Day 53 (December 25)

Our progress as of December 25, 2016. We’re approaching the Pacific coast and are only a couple hundred kilometers away from Sydney.

Today was yet another typical day for us – up at 5:30 am and on the road by 6:30 am. We left the town of Gunning, and rather than riding on the shoulder of the Hume Highway, as we did yesterday, we decided to take a less-trafficked back road. It was sort of a loop road that made its way back to the Hume Highway after about 30 kilometers. It turned out to be a great decision on our part, as we saw no vehicles at all for the first 15 kilometers. Perfect!

Rock outcrops and farm fields 20 kilometers west of Goulburn

And then it happened. As we were slowly pedaling up a long winding hill, I suddenly heard a loud clicking sound from my back tire. A quick inspection revealed a large blister in the sidewall of my tire. It was about an inch and a half in diameter and stuck out about three–quarters of an inch, and with every rotation of the tire, the blister rubbed on the chain, threatening to rub a hole clear through the sidewall of the tire. And this being Christmas day, on a remote road with no vehicles, 15 kilometers from the main highway, and without a spare tire, it certainly was not an ideal time to experience such an unexpected tire failure.

As soon as I noticed the blister, I let out most of the air in the tire so that the pressure wouldn’t blow a hole through it. Mattie was up ahead of me, so I started walking with the bike and scrounging for possible repair material along the side of the road. I found a few scraps of rubber that I thought might be useful and continued up the road to where Mattie was waiting.

This was actually just a high spot along the Hume Highway. No mountains to be seen.

After taking the tire off the rim and inspecting it, it turned out that the blister affected only the outer, non-structural part of the tire. As far as I could tell, the casing was still structurally sound. That was good, as it meant that I could most likely make a field repair and continue on our way. I figured I needed to reinforce the sidewall in the area of the blister, so after rummaging through my gear, I fashioned a sidewall stiffener using a piece of the heat shield from my camp stove. After carefully shaping the aluminum, I slipped it into the tire between the inner sidewall and the inner tube. Pumping up the inner tube pressed the stiffener to the sidewall inside the tire, and successfully reinforced the tire in the affected area. Since the blister was on the outside of the tire, I made a small incision in it, squirted tire patch glue into the blister, and applied a tire patch on the outside of the tire over the blister.

One of the palm trees in the Goulburn city park

We got back on the bikes after the hour-long repair, with the stiffener and patch doing their job without further incident. We rode another 30 kilometers to the town of Goulburn, population 24,000, where we figured there would be a bicycle shop where I could buy a new tire. A quick Internet search showed that there were indeed several bike shops, so we got a hotel room for the night, as everything was closed on Christmas day. First thing in the morning, we’ll head over to the bike shop and get a new tire and tube, then continue on toward the Pacific coast, which should be only two days away, barring any more unexpected events.

Posted by Scott