Recovery Ride..??

Well…I am back home in Calgary after a 7 hour drive through the Rockies. Before I left Kelowna today I had a recovery bike ride that I wanted to get in. Kelowna has an amazing network of bike lanes and bike paths. I mapped out a route that would be reasonably flat that should take me somewhere around an hour. The first half of the route was not too exciting. A bit of uphill here and there, but not much scenery out there. Until I hit the top part of my loop that is! All of a sudden it was nice and rural and the scenery was beautiful! Should I mention that this was also the part of the ride where I realized that my cell phone was sitting on my bedside table…at home..??Lots of green and a few orchards around here and there. Beautiful.It was time to head back into town and it was pretty well downhill. I hit one section that was a 5-6% grade downhill and picked up some speed. I tried to keep it reigned in…but… I turned a corner and there was a set of railroad tracks to go over. And there was a huge rut right at the track. I hit the rut, then the tracks and got some air…then landed. I looked down and no surprises…flat in the back tire. Hey…this would be my first time changing a tire…by myself…on the side of the road…fun! I swapped out the tube, filled it up with CO2, then struggled to get the back wheel back on. All said and done it took me about 16 minutes. As I started away there was a funny sound. Something wasn’t right… It kind of sounded like thump, thump, thump… I pulled over, felt the tire to see if there was still air in there…yup. I started off again, same weird sound and within 30 seconds the tire then went BAM!!! I obviously had caught the tube under the tire bead right by the valve stem. Bugger… Luckily I had another spare tube and CO2 cartridge, but now I was shaken. If I made the same mistake again I’d be screwed as I was still 5 miles away from my car. And did I mention that I’d forgotten my cell phone at home?

I swapped out the tube again and made sure to check that it wasn’t caught anywhere, especially by the valve stem. I filled her up and put the wheel back on. Just then a fellow walked by and asked if I was okay. He mentioned that there was a bike shop about two blocks away if I needed anything, so that was good to know. If I had another blowout in a minute at least I would have somewhere to go!

As I got back on the road it looked like things were holding…sort of. When I looked down it would look like there wasn’t a lot of pressure in the back tire, but then I would stop and feel it and it felt just fine. Let’s just say that I was really happy that I made it back to the car without another flat!

Um…so yeah…just over 18 miles of recovery riding in the bag…plus a little flat changing experience to go with it!