Thursday September 10, 2015, 96 miles (154 km) – Total so far: 11,193 miles (18,013 km)
We wisely sat out Hurricane Linda’s continuing strong bands of wind and rain. The next morning was beautiful and were quickly back on the road. A few hours later Jocelyn said she had a tire wobble so we investigated and found a rear tire bulge near the rim. It looked as though the tire was coming apart. Fortunately we carry two spares – foldable Schwalbe Mondial touring tires. She changed her tire out and we continued. Soon the thunderstorms were heavily on us and we looked at our options of continuing to ride to the next big town about 10 miles over a large hill or turning right and looking for a place on the beach. Since the sky was dark and visibility low we chose the 2 kilometer route to La Manzanilla Beach and found a nice bungalow. After negotiating the price with the seniorita in the pouring rain she signaled for us to bring our bikes in. So with all the mud and water we entered on the nice tile floor. She then got a mop to clean but I stopped her and took the mop and we cleaned up after our mess.
A few hours earlier I also developed a wobble on my rear tire and discovered a tire failure similar to Jocelyn’s. The next morning I changed out my rear tire with our second spare. We were disappointed to have only 11,000 miles on these tires before they failed. Last year we rode many miles off road from Morocco to Southeast Asia on these tires and in Mexico some of the rocky roads have been tough. It’s funny though that we have carried two spares for over 15,000 miles over the last few years and all of a sudden we use both spares within a few hours of each other. On a side note we have never installed a foldable tire. They are very difficult without the steel bead and require differing air pressures in the tube and lots of patience to work onto the rim.
We left La Manzanilla Beach and headed to tourist city Manzanillo in our 6th Mexican state of Colima. There we found another beautiful coastline and cheap hotel at $24.
After much discussion we decided to take a bus 340 miles to Acapulco. We have a warmshowers host there that will store our bikes for a week so that we can bus to Mexico City and play tourist without our bikes. He actually lives in Mexico City but has property in Acapulco. We have many side trips planned for this year and saving the two weeks it would take us to cycle from Manzanillo to Acapulco seems like the right thing to do to save time for the other trips.
