Saturday, February 10, 2018

Another Flat? Come On -

Thursday's Desert Yuma Tracking via GPS and Ham Radio

I'm getting a bit lazy about prompt blogging/reporting my thrilling bike and other adventures lately.
I'm at least riding more often than blogging, which is probably a good thing.
Thursday I wanted to get in a more decent mileage ride so I rode the outer perimeter of the Foothills Golf Course and Estates wherein we are currently parked at the home of a very generous and affable fellow Church member.
I rode the first couple of miles without incident.  As you approach closer to the I-8 intersection of Foothills Drive the shoulder disappears and the traffic multiplies exponentially.  So I turned off Foothills and rode a couple of the inner side streets to get me up to the Frontage Road paralleling I-8 which dead-ends just west of the Border Patrol Interstate Stop on I-8 and turns back south returning towards our current home (as in "Home is Where you Park It").
I thought I was enjoying the ride when a faint rumble and gaggle jiggled the back of my brain, so I stopped to make sure no tires were flat.  I had just replaced the right front tire and tube a couple days prior, and both front wheels this time were fine..... Not so the rear tire.  RATS.  BAH.
Of course, the rear wheel is the drive wheel, with the 9-gear cassette and chain and derailleur and all that rot.... I had stopped near a low brick decorative wall which actually gave me both a place to sit and a place to elevate the frame of the trike allowing difficult access to the rear wheel assembly.
I still had a little CO2 in my handy-dandy tire inflator from the last tire disaster, and of course it went to waste when I used it to re-inflate the low tire only to feel it rather quickly go soft again.  So I dug out the toolkit and removed the axle, wheel, tire and tube, from the trike.
I had a new tube in the pannier but wanted to make sure the tire wasn't hiding a nail or thorn or other puncture-inducing device.  The tire felt smooth and ouch-less as I carefully felt its insides throughout its circumference.  New tube installed, used another CO2 cartridge to inflate the assembly, started to re-mount the wheel.  As usual, the tire bead had not seated on one side and was protruding out in ungainly fashion.  Let out the precious store-bought CO2 to re-seat the tire and thankfully this time it held.  I had not ridden it sufficiently to destroy the tire like the last one.
Thus all this unplanned delay added to the length of an already longer ride.  The rest of the trip was uneventful, and all tires are currently tight and inflated and holding air.

Ride Started:  1:52 PM    Ride Ended:  3:55 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:   13.9   Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest:  12.5  (Solar charging only)
Lowest Temp  75 F      Highest Temp: 82 F   
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  9.4 
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed  
6.5 MPH                                 7.8 MPH                     16.5 MPH 
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time 
1 hour 26  mins                       1 hour 11 mins           15 minutes

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