days after all.