Bicycling Florida to Texas
Through
Alabama, Mississippi,
Arkansas & Oklahoma

2008 - May - June

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Last night, just before going to bed, Jim checked the air pressure in the tires, something we never do at night and discovered a broken spoke in the rear wheel. To make a long story short, instead of getting to bed at our usual time of between 8:30 and 9:00 PM we finally got to bed at 10:20 PM. Jim spent most of the time taking the wheel off the bicycle, taking the tire off the wheel and trying to replace the broken spoke with one extra spoke we were carrying. We did not have the right tool to replace the spoke and the towns we are going thru for the rest of the tour did not look big enough to have a bicycle shop. So we checked the phone book and found a bicycle shop in Hot Springs, AR. At 10:00 PM we changed our route to take us to Hot Springs instead of Glenwood.

The distance was almost the same, but I am sure we had more traffic. We arrived in town after going up and down several hills. We decided to drop the luggage while we rode the 4 miles across town to the bicycle shop. Walked into the motel to find they were booked solid as there is a big convention in town. As we started to leave the motel the clerk found one room on the ground floor. No smoking we were happy campers; we dropped the luggage and rode across town to the Hot Springs National Park and the bicycle shop. Where they not only fixed the bicycle wheel, but offered us the use of their cabin in Mt Ida. They also repair the bicycles for the Police Department.

We stopped for lunch and met a couple from Oklahoma traveling via bicycle, only they are doing it the hard way camping out most of the nights. Had a good time comparing notes before they left and we want across to visit the Fordyce Bathhouse used during the 20-30's. It was really a good self-guided tour.

We then bought tickets for the Duck Tour (lady who sold us the tickets watched our bicycle for 2 hours.) We enjoyed the tour and saw the high school Bill Clinton attended. After the tour we rode our bicycle back to the motel, took a late shower and walked across the parking lot to a restaurant for dinner. We were going to spend an extra rest day here, but we saw so many things to day and the motel is booked up tomorrow night so tomorrow we plan on heading to Mt. Ida.