Flat #3

Saturday, I went to the barn. Hurricane Ike was hitting us, but--OF COURSE--we missed all the rain, and just ended up with a lot of wind. I worked some of the horses on the lunge, and rode Antares, the three-year-old. He's such a good boy. Even with all that wind, he was a saint. Young horses can be a little "weee!" when it comes to wind.

I went on a solo ride Sunday morning. The wind was still kinda crazy, but I've had worse. I had a strong headwind the entire way out, but I knew it would be awesome on the way back, so I went further than I really felt like doing. I turned around, and immediately ramped it up to 22 MPH. It was awesome. Half a mile later, I was doing 25 with hardly any effort. Less than a mile after I turned around, someone passed me even as I was going 25, and I heard a POP and tsssss... I had secretly hoped it was him (deep down I knew it was ME), hoped that he would stop to help me, haha. He did look back to make sure I was okay, but kept on. Oh well, it's about time I fixed my own damn flat.

It was the second flat I've had in (almost) a week. I never did get any CO2 cartridges (to fill up the tire really quickly), so I had to use my hand pump. Every single cyclist that passed me asked if I was okay/had everything--that was nice. Yes, I did have everything, but some CO2 would have been nice. The hand pump was a little difficult for me to figure out since I had never used it before, and it took probably five minutes to fill the tire up. Even then, I probably only pumped it to 60 psi, when the tire should be at 100. Anyway, so after all that, Michael's team ride passed me up right as I was getting going again.

At their rest stop at Starbucks, Michael found a rather large hole in the sidewall of the tire, so we went to a local shop to replace the tire. $60 later... sigh.

Monday, I went on the same group ride I had been on last week. We took some of the same roads, including a construction road. There were some spots of gravel that I had to navigate (road bike tires do NOT do well with gravel and sand), but it was fine... at first. We were going fast, came around a curve, and the one and only guy in front of me slowed down and went off to the left without warning me, so by the time I realized why, it was too late for me. I went through an area of 3" deep sand and rocks for a good 20-25 feet or so. I was going somewhat fast already, and figured I could either grab the brakes and have a good chance of crashing (plus I knew there were people behind me, but I didn't know how close), or just sail through it and let my momentum carry me. I chose the latter, giggling the whole way (although the adrenaline was coming on full force), bouncing so roughly that my tail light rattled loose, flung to the ground and apparently made some impressive air--but I made it. Nobody knew why I went through until I told them I didn't know it was there until I was already going through it!