Everyday can not be the best day, but you can make the best of a bad day!

 Everyday Can Not Be The Best...

Today was not the best day for me but I ended up making the best of it. The start of my day was another ride on my fat bike. The ground was mostly thawed out so there was not a lot of ice yesterday and the roads were very clear today. I was about half a mile from my house when the bike became very hard to pedal and the back felt like it was in deep mud. I got off the bike and knew exactly what the problem was, I got a flat tire. 



It is hard to see in the first image but the second one you can see the spike of plastic in my hand. I do not know what the trash was but it was plastic and sharp. It put a hole in the tire and inner tube. Seeing as I have cheap bikes I am not running them tubeless so a hole in the tube means I have to either patch or replace the tube. Well I was only half a mile from home and did not want to patch a tire only to have it fail later so I just walked home to get my gravel bike. This should have been my sign to call it a day but it was nice out and I really needed to go for a ride. 


When I got home I took a look at tire again to see if I could patch it when I got back from my ride or if it was going to be a replace the tube and noticed it was fully flat with zero air in it. I pushed the tire aside and just looked at the rim to see if maybe by chance I could also just swap it to tubeless. I do not think I could do proper tubeless and I am not going to do a makeshift tubeless so patch or new tube was waht is needed.



It took me a minute to find the hole and it was so small that I just became annoyed. Its in the center of the image and its very hard to find but I was not about to patch it right now so I grabbed my gravel bike and took of on the clear roads. There was some snow along the side but it was limited and I thought everything would be fine. I came up to the gravel portion of the ride and saw some ice patches. 


I should have saw a fall coming but I spent a bunch of time riding my fat tire bike so I was overzealous and thought I would be fine. I was not going very fast but that is not what matters here I fell over on ice and used a bit of a poor fall technique and busted up my elbow. I also as I slid across the ice that was covered in water so I was wet as well as a hurting elbow. Instead of taking that as a sign of the day being over and going home I kept the ride going. 


At the halfway point I decided to take a look at my elbow and it was not too bad. There might be bruising tomorrow but its not like it was broken or anything and I could finish the ride. I ended up doing 13 miles and I kept everything nice and calm for the rest of it. 

What did I learn here? 

I learned something today that is a bit cliché but I got lemons today and I decided to make lemonaid. It was a bad start to a ride and I have not had a ride this bad in a while. I did not end up stopping my ride when the going got a little tough and kept going. I got my ride in and I feel awesome after it. I also am making sure to ride more carful when conditions are a little off. Riding a gravel bike with well worn tires over ice and not expecting to fall was just arrogance. I have kids and a job should not be so careles as to hurt myself on a ride. I will be less careless on my rides going forward. 

Fat Bike Status.

I ended up patching the innertube on the fat tire bike and I realized that I HATE the patches I have. They are the type that you do not need any glue for and it stuck to the tube but it was not a sticky as I would have expected it to be and looks like it will fall of at any moment. They are more like stickers than tube patches. I was able to fill the tire with air and it seems to have kept the air with out leaking but I will see if there is air in it tomorrow when I go for my morning ride. If there is no air then I will have to buy a new tube or much better patches. 

I am off to continue the journey, always be careful and safe while riding! Thank you very much for reading have and wonderful day!

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