I said Friday I need to learn to be more flexible

Yesterday I was going out for an early morning 35 mile ride (which still takes me over 3 hours). I had 1/2 cut of granola with a peach on top and a little heavy cream--a high carbohydrate treat. As I was getting ready to leave I pumped up my tires and the rear tube failed at the valve. I didn't have a spare tube and I knew my bike shop was going to be closed that day (small town with big-time college football, many stores close on football Saturdays). I wanted so much to go out riding that I decided to take the tube out of my husband's front tire and put it in my tire. I actually checked both sides for pinching before I inflated it, but somehow I did end up with it pinched and it blew when I tried to put the wheel back onto the bike. I burst into tears. I was too upset to go for a long walk to work off that granola and my blood sugar did go high and then crash--I felt hungry most of the morning. I drove to a bike shop 20 miles away and bought three new tubes and I got in a ride in the late afternoon. But I guess I have to be more careful about high carb breakfasts and eat my extra carbs when I am safely out on my ride.

Actually there was another funny story yesterday when I finally did go out riding. This isn't a very bicycle-oriented area, and they have put in lots of traffic lights that only turn when a car is waiting. Some of them have pedestrian buttons and some have no way for a bicycle to cause the light to turn. When I went out for my ride the football game was about to start and the traffic had pretty much cleared but there were two policemen still directing traffic where my neighborhood road meets the main street of town. I said to one of them that my problems is I don't trigger the demand light, and he started telling me what he described as one of the funniest things he had seen--a student jumping off his moped late at night to hit the pedestrian button to get a green light. Meanwhile the other cop is holding up cars and motioning to me to cross the street. So I didn't point out that there is something wrong with a system that forces us into running red lights.