First Flat

Today I had my first flat and as I'm sure was cosmically necessary it was raining. Luckily though I was pretty close to home so after I struggled unsuccessfully to get the tire off I called my brother to come pick me up. I did manage to get the tire off and the tube out and the new tube partially on before my brother arrived, but I gladly accepted the warm dry ride home to finish fixing my flat. Once home I did successfully finish putting the new tube in and getting the tire back on. I'm glad my first attempt at fixing a flat was a success (thank you Youtube). It's remarkable that I made it through the entirety of last year without a single flat and this year with far less mileage I've already had one. Hopefully this isn't a sign of what's to come, but if it is I feel much better prepared now.

Excitement

In less than one month I'll be arriving in Providence ready to start this adventure. Today I had a nice 30 mile ride and tried out one of my shot blok flavors I got yesterday. I think the most exciting part of the whole ride was when I saw another Bike & Builder in Newton Centre going the opposite way. I have no idea who it was, but I saw a Bike & Build jersey and got really excited. Here are my stats for my ride: 31.89 miles, average speed 13 mph, max speed 31.2 mph, 2 hours 27 minutes.

Lovely Day for a Ride

Today was a little on the cool side, but otherwise a perfect day for a ride. It being a little cool is actually a good thing because there are fewer clueless pedestrians to walk out if front of me. A few miles into my ride I noticed a sort of rattling buzzing noise coming from my bike. I wasn't sure what it was, but wanting to make sure it wasn't some noise indicating my front tire was about to fall off I stopped to take a look. I have no idea what it was still, but everything looked all right and it disappeared at some point or the traffic got so noisy it drowned it out. At any rate I'll try and keep a look out for it in the future, but hopefully it has resolved itself. The other thought I have about it is that it might be a result of the surfaces I'm riding on, which are not the smoothest. If anyone has any ideas about anything I should check out let me know. Mostly it was a pretty easy ride with not too much wind and only one motorist yelled at me. It was a little hard to tell if he was disapproving or not because all I heard was "bicyclists" although he didn't really look happy. I'd also like to point out that I was absolutely in no way doing anything wrong, I was simply following traffic laws waiting for and then using a left turn signal. I guess he just didn't want to share the road, which is a reaction I'm going to have to get used to this summer. Right now the plan is to get out tomorrow and Thursday, take Friday off, get a long ride in Saturday, and take Sunday off to work at Commencement. Now off to hunt down some dinner and do some MCAT studying and laundry. What a night.