On blowouts, crashes and backpain

Saturday (May 24) was an interesting day. The previous day, Friday, Lesley and I went to my office late at night to do some paperwork - the office has a working printer connected to the network, we have a working printer at home too, its still on the floor with no cables - hey I've got more important things to do than get the home network... networked, the cobbler's son has no shoes, our home has no computer network. Anyway I plugged my blackberry in while working and forgot to collect it when we left the office. The result was, Saturday morning I woke up early and raced back to the office to get the crackberry.

I rode into the office on my old Coppi racer. As I was approaching Leslie street I downshifted on the chain ring from the big ring to the little one (its a 12 speed, 2x6), only I downshifted too much and the chain came clear off. I had to get some pretty greasy hands working that old chain back into position.

After returning home from the office I went to Velotique to attend one of their free bike repair clinics. Its a smart business move, give people free lessons on how to do this stuff, then turn around and sell them all the parts and tools required to do the job. Not that I'm complaining, the major topic which took up most of the clinic was tires and emergency road side tube changes. The rest of the clinic was spent on gear tuning and chain cleaning. I think I mentioned this in this space before, but here's my plan, upgrade my entire group on my Roubaix to Ultegra then take the old stuff (mostly 105s) and put it on the Coppi - which really needs an upgrade soon. The Coppi's chain is so bad it's probably taking the cassette and the chain ring down with it, and those gear shifters are just brutal.

Well anyway, after the clinic, which lasted far longer than I expected, I went for a short ride, 125km, to Burlington and back via the lake shore trail (see maps: 2-12 through 2-04 inclusive). I turned around just West of Burlock Drive in Burlington, total distance at turn around: 59.6km. Except that my distance is not actually correct, you see if you look at map 2-05, between Sandwell and Woodhaven Park, on Lakeshore Blvd. as I went West, my back tire blew out on me, not 4 hours after Saul (from Velotique) had shown me how to change a tube on the road side! Luck. Even better luck, I am a sucker for gadgets, and when Saul had shown us all the toys needed to change a tire, I had bought them and brought them. Well here's a warning to everyone who's never had a roadside blowout, compressed CO2 is great, except it just won't get your tire to full pressure, it will give you enough to ride to the nearest bike store, which I did (a Cycle Path on Speers Rd just West of Dorval). I decided to stop the GPS while I backtracked to the Cycle Path and I did not restart the GPS until I was back at the point where the blowout occurred. (I also made sure to buy two tubes and two cylinders of CO2.) Actually that Cycle Path was pretty impressive, I expected it to be a hole in the wall with low end bikes only, suitable for children since this is suburbia, but instead they had some really good stuff in there. (Damn shame they are about a million miles from home.)

On the return to Toronto leg of my journey I crashed. I was stopped at a red light in Oakville, with one foot, the right one, on the ground when I started tilting to the left, I couldn't free my left foot fast enough and landed on the road with my helmet smacking up against the side of the stopped car next to me. I have a nice little number on my left knee and my right leg (thanks to the cogs on the outer chain ring) looks like there is a satanic message written in blood and grease on it. But who cares about that, I heal, the bike is fine, cushioned by a big meat sack - me!

As I neared the Humber river my GPS did something I have never seen it do before, it shifted the decmial over to make room to report distance covered in the hundreds of kilometers! Just after I crossed the Humber I saw someone skating in the opposite direction with 2006 Custom 3-point Vaypor's. It was Richard, not Richard A, the other Richard (used to be at TISC, looks sort of like Paul Shoebridge). I turned around, this time being very careful not to fall over, and caught up, I tried to give Richard a draft but the crowd on the MGT on a Saturday afternoon can be pretty brutal. By turning around and backtracking I was able to add about 5km (maybe 6km?) to my total distance, hence 125km, I mentioned above.

When I got home, I loaded up on Glutamine and bragged to anyone who would listen to me, that I was the nut case guy that just rode from Toronto to Burlington and back, in an afternoon. My plan for tomorrow (today now) is to skate a marathon distance, but frankly, I don't think I have it in me, and after my remarkable adventure in the outer burbs, I think I've done quite enough for one weekend, not two weeks after I donated blood.