All streaks must come to an end. Apparently mine with flats (or lack thereof) now has.

The story starts yesterday when I was on my way home. There was something a little funny looking, maybe glass, on the bike path and as I went over it I cringed. But made it home, checked over the tire, and didn’t find anything lodged within it. The thought did go through my head of “these tires are getting pretty old and probably need to be replaced”, but I figured it could wait.

This morning, I woke up to sunny skies and the temperature quickly rising. Got out of the house a little on the early side and headed towards class. Made it to Arlington Center and then I heard that sound that you never want to hear while biking…. “hisssssssssss”. Pulled off to the side of the path, and yep, the tube had a puncture and was flatting. Removed the tube and gave the tire a more extensive look over on the inside to see if there was anything protruding. Nothing to be seen. Thought again “yeah, definitely should change the tire”. Put in a new tube, aired it up and on my way

Made it about a mile and again…. “hissssssss”. Well, that was my spare tube and my one CO2 cartridge that I carry on the commuter. So at this point, not much I can do. I only carry one as there’s a bike shop roughly every mile along my commute so it’s not that big of a deal. But since I’m now going to be running late for class, I just walk up to Alewife and take the T from there to get to class half an hour late rather than early.

So, lessons for today…

1. Maybe it’s worth sticking a second flat kit in my pannier and laptop bag
2. When I start to think about changing tires, I really probably shouldn’t waste time
3. Don’t try to be too early 🙂

Hopefully the flats aren’t indicative of how the rest of my day is going to be.

Update: Annnnnddddd… the wordpress app for the iphone isn’t very smart about moving from local draft (on the phone) to draft on the server. So I got to rewrite this.