how does one fix a flat?

Yesterday morning I got up early for a bike ride. It was still a bit chilly so after eating breakfast I hung out watching some TV for a bit. Around nine I finally dragged myself off the couch and finished gathering up all my necessary stuff. I grabbed my bike, checked my tired-and wouldn't you know. My rear tire was flat! I haven't had a flat in almost two years, and silly me, I never actually practice changing them (bad idea). I ask my roommate for some help getting the chain off. And because he's such a great guy he sits in the hallway by the front door with me. I think he was more or less there to laugh at me. But it never hurts to get some practice with this stuff, even if he was mostly just watching. Needless to say. It went badly. For the life of me I couldn't get the tire levers to actually remove the tire. We couldn't find a hole in the tube, so we replaced it and we're going to check out the old one this week in the bathtub. Anyway, after about twenty minutes of my lackluster technical abilities I finally had the tube replaced and the wheel back on. My hands were covered in dirt and grease, as were my legs. I even had grease on the back of my arm. I have no idea how it got there.

Needless to say, I was now not looking forward to riding- even though the day was beautiful. I was now worrying that I'd get a pinch flat, so I rode around the neighborhood for a few minutes. Everything seemed good, so I headed out to find some hills. About three miles in, I was on a slow steady climb and I sucked down a bug and it got stuck in the back of my throat. There I am, on a narrow shoulder on a climb, with cars whizzing by me on the left and I'm choking. Not just coughing, but that panicky cough where you can't get breath. And then it hits me, drink something dummy!

And now all I could think of is what else could go wrong on this day?? Luckily nothing! It was a nice easy 33 miles. I wore enough sunscreen so that I'm only slowly getting a tan. Well, that was yesterday. Today, I completely forgot sunscreen. I was out for only an hour, but I left later in the day. Yup. It's pretty obvious. Oh well. Last night I walked into a BBQ wearing shorts and I was greeted with "What's up Casper?" and "Holy white legs!" and then of course the remarks of "Aren't' you a runner? Don't' you wear shorts year round?" Punks!

Oh well, it's finally summer weather in Seattle and I'm going to take pride in my Casper legs.