Ken's Bicycle Miracle

August 4, 2019, (Sunday)

During this past week, Kay and I have been staying at the Marriott SummitWatch Resort in Park City, Utah.

I brought my mountain bike along, intending to enjoy riding the many trails around Park City. On Monday I took my first ride. I have been riding 2 or 3 times per week for the last month or so in St. George and so I felt I was in pretty strong physical condition and wanted to do a nice ride I remember doing about 15 years ago. It is the “Rail Trail” from Park City to Echo Reservoir. Although I remember it being a rather long ride, I have pleasant memories of doing that ride and wanted to relive it. Thus, I started on the trail about mid-morning, feeling fresh, strong, and confident. The first 3 or 4 miles are on asphalt and then the trail surface turns to gravel as the trail crosses some meadow/pasture lands in the valley.

I took my binoculars with me, anticipating opportunities to see some unusual bird species along the way. When I did the ride about 15 years ago, I caught my first sighting of a bird species known as Sage Thrasher. Since that occasion, I have only seen that species one other time. Thus, I hoped to stop in that section of the trail and try to get another good sighting of that bird species.

The weather was sunny and seemed perfect. The outbound trail is a steady downward slope and so I was enjoying the ride very much. The beautiful mountain scenery all around me; the easy, descending trail; the warm sunshine; and the periodic bird sightings were all exhilarating.

At 7.3 miles out, I spotted a bird flit from the trail in the vicinity that I remembered having seen the Sage Thrasher previously. Thus, I once again stopped and dismounted from my bike so that I could pursue a good sighting. I had already done that same thing multiple times on the ride as various birds presented themselves. I ended up not finding the bird. When I returned to my bike, I was dismayed to find the rear tire totally flat. Although dismayed, at that point as I considered my situation, I wasn’t too worried. I had just passed the only trailside waystation, about a block or so previously. That waypoint, called Promontory, had a pit-toilet, a vehicle parking lot, and a covered bench. I decided to return to that bench to change my tube. I always try to carry a spare tube and tire changing kit specifically for situations such as this.

As I walked my bike back to the way station, I saw a number of beautiful birds, including about 6 different Sage Thrashers, some Mountain Bluebirds, some Tree Swallows, and some unidentified sparrows. Life was good! Upon arriving at the wayside bench, I pulled out the spare tube and my tools and began the task of removing the back wheel, unseating the tire, and changing out the flat tube with the good, spare tube. However, when I tried to put the new tube onto the tire, I found that it had a Schrader-style air valve instead of the Presta-style air valves that I have been using. This new valve was too big to fit through the valve-stem hole in the metal wheel. Thus, the new, spare tube was of no use to me!

I began to be alarmed at my predicament at this point. I was about 7 miles from our resort, out in the middle of a huge pasture/mountain meadow area with limited civilization close. Kay was back at the resort and I had my iPhone. Therefore, I could call her to come pick me up; however, I realized that I had no way of describing to her where I was or how she could get to me in the car. Reading and understanding maps is not one of her strong suits. Besides, I had never driven the roads out in that area and so I was unfamiliar with them and could not possibly explain to Kay how to reach me.

My dismay was tempered by one, last possible option that I felt I had available. There was a large building across the highway from the wayside where I was. It was the only habitation very close to me. Upon checking the building out, I discovered that it was a fire station. Great!! Firemen are known for saving people in distress, right? I concluded that I could use one of my 3 air cylinders (that I use to fill the newly replaced tube with air) to partially inflate my old, leaky tube. Then I could use a sink in the bathroom at the fire station to identify the leak (or leaks) in the tube so that I could use my repair kit and fix the tire. Without a sink filled with water, I could not detect where the hole/holes were in the tube.

Thus, I ventured over to the fire station and rang the doorbell. I could hear the doorbell sound inside the building notifying them that I was at the front door, and I noticed that there were several cars and trucks in the parking lot. Therefore, I was confident someone would come and let me in and allow me access to their sink to repair my tube. However, much to my angst, no one responded to my pushing of the doorbell (multiple times) and I eventually had to give up on that option.

