Having just discovered a large tear in my rear tire which caused the tube to dangerously pop out, my heart sank a little. We were at least 3 miles from where we needed to be and I’d never had to deal with this kind of a problem before. Thankfully, I had previously taken a bike mechanic class and had done lots of reading about common problems with bikes, how to fix them, and what gear was needed so after the initial feeling of dread, I soon remembered that all I needed to do was to “boot” the tire. Luckily, this was one of the repair items that I always carry with me! A boot is basically any durable piece of material (usually with an adhesive) that you slide between the hole in your tire and your tube. The concept being that the material will hold the tube in place and prevent it from being outside the tube and getting punctured. This is considered an emergency fix to get you by until you’re able to replace your tire when your ride is over.

Even though I’d never done it before, booting the tire was super easy and took just as much time as changing a tube so we were up and running in no time. We had 2 options though, we could turn around and go back to the car and replace the tire first thing in the morning or we could continue riding to our planned end point, taking a serious chance that the tire could blow out leaving us stranded and have a long way to walk back to the car. After a few minutes of consideration, I decided that since the trail was totally flat and perfectly paved, the chances of the boot failing would be pretty slim and the extra distance we could gain would outweigh the risks, so we continued on.

About a half mile down the trail, I saw something small and black in the middle of the trail, a Go Pro lens cap! On countless occasions, my cap had fallen off and I’d have to retrace my steps trying to find it including one time where I found it a week later! I was more than happy to pick it up as I was sure nobody would come back looking for it as they only cost about 1-2 dollars to replace. For me, it’s more about the annoyance of them always disappearing….

A couple miles later, we hit our turnaround spot, the remains of the town of Dudley, Idaho. Dudley was an old mining and logging town that went under when the bridge to town collapsed in the 1950’s. You can click here to learn more about Dudley if you’re interested. With the lateness of the day, this was our end point but the day wasn’t quite over yet….

Along the ride back to the car, Zilla and I stopped to admire an idyllic lake next to the trail. As we sat there watching the golden light of the day slowly beginning to fade, I noticed some movement in the water. It then dawned on me that there was a beaver dam in the lake and that the movement must be a beaver! I got out my camera to zoom in and sure enough, there were at least 2 beavers swimming around! I’m a sucker for wildlife so I watched them as long as I could but eventually, I knew we needed to get to the car before it got dark as Zilla and I still had an extremely important day coming up the next day!