July 4, 1991

Is it a hangover or just a 41-year-old body waking up from a deep sleep?  Once again I have to ask myself when JoAnna returned home.  Andy joins us in bed surprisingly early, considering how late he went to sleep.  JoAnna and the boys leave for Two Rivers around 9, and so begins a relatively solitary day.  A phone call interrupts a dump.  Mim wants to know if I'll be coming to Beloit, but I lie and say I'm going to Two Rivers today.  My response bothers me for awhile until I realize that I really wanted to be today was by myself.  I rarely have the chance to do this anymore.  I spend most of the day doing yardwork:  mowing the lawn, weeding the south side of the house, expanding our garden space, and planting watermelon, spaghetti squash, and pumpkins, along with beets and more carrots.  I take a 45-minute bike ride, retracing the route I took on an extremely hot Fourth of July two years ago.

Tempting Murphy's Law

(An everystockphoto)

Surprise!

And not a happy one.

As I walked my bike out of the garage this morning, I noticed the rear tire was flat.

“What the…?!!” I said aloud with dismay.

There goes my bike ride, I thought.

And the tire wasn’t just soft. Every last bit of air had escaped.

My first thought was to load the bike into the back of the Matrix and head for the Trek store. I’d been thinking about a mid-season turn-up anyway, as I’ve easily ridden more than 1,000 miles since mid-March. And for some reason, I can’t shift into the lowest or highest series of gears. It’s become a 7-speed instead of a 21-speed. Not a problem as I generally avoid challenging terrain.

Before a repair, though, I decided to pump up the tire to see how long it would hold air. At first, the valve didn’t want to accept air, but after I adjusted a knob at the base of the pump, I didn’t encounter as much resistance.

Once the tire was firm, I conducted s short test ride around the neighborhood, after which I tested the pressure with a squeeze of two fingers.

Doesn’t seem like it lost any air, I noted.

So on I rode…for another hour, figuring that , with my luck, the tire would deflate when I reached the farthest point from which, a distance of about four miles. And, initially figuring I’d be away from the house for just a few minutes, I didn’t have my phone with me. I’d left myself wide open for a Murphy’s Law experience. Luckily, I returned home without incident, with no perceptible loss of air in the tire.

Prior to today, I last rode my bike on Saturday, which means that it sat idle for four days. Not the longest period of disuse this summer but, except for the visit to Warren, certainly close.

Whatever the case, whatever the cause, it’s a very slow leak.