Come on Century Days!

I hit real flat land this morning, and I'm ecstatic (though cautiously so, I'm dreading having my bubble burst by a new patch of rolling hills). I stopped at a gas station for a foot long sub, coffee, cinnamon roll, and honey bun (see, I'm eating more now) and I talked with a guy from the area who said I'm good to go on the flat lands for a while. I'll take his word for it.

I'm in York, NE right now, which has a faint wild west town feel to it in the architecture and arrangement of buildings. Yet, it feels like 70s style architecture was poured over the top of everything at some point. I'm at the library about to do a few hours of work. A couple of days ago I noticed that a rock tore through the sidewall of my front tire. The tube was sticking out of it a bit, and it finally popped 2 days later. I have a spare old tire, but I'm going to try to fix the tear with a tube patch. I tried a few days ago, but since the patch doesn't hold well to the tire rubber, it slid out of place, and the hole reopened, and my tube came out. The tube spontaneously popped as I was sitting next to it outside of the library. I think it has something to do with the rapid cooling of the tube's air temperature when I stop riding. The tube probably starts shrinking back into the tire, but the tire pinches it and pops it. So before I head out to ride again, I'm going to try the patch method again, using one of my large rectangular patches so it doesn't miss the spot this time. If that fails, then I'll have to change to my old tire.

In other news and ideas, for the movie I'm going to make out of this, I think I'm going to try to do time lapse footage of my rides from here on to San Francisco. The camera will be a third thing I'll have to charge at the libraries, but it'll be well worth it if the footage works out.

Finally, I'd like to mention the new appreciation I have for the city after riding through what's now 3 states' worth of rural country roads. Always living in cities, I have failed to get a real sense of how dense they are. In crossing a state, I pass through about 15 towns of less than 1000 people, another 5-8 of 1000-6000, and maybe 1-3 of more than that. Riding through an entire country of rural areas really gives me a new sense of the scale by which I/we live in the city. A density of people, ideas, activities, objects, life. I have a new and deep appreciation for the city as center of civilization (thanks Nate for the reference)- we talked about it before I blogged (HI NATES FAMILY!!!).

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