It's not a ride, it's an adventure! (long)
Well, in getting ready for my first century next week, I thought I'd take a decent ride today (Sunday) and then just take some short ones through the week to stay loose.
I was about 30 miles into the ride, and was directly across from Three-Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, PA when I hit something (never found it) and heard that ominous sound of a tire going flat. So I pulled over in an access area to a service bridge that goes to the island. I pulled out my trusty patch kit, CO2 pump, cartridges, etc. Patched it, and went to put a new CO2 cartridge, but couldn't convince the thing to come apart to allow me to change the cartridge. So I was looking around for something to use as leverage, and saw 2-2x4 supports at a perfect distance apart to help me. What I didn't see was the SNAKE! It was convinced that it was it's 2x4's and lunged at me 3 times while I made my escape. So after my heart slowed down, I was able to fix the CO2 and pump up the tire, put it back on the bike and ... ooops, the back one was blown too! Put a new tube on the back tire, pumped it up, put the tire back on the bike, and, (expetive deleted) the front one was flat again! there were 2 holes! So I patched that one too, and put the CO2 pump on and ooops... out of CO2!!!!! bad word, bad word!!!! SO I started walking the bike home, I stopped in a lttle town and almost went door to door asking if anybody had a bike pump. Lots of people did, but everyone of them was a Schrader valve of course, and I needed a Presta, (more bad words inserted here!)
So I started walking home. I had seen numerous riders, so I figured the odds were good that I'd run into at least one with a pump or a CO2 cartridge. After about a mile of walking I did find a kind soul from Hershey. I pumped the tire and was on my way, but by this time my muscles had tightened up and it was not a fun ride home, but I made it. 61 miles, er 60 miles of riding and 1 of walking.
My LBS is going to get a sale of 2 new tires and 3 new tubes tomorrow.
I guess if I'm not ready now, I never will be.
Stay safe