Not Increvable

Mike and Pam are arriving at Midway airport tonight so Amy is scheduled to leave straight from where she works at 6pm and pick them up. Then they might have dinner out somewhere, which means that they could potentially arrive back in our neck of the woods around 8:30-9pm. I had promised Evan to an evening of World of Warcraft tonight, so as usual, I will ride my bike to and from work in order to be home in time for the game.

Now, at 7:30am this morning, that seemed like a solid plan bound for success. But by 8am, things had taken an interesting turn. As I biked toward Gross Point Road on the path I usually take to work, I ran over something that sounded like a small rock or perhaps an acorn top as it might gets thrown from under the tire with some extra force. Unfortunately, I only made it across Gross Point Road when I began to hear a rhythmic hiss eminating from my back tire. Psht! Psht! Psht! Every time the wheel went around it was losing air. Crap. I had already come up with a course of action in case this happened, but unfortunately, it involved Amy picking me up from work which, if you remember, probably wouldn't be able to happen until at least 8:30pm.

So at that point I figured it was time to learn how to use the tools that I keep in my bag for just such an emergency. "But wait," I thought. "I put a change of clothes in my bag this morning. And to do that I had to take out my TOOLS! Argh. So, I called Jordan and left a message that I would be running about 30 minutes late because I had to walk the rest of the way to work. Only seconds after beginning my walk, I passed Ruth, a woman who attends our church, walking in the opposite direction. We greeted each other and spoke briefly but she was not able to help me out and I was on my way again.

When I arrived at work, I examined the tire more carefully and located the culprit: a nail. At that point, I asked Chris, one of my coworkers, if he had driven his car that day. I was going to ask if he'd be able to give me a lift home over lunch to get my tools and the tire pump. As it turns out, he had ridden his bike, too, so I had no luck there. But, he did have a repair kit of his own in his bag. So over lunch, he helped me try to patch the tube, but it had been punctured in multiple spots and he had just enough patches to cover all of holes. Hopefully, we'd found all the holes. Once the holes were patched, we walked the bike to a gas station to use the air pump. Nothing. The tube wouldn't hold any air at all.

So after lunch, Jordan was very cool and drove me home to get my tools and the bike pump. Once I retrieved those items, I asked Chris to help me put the new tube since I'd never done it before. So, he agreed, and the new tube is in, but it was a larger circumference than the rim, so I'm not sure if it's in correctly. I'm definitely making a trip to the bike shop this weekend to learn about the reason for the extra length on the tube and how to definitively use the tools I will no doubt have in my possession in the future.