(January 6th)

Day 12 - Brendan to LaGrange Texas

Lies and Damn Lies

 

 If you zoom in, you'll not only confirm that I've got the wheel off to change the flat tire, but you'll see the ice which has formed on the trailer cover following the freezing rain that I rode through twice :)

My tire repair station in the back of a ranch supply and feed store just outside Round Top Texas.

I learned today that Round Top TX hosts a huge, three-week long antique show twice a year. It draws as many as 100,000 people from all the country for the three week period. I decided the place in this pic is in charge of displaying whatever didn't sell from the last show :)

 

Yolanda & Rolando. Together their names form that of my ex-wife! They served me a terrific BBQ Brisket sandwich for lunch at their new place in Round Top (Stone Cellar Kitchen), complete with freshly-brewed tea and a cup of hot chocolate :)

 

 

I totally was enthralled with the Tour de France this year. I'd never watched bike racing and found it to be totally awesome to see how the teams tried all sorts of tactics to de-throne Chris Froome and Team Sky. One thing I noticed while watching the three-week long spectacle was that the announcers used the phrase "had a mechanical" to describe when a rider's bike broke in some fashion.

 

Well, today I had my first mechanical. I'd been really fortunate so far with no flats, but somewhere just after I began my journey this morning I picked up a tiny, tiny piece of metal...like maybe 2 or 3cm long and super-thin...in my tire. And, as any cyclist knows, it doesn't take much. Now, when your bike tire goes flat, the effect is immediate and un-missable: you KNOW its flat.

 

Well, not so much on a trailer tire.

 

It wasn't until about 8 miles into today's ride that I finally realized why I was going so SLOW up EVERY hill. Why riding today felt far more difficult than yesterday did. Why it wasn't me just being a really horrible pedaler. Or the fact that I've cycled 5 days straight without rest. Nope, it's because I had a broken wing.

 

Now, do you all remember my tale about the FedEx package that never quite got delivered in Oberlin Louisiana last Saturday? Well, I never mentioned what was in it. But now I'll reveal the crucial fact that one of the items in that package (who knows where it is right now!) was a pump capable of inflating not only my bike tires, but ALSO...you guessed it...my trailer tires. That is an extremely important fact because the frame pump I left home with is only capable of inflating my BIKE tires and NOT my trailer tires.

 

So, yeah. I ended up dragging my trailer behind me with one tire flat for over 20 miles. And, yes, it is as excruciatingly difficult to do that as it sounds. I only ended up going about 40 miles today but those were HARD miles! No matter how gentle the slope I was reaching for a lower/easier gear.

Now, to be fair if I'd done what I should have done at about mile 12, I would have been in better shape. I did stop at a gas station and fill up the tire. I waited about 20 minutes and, when it was still just as full as it was when I'd filled it, I figured I was good. Now, I KNEW I should pre-emptively change the tire just in case. But I didn't want to. It was below freezing outside and I just wanted it to work. So when it didn't lose air while parked, I told myself a huge lie that I'd simply messed up filling it yesterday morning by letting out too much air when I was having trouble taking the head of the pump off the valve. Yeah, that was dumb, dumb, dumb.

 

So, of course, because it was a FLAT TIRE, it deflated again. And because there was no way I was going to backtrack several miles to go back and fix it, I dragged it onwards another 10 miles. Now, I'd have loved to have dragged it, say, another 1 mile or something. But, nope. There was NOTHING between Burton and Round Top.

 

Well, nothing until I saw the feed and ranch supply store just on the outskirts of Round Top. A location that had some sort of garage-looking things going on for farm/ranch equipment which made me wonder if they might have an air compressor. Turns out I made an inspired choice. Because they had all I needed to include a warm spot inside to work at.

 

Moral of the story? Do what you know you need to do when you know you need to do it because a crazy story ("that isn't flat, just mis-inflated!") you tell yourself to justify being lazy in the cold is obviously just a damn lie.

 

P.S. The cold was actually not too bad despite being down near 20 degrees with windchill. My cold weather riding gear strategy worked out really well. Good thing, because tomorrow will be even colder :)