Welcome to Tucson

A cool morning and a simple goal: ride. Not so simple when you live in Tucson.

My malaise and general fatigue from the summer is slowly wearing off, so I went out for a suburban assault ride. 20 minutes into it my rear tire went flat.

As I changed it, I watched the ‘little river’ flow with fury. I witnessed a standard morning on the rivertrail: dogs, walkers and joggers. An occasional runner. An old chinese lady latched onto me, talking on and on about how she got ticketed for having her dog off leash. $270. Her dog was still not on leash.

I didn’t even bring my tools, just a spare and a worthless co2/hand pump. I pumped for 10 minutes which resulted in an impressive 25 psi. I had no patch kit but decided to continue the ride anyway.

As I turned off the river trail 10 minutes later it was over. My spare was losing air. Welcome to Tucson.

I’ve been carrying that spare all summer. Not once have I had to use it. But I’ve been in Idaho and Utah. This is Tucson.

I limped back as best I could, expelling my lone CO2 cartridge at some point. Things are off to a slow start for me. As if I were not hungry enough; the crispy bullock fire trails are open and calling me. Mitsrugi was defeated, but the soul still burns.

Today I’m going in to school for the first time. It’s the Kobus show, aka Multimedia and Multi-Modal data meeting. (M^5)