Jimmy and Leslie’s Mini-Adventure

Today’s Date: September 17, 2025

Today’s Start Point: Shelton, Washington

Today’s End Point: Castle Rock, Washington

Today’s Miles: 106 Miles

Cumulative Miles: 151.4 Miles

I am writing this portion of the blog at 2:00 pm (Pacific Time) as I sit in an Ace Hardware parking lot waiting for Leslie to bring me extra tubes and CO2 cartridges. How did I end up in this predicament? Let me explain.

I knew today was going to be a long one since it involved 105 miles of climbing and 3,500 feet of climbing. Little did I know that the riding would be the easy part. I would travel today south through the Capital State Forest and continue almost due south to our destination of Castle Rock, Washington. The Mt. St. Helen’s Visitor Center is in Castle Rock so Les was going to drive ahead and visit the Visitor Center and the adjoining National Park.

I left at dawn and Les left a little after me. It was a perfect 58 degrees when I left with a predicted high of only 77 degrees-perfect weather for riding.

The ride out of town started with a half mile hill which got my legs warmed up. The scenery for the first 30 miles was much like yesterday, I was gliding through a thick pine forest. It was what I imagined the forests of Washington to be. The roads were up and down and never straight, quite nice actually.

After this primordial beginning, the land gave way to cow and horse farms (yay cows). The road turned flat and a range of high hills stayed to my left (in the Midwest we would call them mountains).

Just as I passed the town of Oakville, Washington my day became interesting (the most optimistic term I can come up with). I felt my rear tire going soft and realized it was my first flat of the trip. By this point I was on a very busy road so that meant it was the perfect place to sit on the side of the road for a quick tube replacement.

Although I am a mechanical idiot, I have changed tires before, but this was an ordeal. The tires sit so tight on the wheel that it took me 15 minutes to get the tire off the rim. Once I had the tire off, I checked the wheel for glass or metal that might have punctured the tire. After a couple of minutes I found and removed it. After the initial tire removal issue, I was starting to feel pretty confident. Now I just needed to put the tire back on, fill it with air and put it back on the bike. At least that was the theory.

The reality was that I just couldn’t get the tire back on. I literally sat on the side of the road with cars and trucks blasting past, straining and pulling on the tire until my fingers were numb and bleeding. After about an hour of this, I finally got the wheel put together. Now all I needed to do was inflate it. No luck, no matter what I did it would not hold air. I think that I struggled so much that I ripped the new tube.

I knew at this point the smart thing would be to call Les, but she was going to Mt. St. Helen’s and I didn’t want to interrupt her day (although she was upset that I didn’t call her).

So what to do, what to do. It was now noon and I had been struggling with a flat tire for two hours. The worst thing to do would be to try and ride on the flat tire for a number of miles. Of course this is what I decided would be the absolutely best thing to do.

I rode the next 13 miles with a flat tire, which is a genius move. I finally saw an ACE Hardware store in Centralia, Washington. I asked one of the employee’s if he had any inner tubes or CO2 cartridges. He said to go to aisle 9 and they had some, plus ammunition. I wasn’t sure he was being funny because I was in cycling gear or whether he informed everyone of the abundance of ammunition.

I went to aisle 9 with great anticipation until I realized that the tubes were for mountain bikes and the CO2 cartridges were for guns. At this point I realized I needed to call Les. Les was done visiting the national park and was on her way to Castle Rock when I called. After about five interrupted discussions due to bad cellular service, Les was on her way and drove about 40 miles to pick me up. That is how I found myself waiting in the parking lot of an ACE Hardware in Centralia, Washington.

It is now 10:00 pm and the excitement continued. We are spending the night in Castle Rock, Washington so I called a bike shop in Castle Rock to set aside some tubes, tires and CO2 cartridges so I could finally get rid of the tightest tires known to man. The gentlemen at the shop was very helpful so I figured that problem was solved. It wasn’t until about an hour later that I realized that the shop was in Castle Rock, Colorado, not Washington. Colorado seemed to be an awfully long way to drive to fix this problem so I had to call the shop and admit that I am not very good a geography (along with bike mechanics).

We searched the web and discovered there was a sporting goods store in Centralia, so Les drove me to the shop and lo and behold, they had a tire, tubes and CO2 cartridges. I sat in the car outside with Les and replaced the tire and tube, which was soooo much easier to accomplish than with the old tire.

It was now 4:00 o’clock and I had been messing around with this tire issue for six hours. I would love to say that I handled this situation at all times with the calm demeanor of a Navy SEAL, but that is probably a slight misstatement (ok, huge misstatement). Luckily Les has seen this before and just rolled her eyes as I screamed at the heavens.

Les drove me back to the ACE Hardware parking lot so that I could restart from where I left off. I had two and a half hours of daylight so I had to get going.

The roads were up and down, with some of the climbs getting longer and steeper (at least it felt that way). I traveled through pastures with cows, horses, sheep and goats lazily munching away.

As daylight turned to twilight, the play of the shadows on the hillsides was calming on my nerves. I calculated the distance and the speed my tiring legs would go and was happy to conclude that I should make it to the hotel before dark.

With about 20 miles to go, believe it or not, I had another flat with my other tire. The farmyard animals learned lots of new words this day. To say I was dejected is probably an understatement, but I had a goal of getting to the hotel under my own power and I was going to do it one way or another.

I again decided not to call Les and instead try to quickly fix the tire. I was not hopeful since this was the same tire/wheel combo that I had just spent six hours fixing. Finally though, the gods took pity and I repaired the tire in about 15 minutes and was back on my way.

This latest flat tire incident screwed up my timing to get back to the hotel before darkness fell. Compounding my problem was the fact that both my front and back light were out of juice. Let’s refer to all of this at this point as an adventure.

With about five miles to go, I was in total darkness and racing to get to the hotel. Except for having to avoid the occasional garbage can that would pop up out of the darkness, the nighttime bike ride was relatively uneventful.

I finally arrived at the hotel at 8:00 pm, a full thirteen hours after I left Shelton. Except for my knees, hips, lower back, shoulders and neck, I feel ok. Les had already unloaded the car and picked out a nice place to have dinner, which was lovely and accompanied by well earned glass (or glasses) of wine for each of us.

Thanks Les, I would still be in the lovely town of Centralia if it wasn’t for you.