December 04, 1997

BLOW OUT

Riding across Texas wasn't going to be an easy task for me this year. It was great getting off the interstate and away from the mesquite thorns. I thought this was the case but I might had been wrong. I was going along at a good pace on US 67 because of a good tailwind. I was cruising at almost nineteen miles an hour when disaster struck again.

The front tire blew out with a bang. I almost crashed but I was able to keep the bike up. My only problem was that I chewed up the left front side of my right shoe when it got caught in the front spokes.

It looked like the tube that I had bought at a bike shop in Fort Stockton a couple of days ago was too small for the bike. I used my last spare tube that I had bought at the Wal-Mart yesterday. I was able to get the front tire inflated to 64 pounds safely with my hand pump. It was around eleven pounds under-inflated but I didn't want to risk a valve stem blow out again.