Fifteen & a Flat

 Earlier in the week weather.com had informed me that the weather on Friday would be delightful, & Saturday would suck. Turns out they had it right for once, but I planned ahead to get a bike ride in Friday & save running for Sat. when I could head to the gym. It was bright & sunny, so I picked up the Great Allegheny Passage in Homestead.

For those of you who don't know, the GAP trail allows bikers to go from Homestead, PA, (about 10 minutes from downtown PGH) and bike all the way to Washington, DC! That might be my next adventure after the summer is up.

Things were going nicely, and I would have loved to kept going, except I knew sunset was coming. I turned around just past a town called Boston. (Look at me, I biked to BOSTON! Haha) Just a 10 or so minutes after I turned around, I was crossing the Youghiogheny River (not a single clue how to pronounce that one) and I heard a strange sound. I got off my bike to discover it was air coming out of my tire. I quickly hopped back on my bike and rode as fast as I could until my tire was clearly flat. At this point it's way closer to dark than I would like, and I am in an area of Pittsburgh (McKeesport) where it was clear from the stares I was receiving, that I shouldn't be. I began calling people to see who could possibly take me the 11 miles back to my car, as walking would have taken me quite some time.

I came to a corner, and saw a man, who I was hoping would be able to give me a more accurate description of where exactly I was, or an address/zip code to give to Aly who was brave/kind enough to come get me. Instead, to my surprise, hearing my dilemma, he offered me a ride back to my car. Now, I will attest that my mother taught me not to take rides from strangers (though in the worst way possible...), but, I was pretty desperate. The guy seemed nice enough, so I accepted his offer. (Mom, Dad, sorry I didn't mention this on the phone last night, but y'all probably would've flipped.) Put my bike in his car, committed his license plate number to memory should anything go wrong & told Aly I had found a ride.

Not that I'm advocating accepting rides from strangers...'cause I feel like in general it's probably a bad idea...but I'm grateful that there are still good people in this world willing to help someone else out for nothing in return. So, thank you Ray, should you ever stumble across this blog.

I got my tire fixed this morning, so, should I manage to wake up early enough before work tomorrow I plan to put in some of the miles I missed out on on Friday.

15 miles yesterday + 242 miles completed = 257 miles / 500, 243 left to ride.