Weekend Blowout

No, neither a party nor a clearance sale, but the kind that goes thup-thup-thup-pow! and leaves you stranded on the other side of town. I took the Peugeot on a little jaunt over to the Spruce Street suspension bridge, hoping to snap some pictures. I took the Upas Street trail, and had a nice ride/hike over there, but not long after I arrived on the west side of Balboa Park, this happened:

I guess the culprit was probably over-inflation, aggravated by the air in the tube warming and expanding as I rode. This is incentive to buy either a non-crappy bike pump with a decent pressure gauge or one of those handy pen-sized pressure checkers. Fortunately, I wasn't going very fast, so it only took me about ten feet to stop, and the tire and rim were undamaged. It was mostly just a pain in the ass, as I had to hoof it back home to North Park with an injured bike and didn't get to take the pictures I wanted.

I did snap a few before the blowout, including a neat one of a dead on/off-ramp on Richmond Street over the 163. I wanted to jump the barricade and get some better pics, but there was a cop right there, so next time. Get used to scenes like this, what with gas prices rising, infrastructure crumbling, and the end of the world fast approaching. Seriously.