You definitely want the helium option!!! Great advantage to have for the hills. Just watch the blow-outs. On the other hand, if you didn't get a chance to drink any coffee before the ride, the blow-out will certainly wake you up!

Jobob, I will check out the meeting plans for Saturday's Cinderella. Always good to have an opportunity to meet people from an online community in person. Also, who'd want to ride the 62 miles ALONE? (Not that there's anything wrong with that....)

Adventure Girl, I'm so glad that the KA-POW didn't happen while I was decending. I was going along on the flat -- probably around 16, 17 mph when it happened. The front tire deflated completely, and I brought the bike to a stop as soon as I could do so safely. It was pretty steady, tho. So no drama there.

I'm still not sure what caused the blowout. It was my front tire, which I'd changed the tube in a couple of weeks beforehand. (Valve stem mishap. Never try to force the frame pump's chuck off the valve stem -- it'll rip the poor sucker right off the tube.) Maybe I put the tube in incorrectly so that some of it was between the rim and the tire bead. The weird part is that I'd ridden four or five times since changing that tube -- even descended Kilkare and Calaveras. You'd think the problem would have surfaced before Saturday's ride if I'd changed the tube incorrectly.

The guys who helped change the tube did not like my tires at all. "Too flimsy." Makes me wonder if the tire helped cause the blowout. Just to be safe, I bought new tires yesterday -- unflimsy Continental Grand Prix. To be really, really safe, I put Mr. Tuffy liners in there too. I really, really, really don't want another blow out like that.

If anyone's had a blow out and has ideas of what happened, I'm all ears.

-- Melissa