I keep getting flat tires during my rides.

In less than a month I’ve gotten two flats in remote sections of each ride’s respective trail.  The first flat was on Three Sisters trail in Evergreen.  I somehow managed to rip a huge gash in my tube and found myself pedaling on my rim just as I was rounding a tight switchback.  I’m still not sure what I actually hit that caused such a big flat.  At the time I didn’t have a spare tube or a pump so I had to walk about 2 miles back to the trail head.

My second flat was last night on the furthest section (naturally) of the Community Ditch trail at Marshall Mesa.  I had decided not to bring tools or a spare tube because the trail I was planning to ride was a short loop and I was originally just going to do a bunch of loops.  My plan got scrapped when I noticed an off shoot of the trail, decided to explore and wound up much further from my car than I expected.  I was in for another long walk.

Walking back I encountered a herd of cows that had decided to congregate on the trail.  The bovines wouldn’t move and kept blocking my way.  I had seen this sign earlier that warned about getting to close to the cattle and especially about getting between a cow and her calf.  Since many of the cattle were calves I was a little nervous about striding through the herd.  Also, and I know this is kind of stupid, but I was wearing a bright red shirt and in all the movies you have these crazy bulls that always are attracted to the color red and go charging all over the place.  I kept wondering if cows actually are extra excited by the color red, and in the end I convinced myself that they were color blind.  Anyway, I kept walking.  A couple of calves got jumpy as I got near, but I managed to make my way through the crowd without incident.

After I made it through the cows I was fortunate enough to meet a fellow mountain biker who stopped and offered me his spare tube.  Thanks to him I was able to fix the flat and continue riding.

Lesson: always carry a spare tube and a pump no matter how far you plan to ride, and cows actually aren’t very attracted to red.