ride report: EPIC FAIL
wow. Wow. that was a lot of flats.
things started innocently enough as 6 rain-shmain riders converged upon ritual and motored into the saturated grey twilight, caressed all along by cheery, gentle drops of holiday dew.
but soon enough, the Fates cast a blight upon us, it seems. first was the dumbass in the F-350 who turned left INTO gavin at the bayshore/silver rd. intersection, causing brakes to lock up and a collision of bret into my bike, thru no fault of his. i then wisely went after the guy and slapped his truck like the bitch it is, which at least got the punk to stop so we could berate him in a civilized manner. theo's technique was to slide out and sprawl himself on the asphalt, which i thought pretty effective. he did at least utter an expletive or two while carrying out his unusual plan.
carrying on, nothing noteworthy transpired until the holly rd. overpass (skipping the BTN due to insane mudiness), when i noticed a swish-swish-swish sound coming in rhythmic waves from gavin's rear tire. flat #1. fixed and rolling in a couple minutes, but with gavin suffering bloody cuts to his fingers by the selfsame shard of glass, a real bugger. meantime lina and matt carried on in hopes of scoring mini-burritos.
a few minutes later in the climate-best-by-government-test paradise known as redwood shores, I feel that uncomfortable "am i standing on a banana slug?" sensation myself, and it's hello gatorskin failure #2. as i looked down to examine the flatness, i nearly impaled an equally oblivious pedestrian with my face, and received a righteous scolding by another F-350 driven by a fake Santa. coal for me this year he seemed to imply. we told him what he could do with this grumpy self.
in the course of fixing flat 2, i noticed a puncture to the RIM of my ksyrium ES helium 20th anniversary edition, great. "fixed" that with a tube patch. WTF? how did that happen? no idea.
not much later, just past the charming Graniterock facility, I got the next flat to that same tire, surprisingly not caused by the compromised rim -- this time it's a random slice by the valve stem, weird. no shards in tire. this time we were out of spares and had to patch the previous tube, in the rain, sitting in a gutter. super.
that done and air holding, we made it past the EPA bridge to the parking lot when gavin says "oh (brother)!" and yes, the fourth flat is ours. we are 2 miles from home at this point and attempt a "pump it up real fast and ride till it's flat again", which happened one meter into bayshore. really tired of changing flats, I suggested a "blast it with co2 and hope for the best" approach, which got us almost to san antonio. then we faced reality and patched flat #4 1 mile out, and rolled into G at -- get this -- 10:45. wow.
ride time: 2:28. total time: 4 hours flat.
-sc
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 12:38 PM, T-Bone wrote:
Sweet ride and happy holidays. I just wanted to throw out a thanks to
everyone who showed up to ride this morning. I had lots of fun in my
first every rain ride minus the one armed super man stunt on Silver
ave while trying to back up Scott with the complete idiot driver
guy.
-Theo
On Dec 19, 6:02 am, "Lina Mårtensson"
wrote:
> yaaaaay!
>
> On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 6:01 AM, Scott Crosby wrote:
> > let's ride biznatches. it's not appreciably raining. light mist at most.
>
> > On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 7:21 PM, gherinm wrote:
>
> >> +1 if there's now rain.
>
> >> On Dec 18, 6:02 pm, T-Bone wrote:
> >> > I might have been over optimistic about this one or it could have been
> >> > the marginally reliable yahoo weather app on my iphone. NOAA says 50%
> >> > chance of rain tomorrow so, I think this is the best plan. If it is
> >> > raining at any point between 6:00 and 6:30am I am going to travel the
> >> > dryer but not nearly as amusing Caltrain -> San mateo route.
> >> > Otherwise I will be riding in. If you decide you do want to ride
> >> > definately bring what ever rain gear you have in case it does start to
> >> > drizzle and if you don't have any that is an excellent excuse not to
> >> > ride. In addition I am only riding to Foster City so after that
> >> > someone else will have to sweep. I am crossing my fingers cause if
> >> > you have been watching the weather it is suppose to be wet all of next
> >> > week.
>
> >> > -T
>
> >> > On Dec 18, 2:45 pm, "Bret Lobree" wrote:
>
> >> > > +1 as long as there is no appreciable precip
>
> >> > > On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 4:53 PM, T-Bone &
> >> > > wrote:
>
> >> > > > The gods have blessed us I think... It looks like the weather man
> >> > > > has
> >> > > > changed his mind about Friday. Baring any sudden change from the
> >> > > > weather man or Mother Nature, who is in?
>
> >> > > > -Theo- Hide quoted text -
>
> >> > > - Show quoted text -
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