Day 38: Rod's Got It Covered

England played Germany that morning, and what I watched was less a football match than a public execution. Lampard, Barry, Johnson, Upson — fat and slow, the lot of them, a defence that would have got you relegated with Newcastle. I felt hollowed out by half-time. World Cup over. Back to what mattered: the ride, and the fifty-five and a half miles standing between us and wherever we’d end up sleeping.

Joe was quieter than usual, watching his tyre out of the corner of his eye the way you watch something you already suspect is doomed. Every revolution came with a thud from the patch, a small, insistent complaint traveling up through his shoulders. We’d started late, thanks to the football, and rode slower still, so it was shaping into a long day. Terry had dropped by the motel that morning but pushed on ahead as he always did, racing the heat — a man who’d lived and worked in the Australian desert and, strangely, seemed to handle ours worse than we did.

We stopped again and again to check on it. The patch itself held, more or less, but the tyre had worn through elsewhere, scoring the tube until it leaked. Joe fitted a new tube, folding a dollar bill between tube and tyre as a makeshift boot — the old trick, cheap insurance. I was halfway through pitching him on registering JoeMeyerNeedsATyre.com when a white pickup slowed alongside and a voice asked if we were all right. Joe admitted, a little sheepishly, that he needed a new tyre. The driver’s name was Rod. They swapped numbers, and he pulled away saying he might be able to help. A potential saviour. “Options,” as Joe liked to say.

Shots taken while riding — hence the wonky horizon.

www.JoeMeyerNeedsATyre.com

New County, New Roads.

We stopped for lunch in Dighton — another meal built around Frigid Cream, which might sound like a strange way to fuel a bike ride but makes perfect sense once you’ve ridden all day and arrived at the next stop already hungry again. Joe’s phone rang. Rod, confirming the tyre size. Nothing promised yet, but it was sounding good. He’d call back.

Coming into Scott City, the phone rang again. Rod. “I’ve got you a tyre. Meet me at the Lazy R Motel.” Joe’s smile went as wide as the state of Kansas, and suddenly the thud he’d been living with all day didn’t seem to bother him at all — we powered into town. Rod was waiting outside, and he handed Joe a tyre stripped straight off his own bike, the exact same model Joe was riding, one he’d driven all the way to Denver just to collect. Incredible.

Terry had a room booked for us across the street, and Rod came to join us there. He’d tried to buy beer earlier and been told, flatly, that Kansas doesn’t sell alcohol on a Sunday. Rod had a trick for that too — he slipped out and came back inside a minute later with a crate of Corona, produced from somewhere he wasn’t saying. It turned out he was from South Carolina, up in Kansas for the wheat harvest, and a keen cyclist himself, nursing the idea of riding his bike home once the season wrapped up.

We all went out to dinner, and Rod picked up the tab, waving off any argument — his boss, he said, had been buying his meals all week, so this one was on him. He told us we’d talked him into the ride he’d been on the fence about for months. We told him he should do it. I still hope he did.