[easygoingfemme]

I had a rather epic ride on Thursday this week.

I got about 15 miles out, when, after doing my super hilly stretch that goes by several gravel pits, I found that I had a flat. I pulled over to the bike path that runs alongside to fix it and found that I'd forgotten my bag that has my tire pry. I was calling a friend who lives near where I was riding when a man came by who stopped and he had a tire pry. He loaned me his tools and thankfully I had a spare tube and pump and he was good about not stepping in. Often men try to take over when I'm fixing a flat. In the end we worked together a bit because it's a new tire and it was really hard to get it all back on the rim when all was said and done so we needed four hands. But he stepped back after that while I re-mounted it and got the chain connected and made sure everything was okay.

Then the storm started coming in. It was obviously worse in the direction I had intended to head to so I turned around to go to where I could see more clear sky. But still it was a good two hours of riding in pouring rain.

There's an old set of railroad tracks on part of this path. I hate them. They are very wide set and worn out so the pavement along the rails is all worn out and there are huge gaps. I've crossed the tracks on my bike hundreds of time and it's always scary. This time, a combination of a car racing up behind me preventing me from taking the angle I need to take to hit the tracks right, and everything being slippery wet from rain, my front tire went into one of the pits next to the rails and my bike flipped. Banged up my right side pretty good.

I got up and rode the 15 miles back to home but stopped short because I didn't want the ride to get the better of me so I took another 5 miles. I had planned another 10 miles but another storm started and I was soaked and cold and exhausted and sore from the fall. But I did it.

I have some very colorful bruising and road rash now... Yay.