DNF

In which the author fails to finish something that he started.

10:30 am. It is a brisk, windy January morning in Bellville, Texas. I’m seated at a small table inside a convenience store, sipping on a Coke and picking at my turkey sandwich and tater wedges. I’ve just pulled the plug on my first 200k brevet of 2020 after only 25 miles, and am about to turn around and let the wind blow me and my bike back to Brookshire, where my car is parked.

It has taken me almost three and a half hours to ride from Brookshire to Bellville, at an average speed of about eight miles per hour. What happened?

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7:00 am. Today’s ride begins much like my successful attempt of the same route back in October, with a small group of cyclists pedaling northwest into a cold front. This time, however, the wind is stronger and colder, the group a bit smaller. I take a short pull into the wind, then drop to the rear of our little paceline for a breather. The group soon splits into two pairs; the stronger cyclists—Wally and Chris—pull ahead, while another cyclist, Les, and I choose a slightly slower pace.

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7:30 am. I’m cruising along, holding onto Les’ wheel for dear life when it happens—a flat tire only seven miles into the brevet. Les turns around and comes back to check on me, but I tell him to go on ahead and I will catch up. He pedals off into the wind and I am left alone with my bike.

When you get a flat, the first obvious thing to do is try and locate any foreign objects in your tire. Failing that, you can find the leak in the tube and use that to pinpoint the tire damage, where a small object like a wire or splinter of glass may still be embedded. (This procedure is much simpler if you align the tire’s label with the tube’s valve stem when mounting it on the wheel.)

I go over the tire minutely but can’t see or feel anything in it. My concentration is shot and  the bike’s GPS shows my average speed dropping as I crouch on the road’s shoulder, messing with my wheel. Thinking about the many miles I have yet to ride into the wind, I don’t spend enough time examining the tube to find the puncture; I simply throw on a fresh one and try to get on down the road, hoping to catch up with Les in Bellville.

-~-

8:00 am. My ride continues at a crawl, gusts of wind pushing back as I cross the open fields leading to the Brazos River bridge. A biker blows past on a Harley, blasting Chuck Berry’s “Nadine” at top volume. I listen to Chuck and the band slowly drop in pitch and volume over the course of half a minute as the hog and its rider make their merry way into the distance. Today’s ride feels like an extended version of all the times I rode my blue Schwinn against the wind to blow my allowance on candy.

9:00 am. A few miles down the road, my rear tire is feeling squishy again. I pull over by a small, deserted sausage factory and feel the tire—it’s pretty soft. I tell myself I must not have inflated the tire enough the first time, top it off with air, and keep going. Soon, though, the tire is getting softer again; whatever sharp object I failed to locate in the tire seems to have gotten a slow leak going.

I decide to switch over to an old, well-used spare tire I brought along. Pulling into a ranch driveway, I lean the bike on the fence and start changing the tire for the second time in about 15 miles. The old tire feels crusty and stiff, difficult to unroll and seat properly on the rim, but I get it on eventually—along with my last fresh tube.

I’m in the middle of all this fussing around with the tire when two women with streaky Fox News hairdos pull into the driveway in a pearl-white SUV and ask if I need any help.

“I’m okay, thanks; is this your ranch?” No—they’re out posting campaign signs for a county election (sheriff, maybe—I seem to remember a grim-faced man in a gray hat). The two women hammer in a sign and drive off.

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10:00 am. I continue riding into the cold wind. The wheel still isn’t quite right—I think I can feel a slight bump on each revolution. The route gets hillier, and the rear derailleur starts shifting poorly too; clicking the shift lever once often gets me a change of two or zero gears now. I’m feeling too harried to stop and investigate, and probably wouldn’t fix it correctly anyway if I did.

10:15 am. I arrive at the Bellville “Rattler’s” store and my decision has been made; I am just not into grinding out another 30 joyless miles to Burton into this headwind on an old tire with no spare tubes today. I suspect that the control will be closed by the time I get there, anyway. It doesn’t feel great to give up but that is exactly what I am doing. I call and leave a message for Wally that I am abandoning the ride, then call home and say I’ll be back earlier than expected.

I walk into the store and buy a Coke and a small order of tater wedges (“French fries,” as the menu optimistically describes the thick, battered slabs). I eat my lunch in silence, then step outside and get on my bike, grateful at least for a tail wind. In a fit of pique, I unload the route from my GPS unit, a mistake that results in an eight-mile detour on an unfamiliar highway. I’ve ridden about 60 total miles today when I reach my car, parked at the Brookshire police station.

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1 pm. I drive back to Houston, pausing at a bike shop to get the derailleur adjusted.  Later, at home, I inspect the first tube that went flat; there is a puncture about six inches from the valve stem. I then locate a barely-visible cut in a corresponding spot on the tire’s surface. I put on my reading glasses and examine the tire’s interior at that place. There, glinting feebly in the sunlight beaming through the office window, is a shard of glass no larger than the head of a pin.