I’ve never seen one of these break, either…
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Today’s bike ride was Gene’s “Corner Bakery” route, which is another meandering route that leads us ultimately to a bakery. It was warm and sunny, and it felt like spring.
We started out heading east into Arcadia. While we were riding down Santa Anita Blvd, I heard a yell behind me, followed by what sounded like a starter’s pistol from my racing days. The sound was Gene’s tire blowing out. Being that the tire was not repairable, and it was 8:20 on Sunday morning, he figured the ride was over for him, and he called home for help. But in the meantime, Jon had gone across the street to REI and found that there was someone at the store, and he was willing to open up for us, even though the store wasn’t supposed to open until 10:00.
Continuing on, we rode down one street that was partially blocked off for reasons that were not clear at first. But half-way down the block, we saw that a minivan had crashed into and broken one of the telephone poles on the street.
A bit later, Alan saw a tree that had been toilet-papered in San Marino. He reached up and grabbed a piece when we rode by, and he shoved it into the waistband of his shorts.
Finally, we made it up to near the Rose Bowl, where we turned up Inverness for the climb up the one substantial hill of the route. We all made it to the top, where we regrouped. Then we headed down the other side. The descent has some sweeping turns, and as I was going down, I heard a crashing noise behind me. I stopped and turned back up the hill to find out what had happened. I went around the last turn and found Jon standing next to a mailbox and shoving mail back into it. Apparently, he’d gone too wide around the turn and crashed into the mailbox. But he wasn’t especially hurt in the incident. Just a few bruises, which he showed me to photograph.
We continued on down the hill, and right near the bottom, I heard yet another bang, this time ahead of me. This time it was Scott’s tire that blew out. Looking closely at the wheel, he realized that his rim had split. It wasn’t clear if that was the cause of the blowout, but either way, I’ve not seen a rim break like that before, at least not without a violent crash.
Scott was able to put in a new tube and still ride the bike, but there is certainly a trip to the bike store in his future.
It was a day of weird and improbable things happening, but it was still a fun ride.
37 miles.
