It has been a good 50 mile day. We met our first cyclist on the road in over a month (we were in Ohio and headed west at that time). His name is Harry, and he hit the road two months ago in Oregon and is headed to Charlottesville, NC, where he will end his trek and take a train back to Brooklyn. We offered to let him share a campsite with us, and he seemed interested in the idea. But Adventure Cycling has updated their maps since we purchased ours, and the route on his map (and the US Bicycle Route 76 signs on the route) bypasses Bardstown, KY, where we have stopped for the night. So we suspect he stayed on USBR 76 and ended up farther down the road.
Bardstown is the self-proclaimed Bourbon Capital of the World (I suspect they are correct), and the HUGE Heaven Hills Distillery that we passed on the way into town is one of several in the area (and yes, Ann, there are also wineries here, plus a brewery or two).
Our first order of business here was to find a bike shop. But when we Googled for one, the nearest one was in Elizabethtown, near where we had stayed last night. We found a couple of listings for some bike stores in the region that had closed, and when we got to Bullmoose Brothers Bicycles in Elizabethtown we found that he, too, was going out of business. We asked why the rash of bicycle shops closing and he replied "Walmart and Amazon.com." That's not surprising, but it doesn't bode well for touring cyclists if bicycle repairs become increasingly hard to come by. If so, we need to jump into the Way Back Machine to 1985, where 5 speed freewheels and inexpensive, one-size-fits-all chains were the norm. At least those bikes could be maintained by just about anyone - their design and function was pretty much self-evident.
Anyway, the shop owner was kind enough to at least see if our issues were simply a matter of making a quick adjustment, or if either was indicative of excessive wear on our front chainrings or some other more involved issue. Fortunately for us, the former was the case, and we were back on the road soon enough and our wallet was only $20 lighter. It turns out that my problem was being caused in part because of my off-road bushwhacking in north central Illinois - some grass and debris had gotten wedged under the bottom bracket and was interfering with my shift cable.
We are camped at My Old Kentucky Home State Park ($22, power, water and adjustable showers) in Bardstown, KY. While we have water to the site, it is about three times farther away than our water hose will reach, so it is not the best utility layout here. But otherwise it is one of the better laid out parks that we've been to recently, though in part that is because there are only about three dozen campsites here.
One aspect of the recent hot, humid weather is that we've gotten more insects bites than we are accustomed to, though most don't leave much of a mark (if any). The exception is that I managed to get somewhere and picked up a chigger. And where you have one chigger bite you will soon have several. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but once we knew what we were dealing with it was simply a matter of painting over the bites with clear nail polish. Like redbugs, they burrow into your skin and reproduce, with each new batch branching out and finding a new place to burrow in and infest. The nail polish basically suffocates them and stops the cycle.
And finally, check out his old Campy chainring that we saw at Bullmoose Brothers. The holes are there to reduce the weight, but they still added the nice multicolor club design. Quite a work of art!
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