Today was one for the record books. Ninety degrees, very humid, very sunny, and two flat tires!

The first flat was fun, or at least interesting. It happened in the city of Stow, which is north of Akron, Ohio by about 7 miles. I felt a little softness in the rear tire at a stop light. I rode through the intersection to what looked like a church with a couple of big trees with lots of shade and lots of soft-looking grass in the front. I decided that it would be a good place to change a tire.

So, I sat down and proceeded with the tire change. About halfway through the job, a person comes out to do some gardening around the small sign in front of the church. We chatted idly about the hot weather as we both went about our respective chores. I also learned that the building used to be a church, but is now the offices for a local realtor. That explained why the sign in front was for a realtor; not a church. I’m told his desk is right where the alter used to be.

Eventually, the conversation came around to why in the world I was out in the hot weather riding my bicycle. I told her about The Dream Tour and gave her a business card. As it turns out, she has type 2 diabetes! As I’ve told people many times “Everybody knows somebody with diabetes” and sometimes it’s even the person I’m telling it to! Anyway, it sounded like she was doing very well with it — an all too rare example of someone eating right, exercising, and successfully managing her condition. Kudos to her!

My second flat was not nearly as inspirational. In fact, it was downright insulting! I was on a very busy road and I had just passed an interchange with Interstate 77. I felt the rear tire go soft again and I groaned. I’ll spare you the cussing that was involved though. There was no shade that I could get to easily, lots of traffic, and by this time, the temperatures were approaching 90 degrees. I finally walked across an entrance ramp to an area where I could stand in a small piece of shade if I was willing to stand in knee high weeds. To top things off, it was so loud with traffic around there, that I couldn’t hear where in the tube the air was coming out. I finally located the puncture, but I couldn’t find anything in the tire that might have caused the puncture. I finally gave in to the heat. Whatever might be remaining in the tire — if there was anything at all — must be small and it would probably not cause another puncture within the ten remaining miles of today’s ride. I put in a new tube, re-inflated, chugged a half-full bottle of water, and was on my way again.

While I’m riding along at between 10 and 20 miles per hour, it’s plenty warm, but even at these slow speeds, there’s enough of a cooling breeze to make it tolerable. When I’m stopped, however, there’s no cooling breeze and the heat quickly makes me very uncomfortable. Along the way today, I saw a couple things worth stopping and enduring the heat long enough to take a picture.

First, there was this road sign just outside of Warren, Ohio to the west.

Second, an example of a drive-in beer and cigarettes store. You see these scattered here and there along the roads in Ohio. One of the less attractive things about Ohio, in my opinion.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 6:12 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour, Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.