May 10th Mother's Day Rides!

[Susan126]

What can make this Mother's Day so special? A wonderful bike ride with my two beautiful kids and my husband!

[msincredible]

Went for a nice long solo loop yesterday, ride started out well.

Ride was going well, I was about 44 miles in and had about 0.5 mile left of a steep climb when I heard that awful hissing from my rear wheel. Stopped, plopped down in the dirt to change it, discovered my pump was not all that good but I was able to get something rideable (this was actually my first flat on this bike, not bad after about 2700 miles). I didn't see anything obvious for the cause, no thorns, etc.

Oddly enough, one of my Ducati friends was riding by as I was finishing up and stopped to check on me, but I assured him I was doing fine.

Made it another 12 miles, was 56 miles into the ride and heading down a descent, just before a pretty steep part when I got the second flat. A very nice local cyclist stopped and helped me out with a spare tube and some CO2. At this point we discovered the cause of my flats - my rim tape had developed a hole. We attempted to cover it up with an energy bar wrapper.

Made it down the big descent (thankfully) although I ended up losing my pump somewhere on the way down. I wasn't going back for it.

At mile 65 I got my 3rd flat. I had absolutely no way to fix it at this point. Also there was no cell phone signal so I started walking.

2 miles into the walk a couple of cyclists stopped by, offered a tube but I told them it would probably just flat again. One of them took my home number and told me he would call as soon as he got somewhere with a decent signal. After 5 miles of walking my husband finally showed up - he had gotten the call from the guy.

Got in 65 miles, about 7800' before I had to throw in the towel. What a frustrating day.

Big thanks to the people who stopped and helped me out. It would have been a very long walk home.

[indigoiis]

... so, I promise not to kavetch about how sore my rear is after 60 miles anymore... nice ride, MsIncredible (except fer the flats part.)

[alpinerabbit]

Forgot to mention that we tried out a small road that ended up getting steeper and steeper until we stalled. I've never walked on my roadie (or should I say with roadie in hand? ) - but this was at least 150m of 20, 21% and we were already pooped. I can do maybe 100 of that but this incline did not end.