Last Monday was the first time I made the commute from Highland to Chicago on my bike. I had been saying I was going to do it since before I broke my hand, but I'd just been putting it off for many different reasons. However, my friends, John and Lindsey, from Chicago rode down that Sunday and stayed overnight with us and intended to ride back into the city in the morning so there was no weaseling out this time.
In order to be on the road in time to make it to work and get cleaned up in time we had to get up at 5 AM and it was still dark out. As many of you will find out I am typically a morning person, but to me morning implies that the sun has cracked the horizon. My dad joined us until he needed to turn back to make it to his work on time so it was a comfortable pack. There were three really rough stretches of pavement and/or traffic and during the last of these three my rear tire sprung a leak. I hate getting flats because they seem to occur when I am the most enthusiastic about riding and they kill that mood, but with three people taking care of it we were rolling again before all good cheer was lost. Even with the delay we made it to the museum with half and hour to spare.
So now that the monkey was off my back I decided to save a little money in my last couple of weeks at work by riding the bike instead of the train. It also happens to be the museum campus' commuter challenge week to see which institution (The Field Museum, The Adler Planetarium, or the Shedd Aquarium) can have the most employees ride to work at least once. I made it to work no problem, I even found a smoother route, but on the way home I got another flat and was still 15 miles from home. I switched out the tube and went to pump it up, but I couldn't get the pump to work. Any time I got air going in, it would leak back out before i could get past 20 psi. I called my home to get a ride and my dad came to pick me up. I was not in a good mood. Here I thought I had all my gear ready, but now I will need to go get something else. When I got home I set about changing the tire only to discover that my new tube already had a hole in it and it wasn't the pump after all. Whew.
I decided to get back on the horse the next day to try for a successful commute. John wanted to get a few training miles in before this weekend's race (details in my next post) so he rode South and we met half way. We then proceeded to ride up toward the lakefront trail. Wouldn't you know it, half a mile from the trail John picked up a piece of glass and my commute stayed perfect in the blown tire category. It was 7:42 when we were rolling again and we were 6.5 miles away from the museum and i deciced that I wanted to be there by 8:00. So I pulled John and we hammered down the trail making it with one minute to spare. Thre ride home was uneventful. THANKFULLY.
This morning I made it to work very fast, 18.25 mph fast, and that included slowing down for traffic signals and stopping if necessary. I am out of spare tubes so I am taking a bit of a risk given the recent statistics. If I make it home tonight without incident it will be a huge sigh of relief.
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1 comment:
Way to go!
But seriously you need to think Kevlar tires. They are the only tires I have on my bikes now. The original set that I got with my bike last July have 400kms on them and NEVER had a flat- all road riding including over glass, construction, deep ruts and tons of unidentified refuge. They are more expensive but I have yet to regret the money.
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