I rode the Water Works route on Saturday and suffered yet another flat tire. That means I’m 3/3 so far this year: three road rides, three flat tires. The first was mysterious, and I couldn’t find a leak or any obstructions in my tire. The second and third were from riding over glass, which got stuck in my tire and punctured the tube. I guess there must be more road debris around here during the winter. I patched my tube without incident this time, and several other cyclists rode by while I was working on it. They checked to make sure I had everything I needed — I did.

This brings me to the one downside to my Rivendell Roll-y Pol-y tires: they are damn near impossible to get on and off my rims. I didn’t care much once I got them on and road over 400 miles without a flat tire. But now that I seem to be getting regular flat tires, it’s becoming a real problem. I don’t know whether it’s because of the tires, or my rims, or if they just don’t play nicely together for some reason. But it’s driving me crazy. And of course, so are the flat tires, but I don’t blame the tires for that. Sure, if I had kevlar belts in my tires, I probably would’ve been OK, but I intentionally did not buy tires with the belts because of their weight. And I had no problems until recently. Maybe I need some tougher tires for winter.

I also scratched the paint on my top tube — I guess I leaned my bike against something abrasive. I’ll have to be more careful about that in the future. I finished the ride and enjoyed it a lot, once I was rolling again.

I worked from home yesterday, and I thought I’d try something new on my lunch: a bike ride. Some people whose blogs I read have mentioned riding at lunchtime, and some of my coworkers go to the gym at lunch, so I thought I’d try it. Since I was working from home, I didn’t have to worry about changing out of my work clothes (business casual) and back again upon my return.

My ride seemed doomed from the start. It was around 40 degrees and while it hadn’t rained all morning, a few drops started falling as I was getting ready. Undeterred, I headed out, figuring I would do my Mount Gilead Road route, which is about 13 miles and so can be done in under an hour. I was probably 2-3 miles into my ride when the rain started in earnest. I was getting wet, but I sure was enjoying my ride. I had to be extra careful going down the big hill since the roads were slightly wet, and very slippery.

After I climbed up out of the valley, I noticed a weird sound. At first, I thought something was rubbing somewhere, perhaps my fender rubbing the tire. It wasn’t. I realized my front tire had a leak in it and was hissing slightly as the air leaked out. It wasn’t the telltale sudden lound hissing sound that often accompanies a flat tire.

I pulled over and grabbed my pump so I could find the leak to patch it. I pumped some air into the tire and yanked the pump off, in the process tearing the core from the Presta valve stem. I had used the inner tube from my saddle bag on the previous ride and not replaced it, so although I felt prepared with my patch kit, I was completely screwed. Naturally, I was about halfway through my ride, placing me 6-7 miles from home. I wasn’t about to walk that kind of distance, so I called Sarah and she looked up a cab company number for me. While I was waiting for the cab, two different cars stopped to see if I was OK. So if I hadn’t had the cell phone, I’m sure I would’ve figured something out, but I was glad that I didn’t have to count on anyone else. And now the cab company number is in my cell phone.

Lesson learned (twice!): having a patch kit is not enough. I’ll carry a spare tube with me whenever possible. I’m a little baffled that two rides in a row, I had flat tires that I couldn’t handle with my patch kit. Even if the second time seems to have been my fault, it’s a little weird.

This morning’s commute was in the mid-30s and windy. I was dressed mostly appropriately but could have used my neck gaiter. I intended to take it easy, but I was battling 30 mph head- and cross-winds, in an upright position on a mountain bike. A few drops of rain fell, just enough to remind me that it could be much worse and be glad it wasn’t actually raining.

One piece of clothing I’ve found works really well for me, but that I haven’t seen or heard many other cyclists using, is a pair of jogging pants. I have a few pairs now of these, nylon pants with a mesh lining, and I think they’re great. They do a great job of shielding me from the wind and some are water-resistant.  The two layers provide warmth, but the mesh also keeps the outer layer from sticking to your skin. They dry quickly, too. These are great, and inexpensive. The only downsides I see are that they aren’t very aerodynamic, and sometimes I wish the legs were a little longer.

It was around 40 degrees on Saturday, and Sarah and I took advantage of the warmer weather to go hiking at Morgan-Monroe State Forest. We hiked the 2.7-mile Mason Ridge Trail, which was cool despite the fact that it crosses the road a few times. The downside was that part of the trail was closed for logging. The more I learn about (and see first-hand) the logging that goes on in our state forests, the more it upsets me. They claim it’s sustainable, but I’m not sure I’m convinced. We had a good hike though, despite that and despite the fact that we had trouble following the signs and maps we had.

