Okay, I'm going to do this...

[shootingstar]

I'm trying to get the courage to ride more by myself, I am mechanically inept. If something breaks I'm worried I won't get where I'm going on time, which would really only matter if I commute on my bike to work. Which is only 4 miles away, yet I have been a BIG chicken so far. I have ridden without my husband, but only when He's out of town and I'm desperate to ride. And only when a teenage driver is at home to pick me up if needed. I might try to take an REI repair class this month. My work schedule in September will allow me the time to ride to work with no justifiable excuses. Unfortunately that also involved a forced reduction of work hours which I am not happy about. I'm trying to see a bright spot.

Hope you find a solution for this. Sounds like you live in a rural area? And your roads must be rough?

I'm mechanically klutzed..even after other people showing me how to change a flat, etc. But still, I don't let it worry me much since I live in the (big, spawling) city...and our buses have bike racks.

It wasn't always like this. I lived in another city that didn't have bike racks but some of the bike routes ran near subway stations.

Yea, I'm pretty illogical. Considering the fact that we haven't had any car. So phoning him to pick me up if I had a flat, is pretty useless.

The reason for my slack attitude is that I went through first 3 years of returning to cycling with only 1 flat and I was averaging much higher annual mileage back then than these last few years. Back then it was 5,000-6,000 kms. annually.