Talk about luck!!

I would have ran into this...

....and ended up like these guys

....or this guy,

and my bike would have looked like that.

Yesterday, I went for a ride on my road bike. I started at Pigeon Hollow and rode on the brand new road they just built to Spring City(with stimulous money, it's nice though). The weather was fairly decent and I could see a big old black cloud over above Mt. Nebo and Fountain Green northwest from me. I rode through Mt. Pleasant, I could see the storm moving towards me. After I got out of town going towards Fairview on the backroad, the wind started blowing really bad and I couldn't balance myself on the bike very good. I kept putting more weight on the left side of the bike to keep me on. As soon as I got to a hill on the left side, it got calmer because of the hill. It did sprinkle a little bit until the Skyline Golf Course. After passing that, everything was calm was barely sunny just in the spot I was in. Looking back behind me towards Mt. Pleasant, I could see everything was all black and stormy. When I have got to Fairview, I turned around and I could see the storm moving more southeast towards the mountains. So I rode and rode. I got to Mt. Pleasant, everything was drenched. As I rode on the wet road, I was thinking, "man, it stormed here and I was here just 30 minutes ago?" So I got so lucky that I missed the horrible, brutal storm and I would have been drenched and cold. It was wet all the way past Spring City and to Pigeon Hollow. After I got home with a change of clothes on then preparing dinner, I could see outside of the window that wind was blowing like 70 miles per hour and started raining again, like heck. Man, talk about pure luck. One of my lucky rides I call it.

History of a bicycle tire...

Here's something to blog about: History of a bicycle tire...

1846: The pneumatic (air filled) tire is invented, but creator Robert William Thomson uses thick tubes of latex after failing to find adequately thin rubber.

1888: John Boyd Dunlop begins selling the first pneumatic tire, hoping to soften the rough ride that earned early bicycles the nickname "boneshakers."

1891: Inspired by a tire change that involved letting glue dry overnight, Edouard Michelin, of Michelin & Company, dreams up a simpler model that takes just 15 minutes to remove and repair.

1926: Newly invented Mavic aluminum rims are banned from the Tour de France over concerns the metal would heat braking and pop tubes. Some racers sneak them in by using wood colored paint.

1930: Tullio Campagnolo patents the quick-release skewer to make tire- and gear- changing easier. Cyclists previously had change gears by unscrewing their rear wheel's wingnuts. He was driven to create the device after cold-fingered fumbling on a mountain pass.

1937: The German manufacturer StahlGruber begins producing tube patches under the name REMA Tip Top, after Willy Gruber deems them "tip-top" during testing. The technology changes, but the brand name sticks to this day.

1965: Chemical giant DuPont develops Kevlar. The fiber, spun from a crystalline liquid, is five times stronger than steel but lighter and more flexible; its eventual use in tire beads shaves almost a quarter-pound from a set of clinchers.

1989: Slime unveils its tire sealant and prefilled tubes-the polymer provides a nontoxic option for folks looking to prevent auto and bike flats.

1990: CO2 bike tube-inflation devices are intoduced. The Instaflate uses 12-gram unthreaded cartridges and deploys with a trigger.

1999: The first tubeless mountain bike systems are introduced by Mavic and Michelin. Basic tubeless systems appeared as early as the late 1800s, but generally bombed in terms of performance.

2000: Stans Tire Sealant enters the bike market to provide flat protection for tubeless and tubular tires-a godsend for riders in thorn-ridden areas.

2003: Michelin, Shimano, Hutchinson and Mavic collaborate to develop the first modern tubeless road tire and rim system.