One evening this past week while pedaling home from work, my drifting thoughts paused to dwell upon the topic of, "What I would do if my tire goes flat on the way to work." The worst place for this to happen theoretically would be exactly in the middle of my route, which is 3.6 miles according to Google Maps. If I am halfway on my route, assuming a 20 minute walking mile, it will take me approximately 36 minutes to walk either to work or home to get my car. At this point, to the end of not being completely late, it would be best to walk to work and figure out how to get home later. As walking home and then driving the extra 15 minutes (very minimum-if all the lights are good) to work would take nearly an hour. So actually the worst spot for my tire to blow would be slightly before the halfway point. So if I really want to play it safe, I should leave for work an hour ahead of when I need to be there --which is clearly not going to happen. These are all things to consider when taking up a bike commute.
Mental gymnastics aside, these fear were unfortunately not unfounded, but rather brought on by an incident that happened on one of my rides to the ranch earlier during the summer...
I was riding blissfully along the highway towards home, hugging the left edge of the pavement to distance myself as much as possible from the 2 ton cars whooshing by me at 50+ mph. Though I had a healthy left hand side mental barrier, my concern for my right hand side was not great enough. My thoughts wandering a little too far, I imbalanced slightly trying to change gears--again still wobbly in adjusting on the gear shifters in front of me--my tire slipped off the right edge of the pavement onto the adjacent gravel. This in itself would not have been too bad to ride on the gravel a second, but in trying to correct myself back onto the pavement without falling, all I managed was to rake both front and rear tires along the raised edge of the blacktop. Ride on as I might try, hoping by some miracle my tires could withstand such a beating, the instantaneous lack of impulsion could not be ignored. Two flat tires 1.5 miles from home. This in fact was the good news-I was fairly close to home. So indeed I walked, half-dragged my bicycle (up the big hill) home, feeling very miserable about this bike adventure.
If any good came out of this it was a pleasantly increased sense of confidence in the goodness of humanity. One person driving by offered me a ride and then a group of bicyclists at the same stoplight asked if everything was alright. Although, all this attention heightened my self-consciousness and my awareness of looking rather silly pulling my bike along with me like a naughty child instead of riding it, it is comforting to know that there are people out there nice enough to ask.
This put a damper in the way of any more bicycle riding for a while. My bicycle stayed in the trunk of my car for a couple months (this is another reason I love my bike--it fits in the trunk of my car) until I was brave enough to take it in to one of the million bike stores near my lab. Most people would probably think this sort of thing is no big deal, but when you are a completely ignorant, once-in-a-while, weekend rider walking into a bike shop, which represents this whole foreign world of avid bicyclist--it is slightly intimidating.
Finally, weeks after this incident, after learning something about bike tires and tubes, and plunking down a chunk of change (this will teach me not to pay attention); my little blue was up an running again, ready to go... And we even made it home with a compliment, a "nice bike" from the guy in the bike shop as we (blue and I) walked out.
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