No news bumper music to announce about 1.2 miles into the bike ride I got a flat tire. I wasn’t even warmed up yet but as I rode across Woodbridge Drive the rear tire felt soft and I stopped to check. I squeezed it and it was very soft. Fortunately I could my home from there and I rode back to fix the flat in the comfort of my own driveway shade and chair. Rotating the rear tire I couldn’t find anything sticking out of the tire. I put the Cervelo in my workstand, removed the rear tire and looked again but couldn’t find anything. Moving to my chair I tried to get the tire bead loose from the Alpha 50 rim but it wouldn’t budge with my thumbs or the plastic tire tools. I got a blade screwdriver and nudged the tire bead into the center of the rim and used the tire tool to move the bead out of the rim, a job I thought would be hard since it was very hard to get the bead into the rim originally when I first mounted the tire for the new Cervelo. Using my floor pump I aired up the tube but still couldn’t find the hole but adding more air I slowly rotated the tube and found a tiny hole. I roughed up the tube with sandpaper from the patch kit and then began searching the inside of the tire for the cause. I found a couple of tiny pieces of glass sticking on the outside but they didn’t protrude inside. Slowly moving my finger around the inside of the tire I found the tiny piece of wire sticking up. It was so small I couldn’t pull it out with my fingers so I used a small pliers. It was so small it was hard to see but I could sure feel it.

With the tube roughed up I marked the hole and opened the patch kit from my seat bag. The glue was dried up. Another reason I was glad this happened near home. I got a new patch kit out of my parts bin and applied the glue. I’m not the best at patching tubes, it seems I miss the hole sometimes but this time I got the patch over the hole. I aired up the tube to check my work, no leak and inserted it back in the tire. Since I had such a hard time mounting the tire when it was new I thought it would hard but it went on went out too much effort. I aired up the tire, put it back on the Cervelo and resumed the bike ride about 35 minutes after I stopped to fix it. This was the first flat on my Cervelo Caledonia bike since I bought it in February. So I’ve had a flat on each bike now. I biked almost 4723 miles before getting this flat on the Cervelo.

Now I was headed on my original route, New Caney – Tavola – Valley Ranch, planning on riding some different streets in Tavola. I wasn’t sure of the distance because of the different streets but I thought it might be 35 miles. It turned out to be 37.8 miles, a few hundredths of a mile longer than the previous high. This was the 13th ride on this route in 2022. I show the new streets in the video. Tavola is expanding with many houses under construction. I rode gingerly through the work areas hoping to avoid nails.

Getting to Tavola I rode into a stout headwind despite the weather showing the wind to be calm at the start. I think the approaching cool front stirred it up. That turned it into a nice tailwind for the ride back to Kingwood and my speed increased significantly making up a little of the time I lost fixing the flat. I finished the ride at 1:03 PM. Weather conditions: start 78 (humidity 76%, dew point 70), mostly clear, wind calm: finish 87 (humidity 57%, dew point 70), a few clouds, wind N 10 mph gusts 16 mph.

Below is the cadence details chart for the ride. I find this more interesting than watts and heart rate.

From the AXS.SRAM ride report: