On tires

I got out my bike the othern day

I used it to sort of explore the neighborhood. I rode it down all the paths around our house through the parks and everything to figure out the lay of the land in our general vicinity. It was a sort of a scouting mission for future bike rides and walks. I'm pretty confident now that I won't get lost on a walk in the future. And I pretty much always know the fastest way to get home.

Anyway...about halfway through my bike ride I noticed that my front brake wasn't working. I hadn't hooked it up on arrival...I took the front tires off our bikes to make the move and save space in the truck. But I didn't worry too much about it. It was a pretty leisurely ride. I didn't have any reason to need a front brake.

So yesterday I was going to take another ride. This time I rode down to a park that is a couple miles from the house where there is a little trail that kind of winds around the park for mountain biukes. I thought it would be fun.

So I decided to hook up the front brake before I left, but I couldn't get it to work. The two parts just didn't seem to want to meet up across the top of the tire...which is weird because it was hooked up and working fine up until I loaded it into the truck. So after fighting it for a good 15 minutes down on my knees in front of the bike, nose to the tire, I had had enough and I just went. I figured I could deal with it later.

So I got down to the park and had a good time. I have decided however that when talking about bicycle tires, hybrid really means neither. I got these tires a couple years ago that were supposed to be a cross between raod and mountain tires. I have found over the last couple years that they really don't work that well as road tires...and I found yesterday that they really don't work very well as mountain bike tires...my rear wheel kept slipping (which wasn't good since I didn't have any front brakes.)

As I was on my way back I noticed that the front wheel was making a sound I had never heard before. Thgen I noticed that it still had those little rubber things that new tires have but that generally wear off pretty quickly...then I noticed that it was an actual mountain bike tirem not one of the hybrid tires...then I realized that the reason my brakes weren't working was that I had put AAdrienne's front tire on my bike and hers on mine.