God Demonstrates His Love For Us...

God demonstrates his love for us,
In that while I had a one inch long cut in the sidewall of my tire,
I didn't have a blowout while ripping a descent at 40 miles an hour.
For surely that would have been The Suck.
(merckx 3:16)

This is how The Bible would have gone if cyclists would have written it. But this is my story of the day.
I started off on the wrong foot (can a cyclist do this?) when I rolled out of the garage and I felt the obvious sensation of riding on the rim. You cannot mistake this, you know it right away. So, fortunately, I was not far away from a new tube and the floor pump. The tube change took all of five minutes, and I was back on the bike, headed for the nooner.
No one was there. That was bad. So, I was on my own. I decided to do a stage of the Cascade Stage Race, the circuit that goes up OB Riley and Archie Briggs (definitely the hardest climbs in the race) I started up Archie, and then did a full circuit, so that I could hit Archie in the mouth twice.
And, yes, I was ripping descents. The descent into OB Riley is fast and curvacious. And the fact of the matter is, a blowout there is a disaster. You're calling in the Life Flight and hoping that you only have a year a of PT ahead.
The second flat was actually very lucky. Seriously, as lucky as flats go. I was at Third and Greenwood, and I was soft pedaling to the light, and it just blew the heck up on me. I was just peddaling along, and BOOM... empty. I was one block from a bike shop. Nice.
I fixed that flat pretty quick as well. That is when I saw the tube sticking out of the tire by about a half centimeter, at least. A piece of tube sticking out is a terrible thing. Just touching it on the pavement is an immediate blow out. Not a slow leaker as all, but a very sudden emptying of the tire that makes for bad handling and nasty consequences. So, to have that blow out as I slow-rolled to the light was very fortuitous.
Like I said, I was totally counting my blessing. All things considered.