what was that? is that all there is? who is this? this is it.

This morning I grabbed my bike and the rear tire was about 30 pounds low. So I pumped it up and went to work. I rode it all day, no problem, but in the early afternoon it was noticeably low, a very very slow leak that started last Friday. I kept checking it and checking it again all afternoon, reminded of a story 33 John told me years ago. He spoke of a late night winter bike ride with friends on snow covered roads around Salt Lake City. On the ride he was continually checking his tire pressure with a squeeze, unsure if he actually was losing air pressure or if the super-human levels of strength he achieved from dropping so much acid had allowed him to squeeze his tires harder than normal.

Thinking you have a stomach ache is the same thing as having a stomach ache. If you think you have a flat and you’re fixating on it, you might as well have a flat. It’s not that you’re hungover, or tired, or dehydrated, or hungry, or tripping balls. It’s that slow leak in your back tire that’s slowing you down… or at least you think it is. I’m a big fan of psychosomatic illnesses as well as the placebo effect. It’s all in my mind.

Sometimes a nice clean puncture, quick and painless, beats the long drawn out obsession with a slow leak. No energy wasted on the wondering, the questioning, the checking, the squeezing, the doubting.

I need to replace that inner tube. Or maybe I’ll just have a beer and go to sleep. Then in the morning I can pump it up again and go to work.

PS. 10 hours later

...it was July 3, the day before the 4th of July

I got up early and fixed the slow leak. I discovered an inner tube that had been patched once already sometime in the last six to eight months. When the temperature reaches 77 in Seattle you can expect the integrity of an old patch to be compromised. You can expect integrity in general to be compromised.

Traditionally when the 4th of July falls on a Wednesday,  tradition is out the window.

3 Comments

At -25 or so the seams in tubes start to fail. You can walk outside and find a flat. You pull out the tube, check the casing, throw in a new tube and try to patch the old one finding six small leaks before you give up, at least the first time. On another note I've thought I've had a slow leak in the rear tire. Squeezed the tire even checked it with a pressure gauge, everythings right. Turns out my ass got soft.

did you say negative 25? The entire city of Seattle shuts down when there's a dusting of snow. There is only one snowplow within 50 miles of downtown. We live in that median medium not too anything zone.

Well thanks to global warming it hasn't gotten that cold since my rookie years but to make up for it's gotten iceier in the winters. Nokion studded tires I use 'em, you should too.

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