BTW: If you scroll down, you'll see that I published a new post on Saturday because I've decided to give up on as much structure as possible. My apologies for however this might affect your morning constitutional.
I left my house at 5:30PM after a productive day despite the roofers making all the noise possible. I even made some headway into some projects at my mom's place before going out into the world of no responsibility.
Enough patting myself on the back for just doing what I was supposed to do and back to bike blerhging.
Six miles of urban commuting that I more than just loathe up four lanes of Eastway to get to Zac's house. Meet up with Nick and Joey and head out into the night. Not too long and we're at woods number one with an immediate, almost ride-ending crash in the first corner involving the knee of the only person who knows the whole route. From there, on to woods number two.
And then Zac had his first flat followed by a failed CO2 head followed by a loaner CO2 followed by our first stop at a gas station for air.
Streets to an unfinished widening project dirt road that should stay that way so Charlotte can have a quaint dirt road that leads to a bar with classic "Southern charm."
Somehow, our bikes are still outside after one beer, so we continued on into the night.
Zac notices that his freshly inserted but not exactly right-sized tube isn't doing the one thing tubes are supposed to do... hold air. He rides until it's softer than a pre-Cialas octogenarian and then he's hoofing it to a gas station that is hopefully somewhere up there in the distance. I'm greedily holding onto my last CO2 that was punctured months ago for someone else so they could seal a hole, knowing that what little that is left in it might be needed personally to get me all the way home. Plus, it was neat to watch Zac jog.
Maybe being cheap and not just tossing the mostly spent cartridge in the recycling bin and then replacing it with a new one is not so smart...
But mebbe riding with Zac without a pump (and Zac-sized tube) handy is even not so smarter.
Two presta valve adapters that don't work well with this particular air station and some manipulation of a stem cap with a pocket knife and Zac has more air in a tube that is also not so right-sized but at least too big is better than too small.
So we end up at the RTS trails which are the rockiest, most technical thing we'll see all night (and the furthest point from where we started) with mebbe one tube and a CO2 containing an unknown but definitely small amount of tire-filling gasses.
Joey decides to take his turn at falling over in the first chicane at RTS and ends up down in a ditch.
We get out of the woods mechanically unscathed as Zac rode like a grasshopper on rice paper to ensure zero flats. From there, we hit the greenway, alight with nothing more than a pre-super moon (and an iPhone flash).
Aside from getting stuck on the wrong side of a fast moving train, the rest of the night passes in an uneventful manner. Woods number four and five and then I wave goodbye at the beginning of my shitty ride down shitty Eastway with a shitty, dead rear blinky.
Meh.
I carefully sprint home in time to watch SNL and the world starts burning.
I left my house at 5:30PM after a productive day despite the roofers making all the noise possible. I even made some headway into some projects at my mom's place before going out into the world of no responsibility.
Enough patting myself on the back for just doing what I was supposed to do and back to bike blerhging.
Six miles of urban commuting that I more than just loathe up four lanes of Eastway to get to Zac's house. Meet up with Nick and Joey and head out into the night. Not too long and we're at woods number one with an immediate, almost ride-ending crash in the first corner involving the knee of the only person who knows the whole route. From there, on to woods number two.
Zac notices that his freshly inserted but not exactly right-sized tube isn't doing the one thing tubes are supposed to do... hold air. He rides until it's softer than a pre-Cialas octogenarian and then he's hoofing it to a gas station that is hopefully somewhere up there in the distance. I'm greedily holding onto my last CO2 that was punctured months ago for someone else so they could seal a hole, knowing that what little that is left in it might be needed personally to get me all the way home. Plus, it was neat to watch Zac jog.
But mebbe riding with Zac without a pump (and Zac-sized tube) handy is even not so smarter.
Two presta valve adapters that don't work well with this particular air station and some manipulation of a stem cap with a pocket knife and Zac has more air in a tube that is also not so right-sized but at least too big is better than too small.
So we end up at the RTS trails which are the rockiest, most technical thing we'll see all night (and the furthest point from where we started) with mebbe one tube and a CO2 containing an unknown but definitely small amount of tire-filling gasses.
Joey decides to take his turn at falling over in the first chicane at RTS and ends up down in a ditch.
We get out of the woods mechanically unscathed as Zac rode like a grasshopper on rice paper to ensure zero flats. From there, we hit the greenway, alight with nothing more than a pre-super moon (and an iPhone flash).
Meh.
I carefully sprint home in time to watch SNL and the world starts burning.
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