Wednesday Morning. It's gonna be a beautiful day.

So I jump out of bed, bright and early. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping... Ok, groggy as Hell I reluctantly roll out of bed. But it was a gorgeous day. I took a shower, got ready for work, and jumped on the bike. About half way to work, I pass through a toll botth and immediately sense something is wrong. I've been in this situation before, and knew the feeling all too well. At first I thought it was super windy, then I realized, my back tire was flat. Luckily I was passing through the toll booth and only doing about 60 mph. I was in the far left lane, and had to shoot across about 9 lanes of traffic. I did that successfully, got to the side of the road and put my kick stand down to inspect the damage. That was when I discovered with a flat tire, the bike sits too low to use the kick stand. It tried to fall over the other direction. So, sitting on the side of the highway, on the bike, I call W1. She had to leave her job, drop off the car, pick up the truck, straps and ramp. And come half way to my work to meet me.

So there I was, 45 minutes to an hour, sitting on the bike, on the side of the road. The only thing I could think of, other than praying that i didn't get run over, was at least it didn't happen last week. It was in the 80's and last week the temperature was over 100 degrees most of the week. I took this spare time to call ChiaPop and let him know that his was not the only bike I had gotten a flat tire with. He then reminded me of the Honda Red Riders Club. $40 a year and if you break down, they will tow you to the nearest Honda Dealer for free. Which would have been great since the exit I was in front of was for Highway 290, and yes, about 2 miles up 290 is the west side Honda Dealership. They could have picked me up and took me there, replaced my tire and got me on my way in probably under an hour. Oh well, live and learn.

So after I finished loading the bike and strapping it down, I started to tie the ramp to the bed of the truck. Just so it wouldn't blow away. That's when the emergency rescue guy shows up to see if I needed any help. Nice job Chief. Where were you an hour ago? (Actually he said he would have been there sooner but an 18 wheeler collided with an SUV a mile or so up the road, so he had to clean that up first.

Once we were back on the road, W1 went back to work and I went to a bike shop. They didn't carry my size tires and I'm pretty picky as to what I want on the bike (I settled last time, never again). So he placed an order for the new tires I wanted. I decided to go ahead and replace both tires since the front one had about 17,000 miles on it, and was starting to dry rot in the treads. They should be here today or tomorrow so I'll be good to go. He went ahead and plugged the tire so I could just ride it to the shop when the new ones came in. I hung out for a while and watched a stunt video he had playing. Eventually I left, stopped on the way home and ate a Ragin Cajun's. Had a shrimp po boy. Wasn't bad, but the bread was not true French bread. After that I went home and unloaded the bike. By then it was 3:30 and I saw no point in going to work (although i should have after ordering $300 worth of tires). But it was nice to have a day off in the middle of the week.