The tiny holes the arrows above are pointing to are referred to as a snake bite. Usually, a snake bite is the result of inadequate tire pressure, which allows the tube to become pinched between the tire and rim when encountering a square-edged obstacle. But in this case, it’s down to a rider forgetting that he wasn’t on a fat tire bike, and failing to hop the front wheel over the lip of a driveway apron. Oops…
Thankfully I had a spare tube with me, so it didn’t hamper my ride. The driveway was my sister’s, and I was there to take advantage of a warm fall day for a little sibling pedal. She currently rides a hybrid, and was worried that I’d brought my “fast bike.” But I got my speed fix on the way there, sprinting the 13 miles in just over 40 minutes, including my 2nd best ever effort up Lower Valley Pike to the dam. After I swapped to my spare tube, we meandered through the city to the bike path by UD, then detoured around the construction through downtown, before rejoining the path at Riverscape. We rolled through Eastwood and up the Creekside and Iron Horse paths back to her neighborhood, completing a pleasant and leisurely 15 miles, before I turned back and cruised home.
On the day, I turned in just over 40 miles on the road bike, which felt good. It had been a little while (almost three weeks! The shame!) since she’d seen any work, and it was nice to feel the easy speed of skinny tires and smooth pavement again.