It’s incredibly warm here now — it was around 60 degrees yesterday, with a high of 69 predicted for today. For January, this is insane. I took advantage of the warm weather to go for a bike ride yesterday. I chose the Ride Around Lake Monroe route, which  I’ve ridden once before. This ride also goes to the same area as Dr. T’s Funky Fifty.

Despite the warm weather, it was a pretty dreary day. It wasn’t raining while I was riding, but it had been earlier, so the roads were covered in water and grime. And it was overcast to the point where I wasn’t sure how well my camera would work. Fortunately, it did work. Anyway, I set out on Smith Road and took Moore’s Pike over to 446, which took me away from town. Traffic was light but winds were harsh, gusting to some 30 mph, and I rode into the wind for the first 12 miles of my ride or so.

Riding across Lake Monroe is always a highlight of any ride that takes 446 across the causeway. The lake had a weird blue-green hue, not the kind of green that makes you think of algae, but something a little brighter. Contrasted with the grey clouds and dark hills in the distance, the color of the lake seemed emphasized, and it looked almost surreal.

Lake Monroe had a weird blue-green hue

After Lake Monroe is a big climb that took a little more out of me than it should have. The lack of riding as of late is taking its toll.

Hill after crossing Lake Monroe

Limestone lines the road on another part of the climb

After that hill, 446 is pretty easy for a while, a little curvy but not very hilly. I took 446 to Chapel Hill Road, which is a fun road to ride on. At some point I realized that this route is roughly the same as the Hoosier Hills 60K route and for a while followed Dan Henrys. Chapel Hill has some rolling hills and a patchwork surface from workers patching potholes many times. For some reason I love riding on this kind of road more than roads with a perfectly smooth surface. It has a lot more character, each patch reflecting some part of the road’s history. It also makes things more challenging, choosing a good line, rather than ambling down the road without giving it much thought  — which is also great, just different.

I passed Krazy Joe’s Trading Post, which I’ve written about here before. I didn’t stop this time and I took some photos, but don’t feel the need to post more. For more about Krazy Joe’s, see my blog post Food, fiddlin’, and fun … plus caskets.

I rode further and the map didn’t match what I was seeing. To make matters worse, a number of roads didn’t have street signs. So, I got lost. Well not lost exactly, but I wasn’t sure what road I was on, or how to get to the road the map said to get on. I passed a church with a cemetery and a tattered flag, like so many flags around here have been since the winds hit a few weeks ago.

Point of view riding shot

Chapel Hill Pentecostal Assembly

Tattered flag

I took what I later determined to be a wrong turn and started noticing a weird squeaking sound as I pedaled. I thought it was my bottom bracket at first, but then I realized my tire was flat. I wasn’t sure, really, if it had just gone flat or if it had been slowly losing air, or what. I stopped and pumped some air into it to see if I could hear where the hole was. I couldn’t hear anything so I inflated the tire the best I could and continued riding back toward where I thought I had made the wrong turn. My tire continued losing air. I got onto what I thought was the right road and stopped by a forest across from an abandoned house to fix my tire.

Abandoned house

Normally, I would patch my inner tube and try to keep using it. Since I couldn’t find the leak, I had no choice but to install a fresh tube. A dog at a neighboring house took an interest in me and I almost moved elsewhere to get away from the dog, but he stayed on his property and watched intently without disturbing me. I felt the inside of my tire and the rip strip to see if I could find anything that might have poked the inner tube, but couldn’t find anything. I installed a fresh tube and it seemed to be holding air. After pumping for what seemed like forever, I was on the road again. I couldn’t help but feel a little jinxed because 2/3 of my rides in this area have been plagued with mechanical problems, first my cracked rim on Dr. T’s Funky Fifty, and now this. And every time I’ve ridden out here, I’ve gotten lost.

A pretty place to change my tube

Pine trees

I soon determined that I was on the wrong road again, but I was on Coveyville Road, which was the next road I was supposed to turn on. So I kept going, knowing that this would get me to where I needed to be. This turned out to be a more fun way to go, I think, and it had me ride down a big hill and then climb up to the intersection of Hardin Ridge (I think) and Coveyville, which looks out over some farmland and a pond, with hills in the distance.
Coveyville Panorama

After descending into a valley, the road becomes straight and flat for probably 3/4 mile, quite a dramatic change from the twisty, hilly roads I’d been on.

Flat, straight road

After this brief and easy flat section, the road turns and begins a climb labeled “The Alps.”  While I’ve never seen the real Alps, I suppose this name is apt. There’s a really long climb and once at the top you can, at this time of year, see through the trees to see valleys and hills after them, and the lake appears to be suspended on a hill; presumably I must have been seeing the dam. It was beautiful, but I knew my camera would focus on the forest and miss the scenery beyond.

