"My pain is your blogging gain"

Woke up at 5:20AM Saturday morning to meet up with Ben and Cory P. I scrambled to get everything ready to go in time as I was pretty tired the night before and decided to go to bed before my second wind came. I got to the 27th and Hwy 2 meeting place at 6:02AM and saw Ben already sitting there. We waited... and waited... until about 6:12AM. I called Cory and when he answered it was easy to hear that he had just woken up. I told him we'd go on without him but then he said all of his stuff was ready to go... so Ben and I decided to ride the trail downtown and meet up with Cory at 19th and 'O' St as opposed to just sitting at 27th and Hwy 2 waiting for him. Ben and I got to our meet up location a short bit before Cory, and once Cory joined us we were off to Cortland.

The morning weather was perfect. The ride out to Cortland was very good. The Jamaica Trail was in pretty good shape considering the heavy rains this past month. We stopped in Princeton for a short snack.

Salsa La Cruz in Princeton
Cory P. and Ben D.

We reached Cortland pretty quickly after that. I had forgotten how close Cortland was to Princeton. We stopped at the gas station and refilled our water bottles and purchased food. I got a Fairbury hot dog, which is my standard snack at that gas station. Good stuff. We discussed which way we wanted to head back and the three options were Hwy 77, Jamaica/Homestead, or gravel roads. I was pushing for the latter and that's what we decided to do. We headed north on the Jamaica trail until we came across a gravel road. We went east for a few gravel blocks and then turned back north. Not long after Cory was hit with his first flat. We stopped on the road and Cory replaced the tube. At some point around this time he noticed he also had a nice thorn in his front tire, but it wasn't losing air, yet. We decided it would be best to head back and ride back on either the Jamaica or highway back. We opted for the Jamaica once we got there and didn't go long before Cory's front was getting really low.

Fixing a flat... again

In the end, Cory used one of my tubes for the front and it held for the rest of the ride. There were several additional thorns in the front tire that he fortunately caught before fully inflating. The rear was not so fortunate. The new tube soon starting losing pressure and Cory had to stop to pump it up. I was running late and had to get home so I could go to Omaha with the family, so I took off once we got back into town and hit 14th St. I called Cory later to find out that he had a complete rear failure and when he tried to use one of the previously punctured tubes that we attempted to patch, it also failed. He walked to to Scheels from 14th and Pine Lake and was able to make it home from there. I think his desire to go back to tubeless has reached an all time high. The source of the title for this entry should be obvious. Special props to Cory for not dropping the 'f' bomb while I was within ear shot.