Didn't ride today

I was working on my new F55X Felt gravel bike in the garage and I had decided to install Slime innertubes in the 35 mm tires. Well, the innertube punctures with a couple of small holes from the mounting. Why that was I certainly couldn't tell you. But perhaps more importantly, these punctures were quite small and did NOT seal. So not only were these innertubes far heavier than a standard tube, they didn't act any better.

In the process of working on these tires, I moved a heavy tool box that contains my car tools. The results of this didn't take effect for perhaps 5 minutes and then I had a very large pain in my back and have been walking around like the hunchback of Notre Dame ever since. While it is getting a bit better over the last two years it is so slight as to be difficult to tell beyond the fact that it is a little easier to sleep.

In the past when I had these sorts of minor injuries I rode them off on the bike and they were mostly cured by an easy 10 miles ride. But this time it is much too painful to even consider throwing a leg over a bike. This leaves me with having to allow it to heal by itself and being totally unable to ride probably for a week.

So stop all of he telling us what a great ride you had today and what a wonderful time or else I will have to put a hex on you. But I will have a beer on your behalf.

 

Well, I don't need painkillers today and I've been sleeping at nights with just a couple of ibuprofen. I should be able to ride with the old farts on Saturday and once I can ride again that usually causes rapid healing of any back problems.

 

Since moving away from goathead territory I rarely get flats now, maybe once a year, so I don't take any extra precautions against flats anymore. I use to have to use heavy Specialized Armadillo All Condition tires, that I simply didn't like, but I also didn't like fixing a flat or two on every ride, so the tires were the lessor of two evils!

The only precaution I take now is on my main bike and on my commuter bike is that I installed a set of Panasonic FlatAway tire liners only on the rear tires for some insurance, their lightweight at around 27 grams so it does nothing really as far as adding weight. I did test one a few years ago to see how puncture resistant they are and they work really well. I tested it by trying to get a nail tack to go through both a Mr Tuffy and the FlatAway, the tack went through the Mr Tuffy fairly easily but I couldn't get it to go through the FlatAway no matter how hard I tried! Then tried cutting both with a pair of heavy-duty scissors cut the Mr Tuffy like butter but I was hurting my hand trying to cut the FlatAway, I did manage to cut it but with a lot of constant recutting and force. The only drawback to the Mr Tuffy is once the tire is shot so is the liner and you have to buy another and they're not exactly cheap.

I'm not sure once I get my new Schwalbe Marathon Supreme tires for the touring bike if I will put a liner in the rear tire, those tires are pretty much bomb-proof, so I'll probably not put one in and just go naked...

 

Around here the fall is Goat Head season. But more importantly, you can't go anywhere in California where you don't had the same problems - broken glass is EVERYWHERE. The gang punks will go down the street at nighttime breaking out the driver's side windows. They will throw beer and whisky bottles into the roads everywhere and hit and run is normal. If you park on the street sooner or later someone is going to plow into you well above the speed limit back up and then drive away. I took my car out of the garage to go on a ride on my bike and when I returned the car had been hit so hard from behind that it bent the entire frame. The left wheel was more than a foot off of the ground. The perpetrator was a block down the street and the only reason she stopped was because she had a newer SUV that turned off the ignition when the airbags were deployed. A month ago someone parked out in front of my house and AGAIN someone hit it so hard that the entire car had the back seat shoved into the front. I sure a hell don't know how they could have driven off after that but they did.

So aside from all of the other glass on the roads I had to sweep all of this up after the tow truck had taken this mess away.

 

What the heck? Where in the world do you live?

Even when I went to college in Los Angeles and lived in a not so good area at the time called Echo Park, I never had my car hit and ran like you have had happened, they would go down the street looking for decent car stereos and break the glass to get them, but I never had a decent radio just because of that reason, so my windows stayed fine.

By the way, glass from broken car windows will not flat a bike tire because the glass is tempered and breaks into little square pieces that can't puncture a bike tire. I ran over a lot of that tempered glass over the 40 plus years of riding, even back in the day when flat protection was nothing but a nylon or cotton belt! and never got a flat from that type of glass. Now from a broken glass bottle yes, but not tempered glass.

You need to buy a used formerly Brinks armored truck and see how many people will hit that and drive away! One thing for sure, you'll be able to drive away. Plus it can serve as double duty, in case of a gang shootout and you can just go inside the armored truck and wait for the excitement to calm down!