17 riders, 6 flat tires

Yikes!  What a day.  This was the usual Thursday morning, 46-mile ride, on familiar roads with familiar people, but there was a pretty fierce rain storm last night, with a lot of wind.  That combination tends to put a lot of stuff in the roads, and especially on the trails, all of which makes for an increased opportunity for flats.  And even without big weather, sometimes flat tires seem to come in waves.  I’ve ridden whole summers in big groups with no flat tires.  Then there are times like this.  A guy in our group had a flat tire about 3 weekends ago, then Brenda had hers 2 weekends ago, then a guy had a flat tire last weekend, and then it all went nuts today.

Tires can get cut so easily out there on these roads, especially in our section.  Whatever garbage there is on a road sooner or later ends up over on the side, right where we ride.  Glass, screws, chunks of sheet metal, car parts, dead animals, various unidentified sharp things—it’s all there, just waiting to stick right up into the first tire that rolls by.  And sometimes flats can be kind of tricky because it’s surprising how little a thing can poke a hole in a tube.  So if you get a flat tire you have to not only put in a new tube (please—forget about trying to patch a tube) you also have to run you finger around the inside of the tire feeling for sharp stuff.  Whatever stuck into that tube might still be in the tire, and if it is, you can count on your new tube going flat in just a few miles.  If you find something sharp in the tire, that’s a good thing (even though the way you probably found it was by it poking a hole in your finger just like it did the tube.)  If you don’t find anything sharp in the tire, then you’re kind of guessing that whatever caused the flat is gone now.  (And you may or may not be right.) 

Then when you get everything all set with the new tube and you’re ready to put the tire back on the rim you still have to be careful.  That tube is going to get inflated to over 100 psi, so there is a lot of pressure in there.  If you’re not careful, it’s easy to get part of that tube pinched in between the tire and the rim, or sometimes a part of the tube can even kind of get kind of folded up on itself, and if either of those things happens, your new tube will last anywhere from about 30 seconds to maybe one or two miles at the most.

So they got all the flats fixed, except for the last one—it was so close to the end of the ride that instead of fixing it, the guy just gave his car keys to one of the other riders and said, “Come back and get me”.  Sometimes it’s just about getting back home.