So I’m a few hours into today’s ride, a ride that embodied the whole “the days where you feel terrible, the weather sucks, and you hate your bike are the ones that make you win races” philosophy, and I realize my front wheel is being unusually noisy. I pull over to the side of the W&OD bike path and, sure enough, my bearings are shot. That blows. As I’m standing there processing this new level of suck, a middle-aged man on a hybrid bike comes to a skidding halt next to me with what appears to be a flat tire. He squishes the tire with his hand and then starts throwing a fit.
After a moment of drama, he asks if I have a pump.
“No,” I reply, “I only have a CO2 cartridge. But first you’ll need to fix the flat.”
“I just need to put air in the tire,” he tells me.
I blink. “Right. But you have a hole in the tube, so you need to fix that first, or the air will come back out.”
He is clearly confused. “It was holding air fine a minute ago.”
“Yes, but then you got a flat. If it was holding air a minute ago and now it’s not, that means the air came out somehow. You have to fix that problem before it will hold more air.”
This is a lot to process. He is unhappy. He does not have a spare tube or patch kit. I want to ask what he’s carrying in his massive saddle bag, if not spare parts or tools, but sense this is not the time. “I just got this bike at REI!” he rants. “The front tire lost all its air once already and I had to take it back and they fixed it but now THIS!”
“Well,” I said, “flats happen. It’s not a problem with the bike.”
He is not convinced. “I rode 1,000 miles on my old bike and never had one. Who gets flat tires?!?”
There is no point in trying to answer this. I ask if he has a phone or would like to use mine to call for a ride. He looks around, gestures wildly at the wilderness of the highly-traveled WO&D and shrilly retorts, “How would anyone get here with a car???”
I point to the section of trail he just passed through. “There is an intersection right back there.”
This is not satisfactory to him. He decides the best plan is to ride the flat tire to his car, which he estimates to be six or seven miles away. When I point out that this may be bad for his wheel, he is unconcerned and sets off, slowly fishtailing down the path.
Somewhere, a reality show is missing its star.
was he a teenager?
Thank you for not revealing my name in your blog. The 7 miles back to my car, as the valve stem thumped the fillings out of teeth, were torture. I better be getting a MONSTER dividend check from REI for this!!