I seem to be on a good streak.

My brother and I were sitting around the tent on BTC and he asked how my tires were holding up. The front is ok. However the back one had a big spot with thread showing. This was after screaming down Rabbit Ears earlier today. I had brought a spare so quickly changed it.

would have been a good day to buy a lottery ticket?

Re cycling, very good until last year. Last year - not so good. Very good re everything else.

Regarding your tire...I was on a ride in the Delaware Water Gap area of NJ with a group of friends, and we all hit 50+ mph on a big downhill. The guy I rode up with was putting his bike on the car at the end of the ride and noticed that the entire tread surface of rear tire was gone. He was lucky that day.

Not my luck but you may not think this kind of thing can happen. Had to call the attorney that handled my inlaws estate matters. After business we were chatting. He bought a 300 acre plot somewhere up in Canada. Sold the timber on the property for 5 times the purchase price. But as the TV pitchman says "Wait there is more"
Gets a letter from the local authorities that a gold mining company has bought every property surrounding his. And the thing sits smack in the middle of where the company wants to do an open pit mine for gold. He had no idea about the gold but you guessed it, he holds the mineral rights to the land! Nice guy too.

What's BTC?

Mine's not quite as good as yours. A couple months ago I set off on what was supposed to be a double century. Forty miles out my rear tire blew out. I had been meaning to check on it before this ride because it was almost two months old, but I didn't. Since it was still dark, I didn't notice that the blow out had torn through the vectran layer as well as the rubber. Less than a mile after I changed tubes I got another blow-out. As things went from bad to worse, I found that I only had one patch in my kit. As I pumped up my patched tube I managed to break off the valve stem. I limped towards home with all of 40 PSI in the rear tire and hoping to get to the nearest place with cell phone coverage (23 miles away) before the tire went flat. I actually got within eight miles of home before the tire was unrideable. While doing the walk of shame, another cyclist gave me his spare tube. Unfortunately, it also had a hole in it. As I resumed walking, a nice young woman gave me a lift two miles to where my wife agreed to meet me with a tire, tube and patches.

All in all, I had a great time and was assisted by two total strangers and was offered a wheel by a person who worked at the feed store where my wife met me. Missing out on the pain of an early Spring double was a small price to pay for having my faith in the generosity and kindness of my fellow travelers restored. Maybe my luck is as good as yours after all.

Had a similar thing last year at Mountains of Misery. Got back to the hotel, and looked at the rear tire. WTF? The threads were showing through in three or four places. Glad I didn't get a blow-out descending into New Castle!

I'll be right back, I'm going to give my rear tire a spin......