Two Flats and high water

The day started out at 34 degrees, there was no doubt frost on the pumpkins out where I was headed. I dressed in the multilayer of 3 with zipper temperature control. Works well.

Just as I was headed out the door my son Joshua showed up, now he is like me in mannerisms, in other words we were buzzing around like two pin balls in a pinball machine. I know Birgit was waiting for me to get out the door because she was on a mission to clean and the scrub bucket was out. Now she was waiting for both of us to leave.

So we leave, me on my bike, Josh in my car. It was, "Can I borrow your car today dad?" Visit.

At 17.23 miles I get that feeling, the feeling my rear tire is weaving all over the place, the feeling every biker feels when his rear tire goes flat. I ride with Green Slime in my tubes, I think it cuts my flats in half, this flat was in the other half. I could see the Green Slime oozing out of the tire. Riding on gravel a lot beats the bike tires and eventually chunks get knocked out of the tires leaving small holes. I had two choices

1.Put my spare tube on I carry.

2. Or try to a patch on the tube, hoping the Green Slime would not prevent adhesion.

So I tried the patch, and headed in a homeward direction wanting to be closer if the patch didn't hold.

Made it home and rode around for 10 miles sight seeing. My bike wanted to visit these incarcerated bikes and the correctional center. They were locked up and so were their owners
The first time I have seen this. Neat rides for those that bike.
The Mississippi River is at unprecedented levels for this time of year. All the rain that that fell up North of here, has now arrived. This is a campsite totally under water.

Well I needed 20 more miles on gravel yet, to notch another Metric, so I headed back out to the country. Rode 10 miles and turned around for another 10 and headed back home. At about 2 miles to home, I felt a wet spray on my legs, it wasn't raining, I didn't go through a puddle, so my next guess was the Green Slime blew through the patch and out the hole in the tire. The tire sealed up at about 5 psi. I leaned over the handle bars to keep my weight off the back tire and rode the last couple of miles and made it home.
OK, I've rambled long enough, time to put a new tire on Cross Bike and hope I can get time to ride metric gravels, after work, a couple of times this week. Tuesday and Wednesday I am speaking to the 8th graders at a job fair for my company, so there probably won't be any out early those days.

Over and Out
RideON,
DAve.