Albuquerque… rain and flat tires on the highway

 

Let’s be clear. We have had a run of great weather so far. Not too hot, usually favorable winds, lots of beautiful sunny skies in Arizona and New Mexico.  You can’t make it all the way across the country without getting rained on.

Today we got rained on.  We left Grants bundled up. It was about 45° and drizzling and everyone was equipped in their rain gear. I do not have the amount of rain gear everyone else seems to because I generally never ride in the rain.  (A small matter of crashing and finding myself in the hospital the last time I rode in the rain over a decade ago.)

I have a jacket that I bought for this trip. But I don’t have rain pants. I don’t have fancy booties to cover my shoes like everyone else seems to. I don’t have a helmet cover. And TBH I thought they all looked a little bit silly when we started.

26 miles into the ride I was wishing I had all of that stuff. A stormcloud opened up and dumped swimming pools of water on us for 5 miles until we reached the SAG.  


Apres moi, le deluge
(h/t Steve Harvey)

We took over a combination convenience store/gas station/kahuna Burger.  (Isn’t the name of the place from pulp fiction?  Samuel Jackson’s Royale with cheese riff?)   We were dripping everywhere. Taking off our shoes and walking around in socks that held a quart of water each.  I felt bad for the employees who had to clean up after us. Because we were an absolute mess.

I knocked back about 24 ounces of hot chocolate to try and quell the shivering. Rung my socks out and got back on the bike. And proceeded to freeze my butt off for about 5 miles.  

At which point I got a flat. My man John helped me fix it. We got back on the road in 10-15 minutes. And 2 miles later… Another flat.  

For those of you who haven’t biked on a US interstate, the shoulders are full of retread semi truck tires that have blown apart. And when they blow up, they scatter steel wires all over the shoulder. You can’t see them, they go into your tire and that’s that.

This time our resident on bike mechanic/firefighter Peyton help me fix my tire and get me rolling again.

Peyton: mechanic/firefighter/bike racer extraordinaire
(h/t Steve Harvey)

And 4 miles later… My back tire was going flat again. After some investigation with Peyton, we discovered that the nail I rode over yesterday had damaged the sidewall of my tire and damaged the rim.  Carbon fibers from the wheel rim were poking into the tube and causing flats.

Peyton MacGyver’d that with some electrical tape and told me to get a new tire ASAP. Before my damaged sidewall caused a blowout.  So I rode another 12 miles over a very rough shoulder thinking at any moment my back tire was gonna blow.   Thankfully, the SAG team hadn’t left yet. And Dana hooked me up with a fresh tire so I could ride the last 25 miles uphill and downhill into Albuquerque.

The ride into Santa Fe tomorrow is up up up and I’m really hoping that I can forget about my wheels and tires and just focus on pedaling.

I relate all this dear reader for one good reason.  If it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t be worth doing. And today was hard.   But I finished in good spirits because, look, this whole ride is a privilege. Even the hard parts. I feel myself getting stronger every day and look forward to challenging myself in the mountains outside of Santa Fe.  On inflated tires…





Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 17, 2024 at 7:34 AM

    Wow. Tough, wet day! The hard parts make the great parts that much more glorious!! ☀️ gt

    ReplyDelete
  2. Peter HMay 17, 2024 at 9:53 AM

    Woah, tough day. You really shouldn’t have said or written anything about your long stretch sans flats. The road shoulder gods were listening. Hope the issue has peaked, and that you’ve earned another stretch of good weather. Onward!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blythe to Wickenburg Az…a stupid hard day

Image
  It’s not great when, 20 miles into a 115 mile ride, you feel like quitting.  When the flagpole can barely hold onto the flag… We spent 30 miles on Highway 10 fighting a ferocious crosswind and really challenging climbs.  With semis barreling past at high speeds.  Trying to keep your wheel straight in the wind, while avoiding all of the debris that can puncture tires…  I had to stop repeatedly to rest.     Here I am thinking… 10 more miles of this before we're even off US-10?  WTF  By the time I finished the last climb of that first stretch, I couldn’t decide whether I was bonking or just suffering from  existential despair.   Maybe it’s just the fourth long day in a row.  But dang! At some point, I just started telling myself… It takes as long as it takes. It takes as long as it takes.  A mantra I repeated about 50 times on the subsequent windy climbs before the mile 66 SAG. The Little Church of Hope Well-timed at m...
Read more

Route Descriptions: New England

 Route descriptions courtesy of Mark Hansen Troy to Brattleboro, Vermont : The namesake of the Hudson River was the English explorer Henry Hudson. In 1609, he sailed the Halve Maen (“Half Moon”) 125 miles up the river to Kinderhook – which he named – and continued in the ship’s boat to today’s Troy, another 20 miles. He was in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, hence the name of his ship. The Dutch merchants had hired him to search for a supposed Northwest Passage to the Orient. It made a certain amount of sense for Hudson to consider the river as a possibility – the slow-flowing Hudson is tidal as far as Troy – but it did not prove to be. His voyage, however, was a basis for the Dutch claim (asserted in 1614) to the American colony it called New Netherland.  The ride route follows the river north until opposite Waterford, the origin of the New York State Canal. It turns east on Plank Rd: in the early 19th century, roads were planked – decked with wood over stringer b...
Read more

Training Montage

 I have dreamed of biking across the country since I was 13.   Four decades later, with kids grown up, nearing completion of a nine long years in a challenging job, I decided it was now or never.    Here is how I have trained over the last year... (Okay, but seriously, I biked about 3000 miles since mid December.... working under the demanding tutelage of CTS Coach Clayton Feldman, who has me in great shape.  FTP intervals suck...)
Read more