No cigar! I had fallen victim to the deadly Goat Head, and the back tire was flat. I murmured, and took my emergency Beater Bike.
Time for a religion lesson.
You may have heard of Adam and Eve. They lived long ago, in a fabulous garden, and naked as jaybirds. Which was a good thing, since Adam had "abs of steel," and Eve could have been a swimsuit model, if only she'd had a swimsuit.
But alas, they succumbed to temptation, and ate the forbidden fruit.
God evicted them from the Garden of Eden – the party was over.
But not only that! God told Adam, "… Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
"Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee…" (Genesis 3:17-18)
Yep – it's Adam's fault that I get flat tires!
Goathead, or puncture vine, is the bane of bicyclist's existence in these parts. (And dogs and barefoot people, too.) I consider myself very fortunate for having completed almost 3 months, and 1200+ miles, before my first goathead encounter of the year. (It won't be the last.)
Surely my weekend goatheads were leftovers from last year's crop. This year's batch won't get mature and crispy until late summer.Here's my goathead gallery, just in case you don't know what the plant looks like. (The best remedy is avoidance.)
7 comments:
yeh I have the same problem. My alley is not paved and is goathead heaven.
The goatheads are out indeed. I have considered solid air-less tires just for this reason, though the rolling resistance of such things is atrocious. There's nothing more horrible than hearing the tell-tale "crunch" of rolling through an unseen patch of the beasties, and then seeing the horrible white spots on a slowly deflating tire. They look like little devil heads for a good reason.
I have never been much of a religous person, but this story brought God to the forefront of my mind... I also suffered the first thorne of the year over the weekend.
note to self, when i run barefoot -- do not run where the goatheads lie.
Ugh, we've been finding them ALL WINTER LONG.
We live close to a canal bank that for some reason decided not to clear up this winter, like it has in the past. A real issue for us when we run or mountain bike on the bank road, but they make their way onto the street as well.
Wow, the winds this morning (Wed., March 28) were horrible. Added 5-10 minutes to my commute. Hard to wax eloquent about the joys of bike commuting after getting my butt kicked like that, but hey, it's good exercise, good training, and good acclimatization, right?
At least I avoided any goatheads this morning. Would've hated to try to patch a tire in windy, low-light conditions.
Db- I had a head wind on the way home last night and on the way to work this morning. I call this drag.
Drag sometimes comes from the wind, your bike or your body/mind. Somedays have more drag than other. But I don't let nothing drag me down.
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