Bicyclist will tell you: Bicycling is fun and it is healthy. This is true, but the crazy things that happen they will not tell you. Bicyclist just want to get you riding. Enjoy the fun.
Nothing worse than enjoying a ride and then there is a flat. Of course it is always the back tire. Before you start riding you should learn to fix a flat. You don’t want to be in the middle of nowhere and can’t fix a flat. Of course there is YouTube to show you how, hope you have a signal.
I’m ready to ride and I get to the bicycle and the rear tire is flat. No problem, I can change the tube. I hear the bicycle gods laughing.
My rear tire tread is worn, but that is not the problem. There is a crack in the tire and that is not a good thing. There are a couple of smaller ones.
Now I have to get a tire. I go to REI and they don’t have any Schwalbe Marathon 700/35’s. So off to the Pedaler.
No surprise, they don’t have any Schwalbe Marathon 700/35’s. These are my favorite tires. But they have Schwalbe Delta Cruiser Active and they are a cream color. Not what I want. There was a tire I did like but they only had one. I don’t like two different tires on my bicycle. The bicycle rides different or it could be a psychological thing. So I take the Delta Curiser’s.
Sometimes riding on the street is like a suicide mission. Forget that all car drivers are going to give you three feet. Just pedal along and hold your line. Also learn to read car drivers. I learned that the way the position the car or if they are looking in a direction they are probably going that way. I ride defensively.
When I ride a route I’m always looking for different routes to do. Sometimes the hard part is staying on a route because another route looks better. But I store it in my mind for later.
Sometimes a first ride is more getting lost, wrong turns and going a longer way. I may have to ride the route again so I can do what I wanted to do. I’m either going exploring or I want to see something.
I’m done being mad when something goes wrong. It happens and I deal with it. But sometimes it takes longer to deal with a problem and maybe the ride doesn’t happen.