Today's Half-Tracking
Thursday, yesterday, Jacque took the Exploder to the local fresh food field market and I just had to take another wonderful trike ride.
Since I've been having so much tire trouble recently, I checked the tires prior to this ride by had-squeezing them. They seemed puffed up enough, so I saddled up and took off.
I enjoyed the trip greatly until I had about reached the halfway point. I suddenly noticed a weird light scraping sound in the rear and the trike was wobbling ever so slightly. Grumpily I pulled to the edge of the pavement and looked at my rear tire. It still had air, but the bead on one side had pooched out and, try as I might, I could not get it to re-seal and re-seat inside the wheel rim.
What made this even a bit more frustrating was a couple of less-than-friendly cars that passed. One was a fellow in a large pickup who snarled at me as he stopped: "You need to get out of the road! You're going to get RUN OVER! I thanked him for his advice, but ignored him and kept working on my decrepit wheel, and in a few more minutes a car passed by the other direction and a shrill female voice called out "GET OFF THE ROAD!!"
All this while I was parked on the outer edge of the rather wide pavement, where I normally ride unmolested and unchallenged much farther into the road, where there is still enough room for cars to pass each other whilst still avoiding clipping my little horseless and motorless carriage.
This is the first time I've experienced negative reactions here in southwest Arizona and it makes me wonder how people get so offended at non motorized cycle riders. Are we cyclists, as a group, so snarky that it bleeds over and offends others? It surely can't be jealosy over our lowering pressure on gas prices, improved health, better hearts and waistlines, better sex etc, right?
Back to the Crippled Trike Problem. I needed to elevate the rear wheel so I could undo the gears, chain, derailleur, and all that rot, so I could work on the tire rim. No big enough rocks were available, very unusual in these parts, nothing but small rocks and gravel. I wandered farther out into the rocks and discovered some broken bricks that had been discarded. Gathering several of these, I carried them back to the Catrike and moved the trike WAY off the road, into the rocky gravel, and jacked up the trike using the bricks. I got the wheel removed, again, and tried over and over to get the tire's bead to seat properly, but nothing doing. I was about to give up and call Jacque to come rescue me, again, when a nice fellow in a big black Ford pickup stopped and offered assistance. We chatted about his lack of 20 inch trike tires and he offered to give me a ride back to the RV, trike and all. His pickup had a nice lid on the back but it turned out there was nothing inside and he had lots of room. We loaded up the basket case stuff: Trike, wheel, tube, tools, panniers, and whatnot that had been scattered around the wounded trike. It was at least several miles out of his way but he was happy to deliver me safely to my door and drove off with a smile.
Nice Guy. I need to copy his behavior sometime.
This was all very handy since I'd just visited Johnny Yuma's Bike Shoppe and purchased a new tire and tube to refill my spare stock from the last disaster. Now I gotta order some MORE spares and hope they get here before I lose another tire....
Ride Started: 12:22 PM Ride Ended: 2:13 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage: 14.4 Ending Voltage: 13.0 Lowest: 12.5 (Solar charging only)
Lowest Temp 60 F Highest Temp: 67 F
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