Flats & Hills (and another $75)

So a delayed post about my award-winning ride about a week and a half ago now…~16 miles, 2 flats, and that really stinking awesome hill that I mentioned before on Turkey Mountain.  We were aiming for a 20+ miler, but about 6 miles in I took a curve too fast, almost landed on my side, and ended up flattening my tire.  Of course, I’ve never had a flat before, so I didn’t realize it was flat for another 100 yards or so.  So I weakened the sidewalls of my tire doing that, which I think added salt to the wound of the second flat.  We spent about 20-30 minutes fixing flat #1, and got it all back on and continued our journey down to Turkey Mountain.

Riding with Craig meant we had to go up the hill if we’re going to ride that far down.  So I started pedaling fast in my big gear, trying to rev up for the upcoming climb I knew was coming.  Unfortunately I turned it on a bit too early and was not as fresh as I wanted to be at the bottom of the hills.  But I was smart this time and put the front gear on the middle ring instead of being naive and trying to power down the gears and popping off my chain again.  I made it up the first one, not quite in granny gear by the end, and geared it back up to start the second hill.  I was definitely in granny gear on that one, and quite excited there was no one out there to witness my sweet climbing skills because it was like a drunk elephant trying to weave through traffic.  It was not very pretty, but I made it!  I made it to the top, and was enough ahead of the other two I was riding with that my breathing was almost back to non-embarrassing levels by the time they finished climbing up.  Going down was much more fun, but I was a bit more cautious because it was curving and I had already flatted once.

Well, as Julie always says, flats seem to happen in two’s.  So about halfway back from the hills, I did something, I think simultaneously hit a sharp rock at the same time I was hitting a dip in the road, and it punctured the tire and tube, and I heard the rotating “psssssss…….pssssss……..pssssssss” sound as the tire exhaled through the hole and passed under my fork.  I think it’s the fork.  It’s the part that attaches to the front wheel. So I stopped, noticed my tire had a divot in it, I guess where the impact was, and that the pressure was rapidly approaching zero in my front tire.  So we flipped the bike, and prepared to change it again.  Except this time, the sidewalls started warping and doing some kind of funky dance as though to say they did not want to be ridden on any more.  We got it all back on after much sweat and grit, and plugged in the C02 cartridge and the tire did not want to inflate without the tube coming out of the tire.  We tucked it all back in and tried it again, but it did not want to behave.  So we got it aired up maybe to 75 or 80 psi (my normal is about 120psi) and I rolled home very carefully and tried to imagine myself being supported by helium balloons so that my tire wouldn’t be so encumbered.  I made it, even though it meant cutting our ride a little short.  Broke all 3 of my flimsy plastic tire levers, used 2 spare tubes, 3 C02 cartridges, and lost about an hour of our wednesday night riding time.

The next day, I went to the store, and restocked my flat kit and got my tire replaced.  Of course they did not have a matching tire, but I am trying to get over the non-matching tire aspect of my bike.  I didn’t realize a flat would be so expensive, it ended up costing me about $75 all said and done (ugh!):

• 3 C02 cartridges @ $3.50 each
• 3 tubes (one in the tire, 2 spares) @ $5.99 each
• 1 tire @ $29.99
• 2 higher-quality tire levers @ $3.99
• labor @ $6.00

But as all those credit card commercials say, the result is priceless.  The wind in my face, the ground whooshing by, riding miles on end, clearing my head, proving to myself I can do things I previously thought impossible or daunting, and all the other things that go with biking are absolutely priceless to me.  I enjoy running, but I love biking.  Swimming, too.  And I am getting stronger and healthier, and running doesn’t hurt me anywhere close to as much as it did several months ago. In fact, I have been able to run without knee braces for a couple months now. (Yay!)

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