Post flat tire blues
I had the most annoying flat tire today; I was trying to ride the Estacada 100 and noticed, 20-odd miles out, that the mlcm was starting to ride as if the front tire was going flat. This was annoying, because I’d just had a flat on this tire two days ago (a piece of glass had poked into the tube with the expected results) and wasn’t expecting one for another 460 miles or so. But when I stopped the tire was only down to what I guess was 40psi, so I thought that it would be worthwhile to put some more air in and see how long it would stay ridably inflated. But when I started to open the valve so I could attach the pump, it made a happy whiiissht! sound and then launched the valve core off into the underbrush, followed, of course, by the rest of the air in that tube.
So a 2 minute stop&pump became a 15 minute look for the valve core, can’t find it, then just swap tubes procedure, which just happened to be long enough so I couldn’t guarantee a < 4h30 loop time. Ugh. So I bailed at the top of Eaden Road and went home (at an increasingly slow speed because I’m congested today and the combination of congestion+cold winds ( + not enough tea) is much like getting an icepick embedded in my sinus cavity.) I cut 17 miles off the loop, which I could possibly have done (I left home at 10:30 and got back after 49 miles at 2:09 – 17 miles downhill at 17+mph is certainly doable, but if anything had gone wrong I would have missed Silas’s schoolbus and been in a world of hurt.)