An unpleasant surprise this morning. I'm running late already, and as I rush out to the garage to grab the bike, guess what I find?? My front wheel is completely flat. Great! Must have picked something up on the way home yesterday. Normally a tube change takes me about ten minutes, so I went ahead and pulled the wheel. Unfortunately, once I got the tube out, I couldn't find the offending piece in the tire. Then I found out something even more sinister!
I had been carrying around a spare tube in the outside pocket of my Bug bag, for just such an occasion. Unfortunately, instead of the small Presta valve I normally use, the tube had a larger Schrader valve - completely unusable with my wheel because the valve stem won't fit through the hole in the wheel rim. I'm glad I caught this while sitting in my garage, instead of out on the street halfway home!
By this time, I was out of time, since I had a 9:00 meeting to make. So, it was upstairs for a quick shower and change, and out to door to the dinosaur burner to make it to work. Now I have some repair work to do at home.
The good part of all this is that I'm behind on writing an article for my favorite triathlon training website, BeginnerTriathlete.com, on how to change a tire. Now I can take some photos to add to the article! Of course, I'll have to put the bad tube back in to recreate the failure for the early pics.
Here are a couple other articles I've authored over there:
The new article is going to be part 2 of the Roadside Repairs series. I'm only about 6 months behind on it.
I haven't been using BT.com much lately, though I did quite a bit when actively training for triathlons. Right now, I'm deliberately staying away from logging. Not because it isn't useful, but because for me personally when I start logging, I start pushing, and that has led to some of my injury problems. I need to spend a year or so just building a "base", getting my body very, very used to the daily grind of exercising. It takes bone in particular months and months to strengthen enough to stand the rigors of an active workout regimen. I may log swims and runs again when I start working on them during the cold months. We'll see.
What I have found very useful is to log food intake. I'm bad about actually doing this, but I've found that the simple act of writing down and tracking what I'm eating helps tremendously in controlling that food and making sure it is the right quantity and the right quality. I've never lost weight so easily as when I was logging my meals. For this, BT.com has a very, very good logging facility. If you'd rather have something that is more food-centric and less workout-centric, I'd also recommend FitDay.com.
So for today at least, my poor bike is sitting in the garage, sans its front wheel, keeping the lawnmower company while I use the hydrocarbon-fuel engine for transportation. I really need a "backup" bike. Maybe I should start trolling the yard sales...
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