Valve stem blowout is a winner!
Yes, if you had “valve stem blowout” as your predicted cause of my next flat, you’re a winner. Not only is it getting discouraging, but I’m running out of tubes (and those CO2 cartridges aren’t free, either). That was Friday, and I made my change and shortened my loop. Yesterday I actually got out and did 40k without a single flat tire — some kind of minor miracle.
Took a canoe out on the lake today, sidestepping the entire flat tire issue, and saw the most amazing thing I have ever seen: snapping turtle sex. In shallow water I just about ran over a moss-backed snapping turtle, and for a minute I thought it was another dead one because it seemed to be entwined in something (a couple of years ago there was one caught up in a cast-off tire, floating down there for months). But as I got about three inches away from it, its head moved and I suddenly realized that what it was entwined with was another snapping turtle, and they were making hot monkey love. Apparently, even a big green canoe can’t distract a snapper on a mission. The lake was lousy with box turtles, too, more than I’ve ever seen — basking, swimming, popping their little heads out of the water. Hundreds of them. But they weren’t getting what the snapper was getting.
O.K. You’re starting to scare me a little. Turtle sex? I thought this was a family-friendly blog! 🙂
My kids are getting older, so, yes, I did tell them I had seen snapping turtles having sex. Then I changed it to snapping turtle luuuvvvvv to make it sound even worse.But I didn’t go around singing for them, as I did later for my patient spouse, “You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals / so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.” Bloodhound Gang rules!