In any case, we're done with California for now after 1680 miles on the bicycle and about 800 miles hiked. Monday we'll be leaving Ashland continuing to head towards Canada along the Sierra Cascades Route.
In the news we had a bit of a scare just as arrived in Ashland. As we pulled away from a picture stop just outside of town I noticed a faint thumping noise coming from the front wheel. I thought maybe I'd picked up a bit of mud or that something else was sticking to the tire. I looked at it as we rolled along but didn't see anything but when we pushed the bike into the motel room we were horrified to see a huge bulge in the sidewall with the tube starting to come out -- about an inch of sidewall had actually torn out away from the bead! And this was just after we'd descended the twisty Old Siskiyou Highway for over 2000 feet at speed.... yow! I think the only thing that saved us was that I'd found and installed a super thick inner tube in the tire right before we started the trip.
So today it was "search for an appropriate new tire" day since I thought we'd be unable to get at the two new tires that Bill at Blackbar Bicycles had sent to us via General Delivery. After visiting all four bike shops in town I settled on what seemed like the least bad match but 8 miles of trial running with that resulted in a "fail". My first heads up was as I braked while riding on the white line at the side of the road. The new front tire slid like it was riding on glass. Later I found out that it was trying to slip out from under me just for the crime of riding over cross walk paint with just the wee slope of road! Luckily, Tina called the (closed) post office and found that they'd be willing to give me our packages if I walked around to the back door and knocked there. Score! I had the tires from Bill and so now we're set again. I think I'll replace that tire again in 1000 miles whether or not it looks like it needs it. We've also promised ourselves to take more time in our tire examinations!
Anyway, while we were doing bike stuff we replaced Tina's pedals with some that should help her with a foot numbness issue she's been suffering through and we also talked a local bike shop into tearing down and cleaning up the eccentric bottom bracket with the hope that's been the source of a clicking noise we've been hearing a couple times with each downstroke under load.
Tomorrow we're going to attempt to create a day-by-day plan that'll get us to the border so that we're not faced with as much daily research.
Until later, David