As I walked back to by dismembered bike across the highway, I could only think of one remaining option available to me. That was to put the leaky tube back into the tire, replace the tire on the bike and ride home as fast as I possibly could, using the last 2 air cylinders to pump up the tire as needed. I knew that one air cylinder would be required to initially inflate the tire, and then I would have one cylinder available to refill the tube somewhere along the trail back home. I was just hoping against hope that the

hole in the tube was small and would thus allow me to make some good progress back home before the tire was too flat again.

The best I dared hope for under this last-ditch plan was that I might get anywhere from a mile to perhaps 3 miles up the trail toward home before I would be forced into the long, slow task of walking the bike the remainder of the way home; (or at least to a place I could then call Kay and direct her to where I might be found more easily).

I enacted my plan by preparing the bike, inflating the tire, and then quickly mounting the bike and riding as fast as I possibly could back toward home. The gravel trail made it very difficult to tell how low my back tire was getting because the bike tires “crunched” continuously on the gravel in the trail.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that my return was not going to be an easy task. As I already mentioned, the first several miles I needed to traverse was a gravel-surfaced trail and so it provided more friction than a paved trail, thus taking more energy. I also found that a wind had come up and, of course, it was a HEAD-wind on my return ride. Also, as mentioned earlier, the way back was all uphill. Along with those obstacles, I was biking at an elevation about 7,000 feet higher than I am accustomed to. Thus, getting enough oxygen was a struggle for me. With all those obstacles, I found myself becoming VERY tired, VERY quickly. My legs and lungs burned at the effort and I was forced to reduce my speed and effort level much sooner than I wanted. Still, I kept plugging along against the headwind and, as I made more progress, my anxiety level began to decrease somewhat.

I had to pass through 3 gates on the trail through the first several miles of pasture lands. I reached the first gate in a little over a mile or so, and I checked the tire’s inflation by squeezing it with my hand as I passed through the gate. I struggled to believe it, but to my pleasant surprise, the tire didn’t seem to have lost any inflation. I pressed forward to the second gate and then the third gate, checking the tire’s inflation at each gate and gratefully finding the inflation to have not changed noticeably.

Shortly thereafter, two of my obstacles either went away or were reduced as the trail surface changed from gravel to tarmac and the direction of travel changed from southward, directly into the head-wind, to more westward.

I estimate that the return ride home took between 30 and 45 minutes. The tire stayed inflated all the way home. I never even needed to use my last air cylinder to re-inflate the tire during my ride home. As I opened our unit’s door and parked my bike next to the table, I felt completely exhausted but also very, very grateful. I explained my ordeal to Kay as I caught my breath and my energy level revived. Then, after about 5 or so minutes, I went back to my parked bike, intending to use my hand-pump, which I kept in the villa, to finish inflating the tube to my desired PSI of 60. It was then that I noticed that the rear bike tire had again gone totally flat.

A day or so later, when I attempted to repair the punctured tube, I found the hole/leak in the tube to be far from small or inconsequential. Based upon the speed at which air escaped the tube during my attempted repair, I have to conclude that it should have gone entirely flat in a matter of a couple of minutes. Also, during the repair I discovered that both of the containers of glue/cement that I carried in my bike’s repair kit, were dried up and entirely useless. I could never have repaired the bike tube, even if I had been able to identify where the hole was.

In my mind, there can only be one explanation why my bike tire didn’t go flat again until I was safely home…….That is God was aware of my plight, and once again inserted His hand in my life, helping me out of my difficult predicament.

In the days since that experience, I have come to realize that the flat tire might well have been a huge blessing in disguise. Without the flat tire, I would have blissfully continued on my downhill ride all the way to Echo reservoir, about 4 times further than the distance I went. I thought I could do the ride easily because I had done it 15 years ago, but I’m afraid that I was ignorantly ignoring that 15 years of aging definitely impacts one’s physical abilities. If I had done the entire planned ride, I am not sure I could have completed it successfully. Thus, the Lord’s intervention was a blessing rather than just a trial.

I continue to be amazed that our Heavenly Father, who I know to be all knowing and all powerful, would love me enough to help me with something so inconsequential in His eternal scheme of things. It was another wonderful reminder that He lives, that He is watching us, and that He loves and cares for us enough to help us more than we can comprehend.