Today's ride registered on the adventure meter, but not high. No injuries, and not severe inconvenience. I wanted to ride 8 loops in Stonebridge, which would have given me a new daily distance record. I did 4 in a counterclockwise direction, and then turned around to go the other way (so I'd avoid expiring of boredom). But I only got a little over a quarter mile into this fifth loop when my right front tire went flat. It wasn't a blowout, and I didn't feel it happen. But I began to hear a WHUFF WHUFF as the wheel rotated, and when I checked it, it was beginning to go flat.
So I quickly chained the trike up to a street sign, and began walking home to get the car, thankful that I had stayed close enough to make this feasible. Still, it would have been a walk of about 2 miles, but after I had gone about a half mile, a maintenance woman in a van slowed and asked me if I needed help. She had been working on one of the homes in the area where I'd been riding, and when she saw me walking with my helmet on, she thought maybe I'd had a breakdown of some sort. She was understandably wary, though, of picking up a strange man (not that I'm really "strange"), so after I had shown her my card, she asked me to write down my address. When she saw it, she said, "Hey! That's right near my condo!" So I was blessed with a ride.
Then I figured I might as well head right over to Dearborn to get it taken care of, and when I entered Jack's Bicycle, one of the guys said, "Hey, Richard—your friend is here!" He soon had a new tube installed in the tire for me, and aired it up, and I was good to go. I did purchase a spare tube to take with me, though, so I could have a shop in Ann Arbor do the work next time, and not have to return clear to Dearborn. On a future visit, he'll give me a lesson on how to change the tube myself.
One other element of adventure occurred today. When I test rode a trike on April 25, I made a joking remark to Richard about its stability. He nodded, but replied, "It is possible to roll it over, though, if you turn sharply enough and at a high enough speed." Sure enough, that's just what I did. I was riding south on the Lohr-Textile Greenway, and when I came to the crosswalk to go across Lohr Road and into Stonebridge, I rolled it right over. But fortunately, neither the trike nor I were injured, and this happened before I got into the roadway, and it was a good lesson learned for the future!
During the early part of my ride, my friend Randy Greschaw, who lives in Stonebridge, passed me slowly, and called out to me, "Looks like fun!" It was great to see Randy, whom I had known at my former church, but had not seen in some while.
Anyway, even with the truncated plan, I still was able to get in a good ride of 12 miles in 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Funny bumping into you at Jack's today! Regarding the inner tubes, they are pretty generic, so you can just buy them almost anywhere by looking at the size on the tire. I just purchased some "slime" inner tubes for Heidi's bike. Even with new tubes, the tires on that bike go soft too quickly, so I wanted to see if this would help. Slime tubes are puncture proof. Another option might be to just add slime to your current tubes. You can buy this at an auto parts store.
ReplyDelete