Failure and Redemption

Tuesday saw me get out for a road ride on a b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l, sunny afternoon. I was all giddy for the ride since the sun was shining, the road bike was ready to go and I was ready to pound the meat sticks into oblivion. Well, things didn't quite go as planned. For starters, just as I was getting ready to roll out the door one of my tires blew as I was topping it off. at first I thought I had busted the valve since the air rushed out so quickly but after a bit of 'vestigatin I found out that the problem was when I mounted the new wheel I didn't have any rim tape around so I used some of the stans rim tape instead. For those of you who aren't familiar, the stans tape is essentially skinny packing tape that does well to seal spoke holes but apparently it isn't strong enough to withstand the force of a road tube pushing 110psi. Anyway, I was at the office and severely short on options to fix the problem. Thankfully, I found a bikeman sticker that I was able to used to cover the offending hole and some more plastic tape to line the rim one more time for good measure. With that figured out, I went to patch my tube (so that I'd still have a spare for the ride) and what do you know, the brand new (well, unopened at least) tube of glue had somehow dried out and gone completely to shit. Frig. Given the half assed rim tape job there was no way I was getting out into the middle of nowhere without any way to change a flat so I beat feet home, grabbed three tubes (just in case) and headed out.

Unfortunately, by that time my head was out of the game and I soon found out that because of the previous five days off the bike that my legs were out of the game as well. Short of one sweet draft/sprint behind an ambulance the ride was a total bust and I was lucky that about fifteen minutes from home Marcy drove by and offered me a ride because she could see the thousands deaths painted across my face.

Speaking of the ambulance draft, that was potentially the best draft I've ever felt. The boxy nature and height of the vehicle created enough suction that I was able to hang back a good 20 ft (trying not to be a totally inconsiderate a-hole) and still get sucked along nicely.

With Tuesday's tail tucking incident fresh in my mind I wasn't sure if I'd take Marcy up on her offer to pick up B after work on Wednesday so that I could ride home. In the end, I decided to do the mountain bike commute home and I'm glad that I did because the trails were sweet (for this area at least) and my legs were feeling good again.