Tour 2019 – Day 23

Wandering on Bushel Mountain

Gazing all day into mountains, I can’t get enough of mountains.
Retire into mountains, and mountains become your old masters:

when mountain blossoms scatter away, mountains always remain,
and in empty mountain streamwater, mountains deepen idleness.

-Wang An-shih
translated by David Hinton in Mountain Home

Moment by moment do what needs doing
The next stage of the route heads into the Great Divide Basin which is 144 miles of high plains desert with limited water. I was a bit concerned about my tires what with only a patched tube as a spare and the road being increasingly rough and hard on tubed tires. I rode into Atlantic City and managed to get my patch kit sorted so I could at least patch tires. Then I set out into the Basin.

It begins with a steep climb and then descends, but as I started that descent my front tire felt squishy. This was bad news as this was the “good” tube. So back to Atlantic City and I sorted out my options. I ended up resetting that tube and then rode over thirty miles to Lander WY which has not one but two bike shops. You descend over 3500′ to Lander which I’ll have to climb back, but one unexpected bonus was the Red Canyon, a beautiful rust colored rocky canyon.

I went to Gannett Peak Sports and the wrenches there went above and beyond working on my bike. The tires were shot and they replaced those with large tires which meant a lot of resetting of things. Various other end of life or broken elements were replaced and I bought some spares and repair gear. All in all another great experience I’ve had with bike shops when on tour. It took long enough though that I got dinner in town and then camped at the City Park. Tomorrow I’ll have to get myself back on route.

blown about by the
winds of
what is
there is beauty
everywhere you look
if you don’t insert
this or that
past or future
then everything that
arises is nothing
less than the
next thing
to do