I Must Get to Phoenix!

I was glad to be in Wickenberg, it's a small town, 6600 people, has a grocery store and a hardware store and restaurants and shops and cafes but no bike shop, which I needed: I snapped one of my plastic tire levers (which you use to get a tire and tube off the rim) while trying to change my tube, and since I'd only had two (you need at least two to get the tire off), I needed another one. I spent an hour or two trying to figure out where I might get one, and then someone suggested the Ace hardware in town. I oozed over to the store in the 110 degree heat and found that they are indeed the place with the helpful hardware staff. I was able to buy a bike tire repair kit that included four steel tire levers, and while I was telling my sad story of flat tires and broken levers to the counter person, she said "You should get _ to take care of it, he can change any tire." My bikes tires and tubes are wedged very tightly onto a very narrow rim, so trying to pry the edge of a flat tire over the rim is difficult, especially for yours truly with my limited (read almost no) experience. So when Ace man said "sure, bring it in, it's easy", I thought great. I went back to the motel of the day, grabbed the tire and some more water and headed back to easy street.

Boy was Ace man in for a surprise. He'd never changed a road bike tire before, and he struggled mightily. At first, he was afraid he was going to puncture the tire, but he really wanted to learn how change a road bike tube just in case he came across another one, so I told him what to do (slip a lever under the tire edge and slip it over the rim, then move down two spokes and repeat with another lever, and then either slip one side of the tire off or repeat the lever process once more and then slip off a side. Do not attempt while taking certain prescription medication or under the influence of alcohol.) I was too tired to try it myself anymore (always flats at the end of the biking day when I'm most tired; some sort of starnge Murphy's law in effect?) and glad someone else had the energy to deal with it. He got the tire off, replaced the tube and refitted the tire; he didn't have the right air nozzle fitting for my tube, so I thanked him and went back to my room to pump the tube up by hand.

But no, my pump wasn't working, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't operator error. I fit the pump to the nozzle, flipped up the release and pumped away for an hour to no avail. No air. @!*&* And then I cursed some more. I was sweating and cursing and gnashing my teeth but air would not take up residence in my sadly deflated strip of rubber.

There is a bus service that runs from Wickenberg to Phoenix, but it's not made for cargo, just people. I thought, "I could walk to Phoenix, um, no I couldn't." I called a shuttle service that makes the Phoenix run and asked them to pick me up at 9:30 the next morning in my disgrace, broken chariot and all. I love the desert I chanted as I walked to the local ice cream shop for a double scoop of cherry vanilla, thinking I'd better eat it inside or it would melt quicker than I can pop a tire tube.