Walking barefoot through the lumber district
Is not at romantic as it sounds. Started the day with a bike ride down by the river, where I instantly regretted my failure to bring my camera. The fog was drifting over the river, and only over the river, about 20 feet high and so thick you couldn’t see the other side. And then the sun broke through from the other side, making it all magically beautiful. The Livingston Avenue Bridge appeared suspended in mist. Two big rowboats out on the river looked like they were beating in the clouds. A rescue squad was drilling with an overturned raft in the frigid waters just off the boat ramp. A million things to photograph, and me without my camera. Oh well.
So I ran up the bike path in the warming sun for the first time this season, popped out at Watervliet and into Schuyler Flats, where I watched someone fly a model airplane for a few minutes, had a little chat with him and took my leave. Climbed up into Albany Rural Cemetery and the skies started to darken; by the time I got to the gate on the other side, the skies opened up, but I could ride the road with my eyes closed, so it wasn’t really a problem. As I got back into the city and headed down Broadway, I thought of how good my chances of flatting were, with all the rain and so much crap on the streets. I’d barely thought it before there was a spectacular spray of air and water coming off my front tire, the kind of nice, high-pressure, leave no doubts blowout you just don’t see much anymore. Close to my destination, the rain having let up but not stopped, I didn’t feel like fixing a flat in that neighborhood or in the rain, so I took off my shoes and decided to sacrifice my socks for the cause as I walked carefully through the extremely rough pavement and sidewalks of the industrial neighborhood just off the north edge of downtown. Well, I’ve seen odder things in that neighborhood than a sopping wet, spandexed biker in sock feet walking his bike around. (In fact, it’s the odder things that worried me.)
Tally up TWO punctures in the front, so if I’d tried to patch, I’d have eaten up my annual CO2 cartridge supply and ended up walking anyway. My tires, after only 2000 km, look like they’ve had the pox, pitted and scarred and probably not much longer for this world. If only they weren’t so good, they’d be gone already, but I’ve been loving them, so let’s see if they can survive another couple hundred k.
I haven’t been a cyclist since junior high so I have no idea how common bicycle tire flats are. However, this is the third story I’ve heard in a week about flats (according to Journalism 101, that’s a story). Perhaps bicycle flats are a rite of spring. But you hadn’t had this bike in the garage all winter, had you?
Nope, my bikes don’t get babied — even if it’s just on the rollers, they get ridden in the winter.What happens is that when you’re riding in the wet, things like glass, splinters, thorns and such are much more likely to stick to your tires — and after a few revolutions, they get jammed in far enough to cause a problem.It’s a BIT of a spring problem, too, because there’s all that winter crud on the shoulders that gets held in place by snow for a good chunk of the winter, and then it takes a while before it is either washed or swept away.