andy reagan only the interesting stuff

Maybell, CO

For every town that we go to, one rider was assigned before the trip to research a town so we could learn about the town, interesting things to there, and the affordable housing cause in the area.  I was given Maybell, CO and Vernal, UT (today and tomorrow) and so I'll first share a little bit about Maybell.

Population 370, 95% white, 139 of 193 homes are occupied with an 80% ownership, and interesting things in town are (the only things in town are, literally) a general store, library, restaurant, and gas station.  It's a popular destination for bird watchers and solitude seekers alike.

So really there isn't much here, in the way of entertainment or cell phone service, but the restaurant was good and the folks at the library here are very nice.

I was halfway through writing that the ride today was for the most part uneventful, but now I remember haha, about 30 miles into the 73 mile day, I blew the sidewall out on my rear tire! Bang! And the tire (and tube) were done for.  It was Mark, Dave and I at that point, and we had averaged 21MPH and no tires we had.  So we called the van which couldn't have been too far ahead since it just passed, but since it was an easier day we weren't that spread out so she didn't really have time to turn around to get me a tire, I had to wait for sweeps.... So we decided to ghetto-patch the tire itself, and I put in the whole patch for a tube (with the metal wrapper0 that had some strength, and a new tube.  Pumping it up the first time, the tube was popping out of the sidewall where it had busted, but deflating it, taking the tire back off and moving the patch got it to hold!! By that time, some people had passed us, (Laura was only a minute behind us by herself..she was cruisin), and Will Paradis actually had two spare tires with him!  I thought that the patch we had made was actually pretty strong, so we decided to ride that out till lunch and it did hold, even with glancing the rumble strips a few times.

At lunch, Will said that I could take one of his tires as long as I get him a new one when we can, which I did and now I'm rockin a 25C on the back (slightly wider) which I think is a good chouice on his part.  I had about exactly 800 miles on that Gatorskin before it blew out...bad luck I guess.  I chowed down on three PBJs and we headed back out.

I've only got 5 mintues before we head out, but in short the terrain changed to desert basically, we stopped and swan in the Yampa a few miles out of town which was nice, I set up the hammock under a tarp which I'm excited about, and we're camping in city park.  It looks like it's about to thunderstorm like crazy in about 5 seconds out there, dark and really windy!

Gotta go, thanks for reading!