On the glass being half full

I don’t know if I’m fundamentally a glass half full or a glass half empty type of person. I know I would like to be a glass half full person. I worry, I fret and I dither. I am insecure, but I am secure in my insecurity. So, I think I am going to try to emphasize today’s events as glass half full.

By my reckoning, it hadn’t rained since the morning of last Thursday and it has generally been quite sunny. So that today would be wet was no great issue. After a nice breakfast and a chat with my host Ray in which he warned me of a potential route issue, I set off through the rain which waxed and waned as the morning progressed. Mid morning, I changed into my merino bike jersey.

I came to the potentially problematic part of the route, which proved to be impassable to cars but was passable by bike. I came out on the end of a section of old highway that was relatively little used except by informal drag racers if some of the markings on the road are to be believed. A wild turkey saw me, then slunk into the undergrowth by side of the road. 

A few kilometres past. I was a bit chilly and I found it was slow going. I was plodding up a hill when I heard a loud bang from my rear tire…

I only had to look to see that what I had been dreading had happened. My rear tire had given up the ghost. When I had taken Leonardo in for a pre trip check up, the mechanic had commented on the poor state of my tires and I ordered a new pair. However, they hadn’t arrived by the time I left so I had hoped the old ones would last. Somewhere in the Saquenay, I had noticed that there was an ominous bulge on my rear tire. Since then, I had been on the lookout for a suitable replacement but I hadn’t come across a suitable bike shop. I had been planning to seek out a replacement in Fredericton on the grounds that there had to be a good bike shop in New Brunswick’s capital.

So there I was, miles from anywhere in the rain with bike whose rear tire I didn’t trust with a new inner tube. Oddly enough, I was fairly calm about it. I don’t know why but I just felt it would work out. The only thing to be done was to stick out my thumb. It wasn’t long before a bright blue pickup stopped to give me a lift. I explained what was what. The woman driving the pickup gave me (and Leonardo) a lift to a nearby gas station which proved to be a truck stop on the Trans Canada. As I took Leonardo out of the truck, I was surprised to see that the front tire was flat as well! I wonder if that explained some of my slow going.

I asked the cashiers if the intercity buses stopped there, but I was out of luck. I then decided that my first order of business should be to get some food inside me as it was past 2 and I had yet to have lunch. I function better after a meal. I also put on a fleece layer. As I ate, I decided that worse come to worst, I’d hire a taxi to get me to Fredericton.

After lunch, I started by questioning a few likely people refuelling their pickup trucks at the pumps if they were A. headed toward Fredericton, and B. would they consider taking me with them. I didn’t get lucky, so I decided to head to the Trans Canada and try my luck there. I remember thinking that if I didn’t get a ride in half an hour, I would go back to the truck stop and try for a taxi. About ten minutes later, a man called John stopped in his SUV and flipped down the back seat to make room. He was on his way to Fredericton to pick up a friend who had been in a car accident and was at the hospital to be checked out, just in case. He was extremely sympathetic and suggested the name of a good bike shop in Downtown Fredericton. We decided that it would be best for me if he dropped me off there, rather than at my B&B.

Savage’s proved to be not only a good bike shop but apparently Canada’s oldest having been founded in 1897! I can’t speak highly enough of the place. The young man with whom I dealt inspired great confidence and spoke with empathy. Admittedly, even a casual glance at my tires would indicate that they were kaput given some of the damage. I am suspicious that all the riding on rocks yesterday didn’t to them any good. As well, today saw me riding through a fair bit of crud on the side of the road. In addition the tires, there were a couple of other small issues to be dealt with on Leonardo, so I left him at the bike shop and took a taxi to my B&B. The guy at the bike shop suggest that I put my four wet bags into a cardboard box he had handy for ease of handling and to minimize the amount of road dirt shed in the taxi or at my Victorian B&B.

So glass half full. Both my tire failures happened at once, fairly near to a source of replacements right before a rest day. It happened in the Maritimes where the people are extremely friendly and helpful. I happened upon someone who knew off hand of where a good bike store was. Strangely enough, the fact that it was raining probably made it easier for me to hitch my ride as people are likely to take pity on a drowned rat by the side of road. At least that was a hitching hiking theory that Philip once told me. ;-)

More glass half full: The owners of the B&B are wonderfully helpful and their house is a joy. Furthermore, there is a laundromat across from the B&B and my clothes are in the dryer as I write this.

For those of you with a taste for the morbid, I finish this blog entry with what the guy at the bike store described as “bike gore”.