After seeing the temps drop a little, I decided to tough it out and ride tonight. My intention was to take Pipeline, Dynamite Road, Canal and back up to One Day and HCM. Well, after Pipeline, I took a wrong turn at Post 15 and wound up taking Psycho and Turf back up to Pipeline. I then took the LEFT fork at Post 15 to the trailhead for Dynamite (Post 16) where I came across the only other biker I would see this evening.
He was trying to pump up his tire with no result. He had pinch flatted going up Dynamite and replaced the tube, but it wasn't holding air. We tried patching his pinch flatted tube without success. So we take his currently mounted tube out to try figure out what was wrong with it and we found that the tube was torn at the base of the valve stem - unrepairable. I let him have my spare tube and he was on his way (good thing he was also on a 26").
During the repair attempt, he had told me that he had parked up in the forest preserve by 2bici. Like I said, he was the only other biker I had seen out there and in the 20 minutes we spent trying to fix his two tubes, NOBODY else rode by. If I hadn't made a wrong turn earlier, I would have missed him or crossed paths with him before he got a flat and he would have had a very long walk back to his car.
So anyways, if you carry a spare tube, make sure its in good shape and can hold air.
