You wanna go for a ride?
Today was a must do things kind of a day. I needed to take my motorcycle into the shop for some mechanical work. It starts but does not stay running when I give it gas. It is a 2004 and time for some maintenance. We also needed to go for a bike ride. We headed out and went to the C&O canal to ride. We were doing pretty good on the way out. It was hot but the rain held off. I ended up getting a flat rear tire a little over 5 miles out. I did not have tools or a pump with me so my choices were to walk the bike out or ride it out on a flat and risk ruining the rim. I rode it out. I did not want to walk 5 miles in the 90 degree heat. It would have taken too long. Riding the flat sucked. I had to keep my speed under 6 mph and it was best at 5 mph. On the way out we were averaging 10 mph so this was still slow going, but twice as fast as walking.
It was very scenic there. The canal, the river the nature! 
The turtle was cool to see. We are always looking for nature when we go out. I was so fixated on my flat tire I did not see him. My wife spotted him. We had to stop by and say hi to him. He wasn’t happy to see us. He kept his head in but did not try to leave so we did not disturb him too much. The pictures do not do the canal justice for how awesome it looked in person. There were folks out canoeing on the canal. It is a place we will be returning to.
Once the fun was done we rushed home to get my wife’s other bike and brought it into the bike shop with mine. They fixed the bike on the spot and took hers in for some servicing. Next on my list is my old mountain bike that I converted into a road bike. It currently looks pretty dorky, but it was converted for me to be comfortable. I used to get a sore back from being hunched over in a mountain bike riding position. I had changed out my handle bars for high rising bars and ditched the aggressive tread tires for smooth road tires. Since I have a true hybrid street bike I don’t use my original bike at all. Time for it to become a mountain bike again.
