August 9: "Will the tire hold out? "
Up at 7:30 AM but beacause of the time it took us to tidy up our wet and oily
gear, we left only about midday. I started by cleaning the bicycle and in
particular the wheel rims and brake shoes clogged with sand. It is here that
I discovered that the front tire had a hernia. And the next cycling store
is 411 km away (or 103 km if we considered going back but without being certain
they would have our size of tire in stock. In any case, going back on our
tracks was unthinkable). I reinforced the tire with rip proof tape in the
shower room. The evening before we discovered that our air mattress had a
small leak. And to end this long list of problems, the cleat (for my "step-in"
pedals) broke on one shoe. We thus decided to be a little gentler with ourselves
and reserved a double room in the next youth hostel at Berunes, 42 km away.
To clean mind, body, and belongings. Headway turned out to be extremely
difficult because of a very strong wind and hilly terrain. (All sorts of
short but rather steep ups and downs that we toiled ascending and had little
fun descending beacause of the fear of a blowout of our weak front tire.)
But what luxury once we arrived. Our room resembled that of a teenager
with all our bags emptied and their contents strewn everywhere: on the beds,
chairs, and floor of course! I reinforce the tire repair which seems to have
held out well with an almost complete disappearance of the hernia. Anne washes
our dirty laundry in the sink and we both wash ourselves under a sumptuous
shower, not limited to 4 or 5 minutes as is often the case in the campsites.
And impossible to resist the temptation to takes pictures of the very spectacular
sunset. At least today we had only the wind without rain with quite a bit
of sunshine to boot. But this evening we are exhausted, sore and craving for
rest. The wind will have made today one of the two most difficult of the trip.
However weather forecast predicts favorable conditions for the next few days.
Consequently, Anne wants us to take advantage of this good fortune and thrust
forwards towards Reykjavik only a few 900 km away! We knew that pedalling
a minimum of 55 km per day was an imperative if we wanted to catch our plane
on the 28th. Thus there was no question of our slacking off! And after all
that we had read about Iceland, we knew that the following day could be even
worse: we had had one day of rain, another of wind, the following could be
rain AND wind! (Anne seems to have heard about The Murphy Philosophy:
"Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse".) Thus a day of rest was
out of the question, we had to try and get ahead of schedule whenever possible.
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Repair
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Strong wind
on the fjord
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Berufjördur
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Sunset
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at Berunes
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