My family deserted me this weekend. Well, not so much deserted me as escaped to the Adirondaks for a long weekend. There are two things that their departure means for me: More pork products and lots of golf and bicycling. So Friday night, I made Bucatini all’Amatriciana from a fabulous recipe from the New York Times, and I booked golf games for Saturday and Sunday.
On my way back from Saturday’s round at Shaker Hills (a disappointing 97 after a front side 45), I was arranging carpooling with my friend Paul for the following day’s round. I mentioned that all I needed was enough time to do an early morning bike ride. Paul asked whether I rode with anyone or went solo. I replied that with my wife out of town, I was mostly riding solo. He wondered whether that was such a good idea, pointing out that if something went wrong, it would be nice to have someone to help out. I chuckled to myself and casually and condescendingly mentioned that 1) nothing ever goes wrong and 2) if something did go wrong, I have a cell phone. “In fact” I said, “should something go wrong during tomorrow’s ride, I will call you to help me.”
So this morning I woke up early and was on my bike by and riding out to Dover by 7 AM. After about 3 miles into the ride, I noticed that I was struggling a little bit: my speed was down from my usual, and it just seemed as if I was riding in sludge. I figured that this was due to the fact that I had worked out the day before and my quads were weakened from the excessive amount of iron pumping that is standard in my typical weight training regimen. At the five mile mark, I finally figured out what it was: I had a flat rear tire.
So I pull off the road and proceed to replace the inner tube on the tire. It needs to be said that I don’t have much experience with basic bicycle repair. If we’re getting technical about it, I actually have no direct experience. In fact, I have ridden over 2000 miles and my bike and have had only one flat tire, and that was while we were on our Vermont tour last year, and so someone else changed it for me. It took me a while, but I finally figured out how to replace the tube, and was ready to go in about half an hour. Just before taking off again, I decided that I needed a little more air in my tires. So I reattached the hand pump, added a few more PSI. When I removed the the pump, I also removed about half of the valve stem and all the air poured out of the tire.
Now things got interesting, because I don’t have another inner tube with me (I had given away my other tube last year to someone I saw broken down on the side of the road). I immediately thought back to my conversation with Paul the previous day, and was all set to give him a call to pick me up, when I realized that he didn’t have a car big enough to handle the bike. So I began my long walk home.
About a mile into the walk, a kind person in a car stopped and asked if I needed some help. I said I would love a ride because I had a rear flat and no extra inner tubes. It turns out this guy was on his way to a bike race in Newton and had an extra inner tube. After about 15 minutes, I was good to go. I profusely thanked the good samaritan as he departed, hopped on the bike and within 10 feet realized the front tire was also flat. For those of you keeping score at home, that means that prior to today, I had a grand total of one flat in 2000 miles. Today alone I had three.
I eventually got a ride home from our generous and patient next door neighbor. About an hour later when Paul picked me up for our round of golf (a pretty good 91 at Blackstone National), I gave him a lesson in scientific logic: 1) I had ridden bikes in Newton without incidence for 3 years, 2) On Saturday, Paul raised the possibility of problems during a ride, 3) On Sunday I had 3 flats in the space of one ride. Therefore, Paul caused me to have problems on Sunday. It is comforting to know that in these uncertain times, the law of cause and effect still holds.
And now I am sitting here writing this blog holed up in my TV room, because there is a bat loose in the first floor of the house. I think I’ll sneak upstairs to bed and try to sleep before I see what else the gods have in store for me today.