it had to happen

after about nine hours of riding my old bike in the past few days, through all sorts of terrain, i finally got a flat. it was a pretty nice ride home up until then. it was very dark and the stars were out. one weird thing was going on under me, for the last 1000 yards i could feel the back end of my bike slipping around the turns. at first i kind of played dumb..."i wonder what's going on?".... then it was too dark to see the ground, so i could not verify that it was flat. then it was very obvious that i was loosing air. i had actually lost a bunch of air at this point but i wasn't going to stop riding, i was too close to home. i could see the lights of our neighborhood off into the far night. finally i stopped and checked to see if this tire was what it felt like. just as i thought, but tried to ignore, the tire was completely flat! there was no way i was going to try and ride it any more, but i was still too close to home to stop and fix it.

i knew that a nice bright warm comfortable garage was waiting for me. it wouldn't seem right to be just outside my neighborhood scrambling around in the dark, trying to pull off a tire. i don't know why it wouldn't seem right, but it wouldn't take my word for it.

if it weren't for pulling off the tire, flats would not be problem at all :)

i decided to just walk it home. it turned out to be a good choice. walking has a quality about it which relaxes people like me. you know, the feeling that there is no way you can do something fast... so just sit back and enjoy the ride. it was really neat to be walking home in the dark... before i knew it [about 20 minutes later] i was home. a little later than i expected, but at least i was very relaxed :)