Five flat tires
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Today’s ride was through Turnbull Canyon to Whittier. It was kind of a chilly day, and still wet from the rain last night.
We started out from the park, heading south and east. In El Monte, Jon got a flat. Of course, I took the obligatory picture for the Flat Tire Gallery. While he was fixing it, I had a look at the Army recruiting office there. They had a big rack outside the door with brochures in English, Spanish, and Korean. I’d never seen Army recruiting literature in Korean before.
After fixing the flat, we continued on, turning onto the San Gabriel River bike path. We rode that for a short distance to Ramona. Newton had ridden in from West Covina to meet us there. At that point, James, Jon, and Grant all missed the turn. So Newton took off after them. We figured if anyone could catch them, it was him. A few minutes later, my phone rang. It was Newton. He said that James and Jon had disappeared off into the distance and Grant had gotten a flat. So we rode down a mile or so to watch him fix it and so I could get a picture. Then we went back up to Ramona and continued on the ride.
In Baldwin Park, we passed In-N-Out Burger and their big “In-N-Out University”. Then we rode down to the north side of Turnbull Canyon Road.
Up to this point, the ride had been fairly flat, but Turnbull Canyon is a nice little hill. We rode up and regrouped at the top. I took a picture of the view of downtown L.A. from up there. Then we rode down the south side into Whittier.
Just before the bottom, Philippe got a flat. So we stopped while he fixed it. Then, when he was pumping up the tire, the valve stem snapped off. I’ve seen this happen before. I consider this to be a second flat, even though we hadn’t actually moved since the first one, so I took another picture.
When Philippe was finally inflated again, we continued on down into Whittier. We stopped at a little bakery downtown. It was pretty good, but it was kind of cold to be sitting outside.
Leaving Whittier, we rode back along Workman Mill Road to Durfee and then over to Whittier Narrows. At this point, Philippe got his third flat tire. We cheered, because this broke the old record of four flats on one ride.
From there, we took the direct route home, straight north through San Gabriel and San Marino. For some reason, this ride seemed much longer than it really was. Perhaps it was something to do with fixing all those flats. In any event, we were all ready to be done.
46 miles.
December 15th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Ohhh. So that’s what happened to you guys. James and I didn’t have a clue. We just started racing along the river bike path like we usually do when we encounter a river bike path. I was in the lead when we went through one of the underpasses and discovered too late (at about 20 MPH) that it had about 6 inches of water in it — but we just plowed through without mishap (except for wet feet for the rest of the ride) and went on. (At least James and I did.) After about a mile or so we figured out that nobody was following us. So we turned around and went back (through the water again, but more slowly) but we never found you guys. So James suggested we take our own route up north to the dam, and then up Santa Anita. I readily agreed, but I didn’t know he meant all the way UP Santa Anita to Chantry Flats. It was a great ride nevertheless. 58 miles by the time I got home.