Most students are relieved when Friday rolls around. Their busy, weekly schedules come to an end. Saturday brings free time – time to play, time to catch up on homework, time to just do nothing. Things are a little different for me. With Saturday and Sunday comes more time already spent. I have a lot of reading to do over the weekend, but my obligations and commitments are presenting a bit of an obstacle. Throw in finding time to ride, and time management turns into a jigsaw puzzle. I’m not very good at those.

Today, I woke up to a bright, beautiful morning. I was quite pleased to see the sun shining and the temperature quite near to 70 degrees F. One thing popped into my head: RIDE! I quickly threw my mountain bike into the back of my Pathfinder and packed up my cycling clothes. I also packed up my school stuff.

After my last class, I went for a much needed “therapy session.” I hit the Tech Trails on my Jamis for the first dry ride with that bike. Ride number three in all. It’s really quite sad that I haven’t had time to ride, but today was different. I was excited.

I hopped on the trails from the commuter lot and began the fast, flowy descent down Outer Loop. I moved onto Inner Loop thinking how hard the climbing was, but that was ok. I was riding. I moved onto Time Trail and hit the first part of Hairy Toad, sailed around Barking Frog, and began the finale of Hairy Toad when, suddenly, there was a SHEEEW (rhymes with ew) sound from my rear tire. I immediately stopped and removed my wheel to replace the tube. Just as I was about to pull out the tube, I noticed a 1-inch gash in the tire. Uh oh. Crap. Ok. Well. Hmmm. I replaced the wheel and walked back to my vehicle. At this point, I feel it is necessary to thank Erin for conversing with me via cell phone during my 30-minute trek to my vehicle in the commuter lot. Thanks, Erin!

My potentially three hour mountain bike ride turned into a 70-minute ride, 30-minute walk, and lots of time at The Bike Shop. I was quite disappointed with the circumstances because I was having a great ride. I was clearing all of the rock gardens and having a satisfying ride, so the flat stole my thunder. Also, 70 minutes really isn’t enough to clear away the week’s stresses. I am going to reschedule my therapy session with a different set of tires and go abuse myself for, hopefully, three hours.