Another quickie

Out on the track again, this time counter-clockwise; I was hoping to break 50 miles but a couple of flat tires took care of that. I found my rear tire was getting soft almost at the top of Papa Bear, so carefully patched it, found the offending sliver of glass that was still in the tire and would have cut another hole if I hadn't looked for it, then put the whole thing back together, congratulating myself on my poky but thorough repair--and blew a new hole in the tube, right next to the valve stem, by pumping it up too hard. Shit. Fortunately I had a spare tube. Tore the whole thing down again, put in the spare, went on.

Miles later, coming up San Pablo Dam Road, I saw a Plymouth sedan pulled over on the shoulder with its hood up. Rule is, you offer help, so I stopped, but the guy didn't need anything; his throttle had stuck twice and he damn near burned up the brakes stopping it the last time, and he wasn't going to try to drive it any more but just wait for the tow truck. So I wished him luck, clipped in again, and shit! that rear tire was completely flat again. Took it apart, couldn't find the hole this time; fortunately had another spare tube. While I was carefully putting all this back together again, someone who turned out to be the guy's father showed up. The guy gave his dad the same story he'd given me, with the additional detail of turning off the ignition--something I'd mentioned when he said "stuck throttle", but which he hadn't mentioned before. His dad seemed to have trouble believing his story; I didn't think mentioning the discrepancy would help matters, so I concentrated on my tire.

All in all, 40.4 miles, 14.1 mph average, 44 mph max, 2:53 hours.

Tomorrow I'm going over the Zampa bridge again, hopefully with catzen, for a nice long one. I have an especially hard time getting out early on Fridays--they're generally the beginning of my weekend, and I seem to need to putter around for a few hours.