![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/tire-1024x768.jpg\" "\\"Bike")
<\/p>\nI’m taking a brief break from documenting the life of the mind to talk about a bike race I rode this past weekend. \u00a0I discovered just before the race that one of my race wheels was out of true to the point where it rubbed the brake pads on every revolution (Naturally, I had not looked at the wheels since putting them away after my last race, and I’m going to chalk up my miserable\u00a0performance\u00a0in that race to their condition). \u00a0I decided that this did not signify, and I’d just go ahead and use my training wheels (note that “training wheels” mean something a bit different to bicycle racers than most people), since after all, the race was fairly flat and my feather-light race wheels wouldn’t provide much advantage. \u00a0So I threw the training wheels back on the bike, again without looking at them, and packed up the truck.<\/p>\n
I got moving a bit late in the morning, which meant I was slightly rushed in my\u00a0preparations. \u00a0One result of this was that I managed to forget that the race uses chip timing (a little RF transmitter attached to the bike that records when you cross the\u00a0finish\u00a0line) until I was approaching the start line minutes before the race started. \u00a0Recalling that the chip was back in my truck, I turned and rode hell-bent for leather back to get it. \u00a0The quickest path to the truck was over a little nature path, so this meant I was tearing along, throwing rocks and twigs around as I went, looking like I was in a cyclocross race. \u00a0I stuffed the chip and zip tie into my pocket and rode back to the line (my thinking being that if I got back as the race started I could just ride with the thing in my pocket and hope it registered. \u00a0The race hadn’t started yet, though, so I immediately whipped out the chip, and with a few quick motions, lashed it, as well as one of my spokes,\u00a0securely\u00a0to my fork. \u00a0Fortunately, I have a Leatherman (TM) mini-knife on my keychain, so I was able to cut the zip tie and ride back across the lawn to the\u00a0registration\u00a0desk to get a new tie.<\/p>\n
Somehow, I managed to get back to the start line and get everything set up before the race went off. \u00a0I did end up starting far back in the field, which made things tricky. \u00a0Still, I managed to find a little gruppeto to ride with and had a respectable (for me) finish. \u00a0Then, after a\u00a0leisurely\u00a0cooldown, I looked at my tire and saw this:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
For those of you not very familiar with bike tires, what you’re seeing is a good chunk of tire casing peeking out past quite a bit of missing tread, and this is only one of the places where it was happening.\u00a0 Meaning that all the time I was merrily riding over rocks and branches, and racing over potholes, the casing was all that was holding 110 psi of air where it belonged.\u00a0 Sometimes it is better to be lucky than prepared, is what I’m saying.\u00a0 Which makes me wonder if I should spend less time cultivating beta readers and doing rewrites, and more time eating nachos and waiting to blunder into a publishing contract through sheer good fortune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m taking a brief break from documenting the life of the mind to talk about a bike race I rode this past weekend. \u00a0I discovered just before the race that one of my race wheels was out of true to the point where it rubbed the brake pads on every revolution (Naturally, I had not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-writing-things","category-metaphor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}