Just before I was going to ride I went out to the garage to crush some aluminum cans. As I was walking back to the house I looked at the rear tire on my Motobecane Le Champion and noticed a dark spot on the rear tire sidewall. Looking closer I could found that the tube was bulging out of a cut and forming a small bubble about 1/8″ in diameter. This cut was from the flat I had last Saturday. At the time I did not think the cut was big enough to cause a problem but I was wrong. When a tube is under 110 psi of pressure even small openings can be bad. Next the next step was to put a boot in the tire since there was plenty of tread and life left in it. Last year when we cleaned out the garage and rearranged everything I threw away my old tires, a good source for boot patches, so I was searching for something to use. Going into the house I found a flexible refrigerator magnet and decided to give it a try. It turned out to be bendable and the right size, going from bead to bead inside the cut area. Since it was a little thicker than I first wanted I thought this might cause a lump on the tire that I would notice as I rode but that did not happen. Another worry was if the boot would move but no problem there either upon checking after today’s 29.11 mile ride. So I think this will be a good fix until the tread is gone. I have about 1950 miles on the tire. I had a boot from Park Tools but it warned that it was for emergency use only so I did not want to use it since this was not an emergency.

The great weather continued today event though it got down to 56 degrees overnight it was 80 degrees (40% humidity) by ride start and 87 (29% humidity) at the end. My sunglasses make the brilliant blue sky even more vivid. It must be the polarization of the lenses. Wind was light at 8 mph from the ESE. My average speed was a solid 15.5 mph and my max speed was 20.7 mph. Average cadence was 81.6 RPM. (These numbers are SportTracks and differ slightly from RideWithGPS.com numbers). This is the second day in a row that I rode 29 miles or more. October miles are now 354.90 and year to date is 4596.24 miles.

10-14-2011 Bike Ride Data and Route Map

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