Flat Stanley

Pneumatically challenged
London, ON, July 2010

It's difficult to get where you're going when your route takes you through neighborhoods that, to be quite charitable, seem to require copious amounts of charitable giving. Notice the overturned shopping cart behind my going-nowhere machine. It's one of many littering this sad stretch of road - called, I'm not kidding, Cheapside Street - that I often try to ride at speed because, let's face it, I'm an elitist wimp who doesn't really want to get into it with the muttering drunk who claims the graffiti-covered bus stop with the shattered windows as his own.

The combination of tires that require the air to stay inside - imagine that! - and roads littered with shattered glass, nails and staples that, despite their lack of sentient capability, seem to conspire to remove said air from said tires was, unfortunately for me on this morning, not a happy one. A rogue staple quietly reduced my rear tire to mush, and by the time I felt the telltale bounciness from the rear end, I knew I was cooked. The damage was in a part of the tube that meant I wasn't going to McGyver-patch my way out of this one. Or McGruber. So out came the BlackBerry for the plaintive call home, and pretty soon my wife was winging her way east to rescue me.

While I waited, the drunk stayed on his side of the busy street. The beer store wasn't scheduled to open for another two hours.

Your turn: Ever get stranded? Do tell!