I eventually got lost again. I was supposed to find Ramp Creek Road, but I saw nothing with that name. I need to look at some real maps of this area and see if I can’t figure out how things connect. I always get lost here and the Bloomington Bicycle Club maps do not at all seem to match the roads as I see them. I’m a decent map-reader, so I really do think it’s the map.

Lake Monroe

From here I decided to try to find Ramp Creek Road, which turned out to be a bad move as I passed where I feel I should have turned and ended up taking a really stupid route through town. Something similar happened on a past ride, but this was worse. I’ve never gotten lost so many times on one ride before … especially in my own town! I also ended up riding on some much busier roads than I would’ve liked. Drivers were courteous, but this was not a good way to go. I’m not sure what I did, but I need to familiarize myself with these roads. Perhaps a drive out in that area is in order.

Despite my flat tire and getting lost, I very much enjoyed this ride. I’m glad I took advantage of the rare January warm weather and rode longer than I have for a while. My ride ended up being just shy of 45 miles.

Silo silhouetted against the sky

I took Sarah up to Fort Wayne to visit her family this weekend. I brought my mountain bike so that I could go ride at Winona Lake, which is in Warsaw, IN (about an hour’s drive west of Fort Wayne). I had tried to ride there last year, but that didn’t work out. Needless to say, I was excited to ride on this trail. It was also a bit of a scouting mission to help decide whether to ride in the 24 Hours of DINO race.

The first thing I noticed as I was getting ready was that it was cold. I wasn’t really prepared for how much cooler it was there. I was pretty comfortable, though, even in shorts and a short-sleeved jersey. I felt a little bit cool, but I don’t mind that. Of course, the first thing the trail did was go through a creek. By the time I had gone less than a quarter of a mile, I was already drenched and freezing. I knew I’d warm up and dry out, so I wasn’t worried. It was really hard to shift right from the start; I did a number on my derailleur cables on my last mountain bike ride, which was very dusty (see the Pre-Breakdown Shakedown).

Winona Lake is an interesting trail because it has numerous points where there are more difficult sections of trail, and you can choose whether to go on the harder part or take an easier bypass around the obstacles. I checked out the first difficult section, and it had a pretty big drop-off. I decided against riding it. I knew I could probably make it, but the consequences for messing up would have been pretty severe, and I was riding alone. If something happened, getting help would have been difficult. So, I backtracked and took the easier way instead.

I got a bit confused a couple of times about how to follow the trail. It’s an overlapping network of trails, with signs, and I had a map, but it was still pretty difficult to follow. I figured out a good way to go. I rode some more and came across another difficult section, and rode it. I went flying down a hill, up a ramp to a narrow wooden bridge, and then dropped back down and crossed a big log. The trail wound around, and I had a little trouble keeping good traction. The soil was sandier and looser than what I’m used to, and it took me a while to figure out how to keep good traction.

The trail wound around some more and spit me back out on a paved road. I saw that the trail continued on the other side, and kept riding. I saw a drop-off coming up, but didn’t realize how big it was until the last moment. I almost tried to stop, but instead kept going, catching some good air and landing safely. The trail wound was a bit straighter for a few minutes, with some small climbs and descents. I looked up and saw a huge deer. At first, I didn’t even think she was real, she was huge and standing very stoically and looked statuesque. Then she moved and I realized that she was the real deal. She was pretty different from the deer I usually see at home, much bigger and with grey fur instead of a reddish brown.

One thing that took me a while to get used to at Winona Lake is that it goes near a paved path and a bunch of subdivisions and other signs of civilization. It’s clear that they had a pretty small piece of land and wanted to cram as much trail on it as possible, because the trail loops around in sort of weird ways and you often find yourself going back in the direction from which you came. At first, I took this to mean I was going the wrong way, until I realized the trail was doing a bit of zig-zag action. This also means sometimes you’ll ride right by a section of trail you already rode on. It’s a little disconcerting when you’re used to trails that go somewhere.

I kept riding, and took another one of the difficult trails. I stopped short when I saw a cascade of 3-4 big dropoffs. I wanted to try it, but I didn’t have the nerve. Again, maybe if I hadn’t been riding alone, I would have given it a shot. Alas. I took the easier way and then found myself on the very interesting Field Trail, which is appropriately named. Suddenly, I found myself out of the woods and in an open field with tall grasses growing in it. The trail wound through this field for a while. It was pretty cool, and reminded me a bit of the balds we saw in the mountains. I took the wrong trail at the other end of the field, but corrected my mistake and went flying down a big hill with a banked turn at the bottom of it.

The trail followed a creek for a while, which was really pretty. Then, it crossed a bridge and got twistier on the other side of the creek. There were a couple of difficult trails in this section, including the Caution Trail, which has a lot of extremely sharp turns. There were a number of logs and big roots to jump, some short, steep climbs, and some really fun descents. My memory is a little hazy on this section of trail, but the thing I remember most is all the sharp turns. There was also a fun mounded dirt jump at one point, and a “Black and Blue” big dropoff that I didn’t attempt. The trail followed the creek some more and spit me out at the beginning.

