Girl vs. Bike

My bike hates me. Maybe it's good that we only have a few more days together before it gets shipped off to California. I came home from work today so excited to go for a bike ride, which doesn't normally happen. I should have known right then that something was wrong. The worst part is that I was even excited to do hill repeats on the hills near the little red lighthouse by the George Washington Bridge. So, I get dressed in my biking gear, including my special Marilyn Monroe socks. I fill up my water bottle. I put a bar in my bento box. And that's when I see it.

The flat tire. Sigh. OK, not a big deal. I can fix that. So, I find the hole in the tube and patch it. I put the tire back on the wheel and pump up the tube. And I'm still leaking air. Sigh again. Take off the tire only to find that there is a kink in the patch, which is letting air out. Okay, I can fix that too. I remove the first patch and re-patch with a new one, using my very last patch from my kit (I've had a lot of flats, okay?).

I probably should mention some other facts right about now. This flat was on my front tire and it's my very first front tire flat. Kind-of nice not to have to get the chain involved! Last year after I got so many flats in the back, I got an armadillo tire, which has been working great. I wonder if it's time for an armadillo on the front?

Anyhow, after re-patching the tube, I put the tire back on and pump up the tube. It seems to be holding air, which is awesome. I put the wheel back on my bike frame and put my bike in the corner. By this point, I've wasted the good chunk of my daylight riding time and I think I could get in about a 20 minute ride, which seems ridiculous to me to even drag my bike downstairs.

Since I've now wasted a perfectly good day for bike riding, I figure that maybe I should try to use my multi-tool to see if I can get my pedals off my bike. I push and pull at them using this really small Allen wrench to see if I can get them off (I need to get them off to ship to CA). They won't budge. I Google everything to make sure I'm twisting the right direction. I try watching a You Tube video. Turns out those puppies are on the bike very snugly! I'm not too worried about this, since I had planned to go to Toga and buy a longer Allen wrench anyway, so I can buy that and ask them to demonstrate just to make sure I have it all down.

So, after the pedal failure, I decide that I won't mope around and I'll make myself some dinner instead so I can get to bed at a decent hour and get lots of sleep before tomorrow morning's brick workout. And then I hear it. The telltale "psssssssssssssss". Argh!! All the air just let itself out of my tire! I'm all out of patches and the bike stores are closed. Luckily, I do have another tube, so I'll have to take the tire off again (for the third time today, in case you lost count) and put in the other tube. Let's hope this one holds up at least until after 7:30 tomorrow morning!

At the moment, it's Bike = 1 / Girl = 0