Yakima Weekend

QUICK STATS	This Ride	2010 Cumulative
Distance	45.51 miles	4597 miles
Elevation Gain	2139 feet	49.68 miles
Average Moving Speed	14.76 mph	15.14 mph
Dog Bites	0	1

Saturday's ride started out a little too urban for our taste, but after about 8 miles we turned onto Naches Heights Road and it was like somebody flipped the light switch from "urban" to "rural". Very little traffic from that point on. Save for the occasional tractor. Orchard after orchard after orchard. Nice views of Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier, and of course all the surrounding hills. It was a very beautiful ride.

We had originally intended to relax Sunday morning but it was such a beautiful and enjoyable ride we decided to do it again on Sunday. Plus we figured the traffic on the first few miles might be a tad better on a Sunday morning than it was on a Saturday morning.

At about 4 miles into the ride we were crossing a relatively busy intersection and I made sure to get all the way over to the right to allow a passing car to get around us with plenty of room. The side of the road is often full of debris: gravel, dirt, glass, thorns, you-name-it. So normally cyclists don't like to ride through it. In fact that is why you sometimes probably see cyclists riding in the vehicle lane rather than the bike lane - the bike lane is full of junk. Well as you have probably figured out there was something nasty in the debris I rode over and it gave me a flat.

But that wasn't the bad part. The bad part is what happened next.

Amy heard my flat tire hissing so she immediately pulled into a vacant parking lot and I followed right behind her. This parking lot hadn't seen cars or street sweepers or anything in quite some time. This parking lot had quite a bit of some kind of ground cover weed over much of the paved area. This parking lot was full of goathead thorns.

Before we knew it all 4 of our tires were flat.

It took a moment to ponder our situation before we decided on a solution. We each had one spare tube and we each had a patch kit with several patches. This would be a job for the patch kits.

Except that both of the patch kit epoxy dispensers were completely dried out. Even the one that hadn't ever been opened. Useless.

It was at this point that Amy mentioned the Starbucks across the street as a possible solution. So that's what we did. We walked our bikes over there and ordered two big expensive coffees and relaxed.

Chatted a bit with another fellow who said he'd been in a group of cyclists when they experienced 28 flats when some of them went off the main path. Before Sunday I wouldn't have believed him. Now I believe it could easily happen.

Eventually we got in contact with Amy's family and got a ride back to their place.

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is. Avoid goatheads I guess. They are nasty. Very nasty. They are like the smart missile of bicycle tire puncturing objects.

Maps showing all rides: 2010 Rides • 2009 Rides • All Rides