I decided to ride the loop a second time, now that I had a sense of the trail and which technical features to attempt and which to skip. I got a little past the narrow wooden bridge when I noticed my tires making noise. I thought it was just the slightly-crunchy rocks in the soil at first, but I looked down to check my tires. The front was fine. The rear had gone flat. Crap!

Fortunately, I had a pump and patch kit in my Camelbak. I got to work on finding and fixing the leak. I found a small hole in my tire, and a matching one in the inner tube. There was no sign of anything still being stuck in the tire. A couple of runners went by, asking if I needed help. One of them even had a pump! But I had everything I needed, and they continued running. I messed up putting the first patch on, but got it right on my second try. I got anxious and tried to put the first one on before the glue was completely dry. I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes through all of this — I hadn’t noticed them while I was riding, but as soon as I stopped, they attacked.

The second patch took, and I seated the tire and tube and started pumping. My pump worked surprisingly well. I say “surprisingly” because it doesn’t work well at all on my road bike. It probably took a couple hundred pumps, but I think I got my tire up to around 50 psi, which is where I normally run it. I didn’t have a pressure gauge to check.

Once I got moving again, the rest of my ride went very smoothly. I was finally getting used to the loose, rocky, sandy soil and learning how to get better traction. I also did better on the technical features. I enjoyed my second lap a lot more than the first, since I was more familiar with the trail and was able to really let loose a couple of times where I had to be more cautious the first time around.

All things considered, I really enjoyed my ride. The Winona Lake trail was not what I expected — I was hoping for something that would cover more ground, rather than zigzagging across the same small piece of land — and it didn’t even go by the lake. But it was a lot of fun in its own right, I enjoyed the twisty sections, technical features, and the dropoffs I did do. I’m still not sure if I’d want to ride on it for 24 hours (or 12), although that’s still under consideration.

Back in May, Sarah’s friend Julia came to visit. We spent a couple of hours with her cousin, Christopher. We went over to his place to hang out for a while, and as soon as we entered his kitchen, Julia spotted a sign that said “Simplify” in block letters. She started laughing and asked, “You have one, too?” Apparently, one of their relatives gave a “Simplify” sign to each of them. Both of them kept it, but neither seemed to be sure why.

This “Simplify” sign had a surprising impact on me.  I’ve thought about it a few times since then. Then yesterday, I looked at my bank statement online and felt stupid — “this transaction was unnecessary,” I thought. “This one, too.” There were several things on there that I just didn’t need. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much stuff is cluttering up my life.

Then, on my way home from work (I drove, since my bike had a flat tire), I saw a man laying on the ground and a cyclist trying to help him. I turned off on a side street so I could turn around and see if I could help. I turned around, and I was stuck at the intersection, but I could see across. A few people were trying to help the man, and at least two people had already called 911. The man appeared to be unconscious. He started to convulse a little bit. Moments later, he regained consciousness and tried to get up. Someone helped him to his feet. He seemed to have enough help, and I could hear an ambulance already, so I decided to continue on my way.

Another reason I didn’t stick around was that I knew I couldn’t do much. I don’t know much about first aid, and I took a CPR class back in high school, but that was a long time ago. I felt helpless. Fortunately, this guy already had people helping him, but what if I was the only one there, and I didn’t know what to do? I felt silly that I had worried earlier that day about my flat tire and getting a new tire and how I was anxious to get home quickly. Those things are so trivial compared to a human life.

I need to get back to basics. I’m going to make a concerted effort to simplify my life. I’m not sure yet what that will mean, but I need to figure that out. Two things I know it will involve are buying less crap and learning some first aid and CPR. Especially with all the cycling I do, and the hiking Sarah and I do together, I really need to know those things. Sarah said she’d take some classes with me, which is a great idea. I think I can get rid of a lot of the junk I already have, too. I have a lot of clothes that don’t fit anymore, and stuff I don’t use. It needs to go. I have two old bicycles I’ve been meaning to get rid of, but haven’t. I have no idea why, I just keep putting it off.

I’m hoping this simplification will help on several levels. It should help me save money, and I think having less clutter will make me more comfortable. It’ll be easier to find things if I don’t have so much junk to dig through. But more importantly, I have been trying to be more self-reliant in general, and I think that learning first aid — and trying to depend less on things I should be able to do without — should help me do that. I already feel more self-reliant from cycling. If my car broke down, or I crashed it, or something happened and oil prices skyrocketed even further, I could still get around. But if one of my loved ones got hurt, I wouldn’t be able to do much of anything. That is unacceptable.