Well, not literally but...
Last Friday I decided to go for a bicycle ride along Palos Verdes Drive South and West, both of which run along the coastline in Rancho Palos Verdes and Palos Verdes Estates. It has some truly beautiful scenery and is a ride I enjoy at least once a week (sometimes twice). I then get onto the bike path that runs along the beach, starting in South Torrance and follow it all the way up to Hermosa Beach, passing through Redondo Beach on the way. I then ride back. It is a 34 mile round trip, around the peninsula, which has some quite steep hills. Therefore it makes for a great workout.
I got there fine and walked around and enjoyed the beach for a while before turning back... I got about halfway back before I noticed that I had a flat tire. I turned the bike over to have a look and there were two prickly foxtails sticking through the tire and into my inner tube. I was still about 10 miles from home at this point so I wasn't sure what to do. I started walking, hoping that some other cyclist would pass me and have a patch for my inner tube (and hopefully repair my bike for me since I haven't mastered that skill yet). I walked for about a mile and nobody came by, apart for a bunch of cars. I had just about resigned myself to a long walk home, when I noticed a man walking out of the bushes by the side of the road with his scooter. My intial reaction was to get on my bike and pedal away as fast as I could with a flat, but then I thought... He has a scooter with tires on it. Maybe he could fix my bike for me. Firstly I called Steve at work from my cellphone to let him know exactly where I was and what had happened. I told him that I was going to ask the guy for help. He stayed on the phone the entire time I was alone with the guy. Normally I would never stop and talk to a stranger by the side of the road. However, there are parts of the road along the coast that are quite lonely and have no pavement. This is fine if you are on a bike, but not so much if you are walking by yourself. So asking the guy for help, with Steve on the phone the whole time, seemed like the only option. Luckily for me, he had something to fix my bike with. He didn't use a patch, but sprayed something into the tire to seal the inner tube inside. I started talking to him and he said he knew the area quite well, so I asked him where he was from. It turned out he was homeless and living right there in the bushes! I got a little apprehensive at that point. He finished fixing my bike and I thanked him and got the hell out of there!
When I was a few miles down the street I stopped to tell Steve about the guy and he told me to keep riding and not to stop until I got home. However, I only got another 3 miles before my tire went flat again. At this point I got hugely paranoid and was convinced that the homeless guy had done something to my tire and only pretended to fix it to lull me into a false sense of security, so he could come after me at a later stage and finish me off. I was probably being ridiculous, but you never know... Luckily I was not far from Point Vicente Fishing Access which is a very scenic lookout, and there is always plenty of people there. I saw two girls together and told them what had happened. They offered to drop me off near my house which was very nice of them. They even had a truck, so I didn't have to lock my bike up somewhere and get Steve to go and get it in his truck later...
Anyway, the moral of that story is; not to go on long distance rides unless you know how to fix your bicycle. Steve still hasn't got around to showing me, but he'll have to before I do that ride again later this week. We did a new route together yesterday and took the long hilly route through the various beach cities. We were out for 4 hours and covered about 50 miles. It was very tiring, but nice to get outside and do something we both enjoy.