Yet another flat tire story

At a retirement party for her brother yesterday TOPWLH was able to recount for interested friends and family what she has done each and every day since SHE retired.  I am now engaged in doing the same thing which has caused me to miss an entire night's sleep and develop a severe case of laryngitis.  I am all the way up to . . .

Obviously I am doing no such thing.

We had a tiny bit of excitement on our ride today.  The Saint Paul Classic group ride was held today.  That is actually a morning thing but when we reached Como Avenue shortly past noon the traffic control cones were still up and traffic control provided by the ride organizers was still present at major intersections to stop the cross traffic and wave us through.

Even though we were not registered riders we mostly went along with the well intentioned police volunteers until at last we reached a fork in the road where a volunteer tried to wave us onto a left turn when our actual intention was to continue straight ahead and leave the ride route.

It was a beautiful day for a ride, I hope each and every one of those riders enjoyed the experience and will take from it the lasting message and direction given by the great Eddy Merckx, "Ride lots."

Our destination today was influenced strongly by chip and seal street maintenance all over the northwestern part of Saint Paul and by, of course, the wind direction.  We crossed the big river at Franklin and started filtering our way through Seward towards the Greenway.  Once we reached that major transit way, however, I experienced severe second thoughts about the advisability of riding on that MUT on a Sunday afternoon which was also one of the nicest Sunday afternoons in the history of Sunday afternoons.  People like this were out in profusion on the bike path.

So we stayed on the street and kept on all the way to Lake Street.  This seemed like a good place to turn around.

Just looking at All Wheels it would be my guess that although they may have once spoken Spanish there that most days now there are zero human beings on the premises and no languages at all are spoken.

We had just crossed back over the Greenway thing on our return voyage to the river crossing when the GRider gave a big oh-oh.

Flat tire.

Well, this time it WAS a rear tire but at least this time it wasn't me.  But this time it was 10 miles from home.  We found a patch of shade and I started to work.  Before even removing the wheel I gave the tire a squeeze to convince myself that we WERE having this bad luck and immediately noticed a big chunk of something embedded in the tire quite near to the valve stem.  Eventually we dug four big pieces of glass out of the outside of the tire.  Really bad luck.

I was getting down to the actual task when a really nice thing happened.  The fellow living across the street from the shady spot where we had stopped came out and asked if we had everything we needed to fix the tire.  We thanked him but also assured him that we had the items that were necessary for the repair.  He had some clippers with him and was soon putzing away at something in the boulevard in front of his house.  After having spent a little time getting the tube out it occurred to me that we had everything we NEEDED but actually as long as he was there and was offering there was something that we WANTED.  I dispatched the GRider over to where the fellow was clipping and had her ask him if he happened to have a pump.

Well, indeed he did.  In fact he not only had a pump, he had a really nice Specialized pump.  I had a mini-pump and a CO2 pump with me but there just isn't anything to get you confidently back on the road to compare with a really nice floor pump.

Back on the road we passed the tulip patch near our home.

This guy is serious.  All that work he did there last fall was apparently a double planting, the tulip bulbs to bloom in the spring and black eyed Susans to bloom in the fall.

I dropped the GRider off at home when she had completed her requested number of miles and headed off for a small loop completely west of Snelling to get my mileage up to what I wanted.  This is extremely odd looking to me.

I kinda resembles a soccer goal but it is too large for that and further more it doesn't have the characteristics of a goal.  It is a pipe frame with white netting strung tightly.  It appears to be at the approximate property line between those two houses but whatever can be its purpose?

Possibly it is one side or the other hoping to settle some grievous neighbor problem.

There are about to be a lot of these.

That's the neighborhood gives up way too early maple.  Right now the colorful display outlined against an absolutely not a cloud in that blue sky helps to show what a gorgeous day it was today in Minnesota.