Today I (Sam) woke up with a migraine and decided to lay in the tent after taking medicine until it felt better. James thus got about a 6 mile head start. I ended up leaving at around 11am and planned to walk 27 straight miles to arrive at our OKC destination by 8pm. My dreams of this occurring were soon halted, as 10 miles in in the town of Jones, I picked up a flat tire. Luckily, there were some benches in the town square, and I sat down while stripping my inner tube. I patched the hole. Then I realized there was another hole. And another, until I realized there were about 8 holes in my tube and I had ran out of patches. I checked my tire and realized that there were a bunch of thorns piercing through that I later learned were called “goat heads”. I called James and told him I needed the spare inner tube, but since he was 8 miles ahead at this point this posed an issue. I went to the Jones police station and asked whether an officer would be able to go to James at the corner of NE 63rd street and Coltrane road. They agreed, which was extremely kind, and after about a half hour I got the inner tube from James! I removed all of the thorns and set up the new inner tube and was ready to roll. 5 minutes into my resumed walk, I picked up another flat tire! 5 new goat heads were stabbing my tire, which was just great. I thought I would need to buy a bunch of inner tubes if I was going to get to OKC and was quite surprised that James hadn’t encountered this problem himself. They seemed to be littered in the grass on the side of the road. I ditched my stroller behind a church and took a cab to Walmart to get new tubes. I had a very kind driver named Kathleen who was willing to wait at Walmart for me to come back in order to avoid having to wait for another ride. I bought 6 tubes and a tire liner. After getting back I replaced my ruined tube and left my stroller behind the church. I was just going to spend the night there as the clock had already struck 6pm and James told me that the roads ahead were unwalkable at night. I went to a restaurant called the rooster cafe and drowned my sorrows out with pork chops and fried catfish. After my meal I went back behind the church, set up my tent, and fell asleep after watching some Monday night football.
9/12/22
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