GOOD TIMES



'This is the worst, the very worst of times!'
He thought as air hissed from his right front tire,
'I wish that I had made the switch to Slimes®.
I must have hit that stupid piece of wire.'

He had; he saw the tell-tale evil glint.
He cursed and groaned while pulling off the trail.
'This BLEEP-ing puncture stopped a killer sprint.
Flat tires' he thought, 'are sent to Earth from Hell!'

This flat was only number FIVE today,
With one from glass, and one pinched tube, and two
From ramshead thorns that leapt out in his way.
He'd yelped and moaned, but did what he must do.

He'd changed the tube or patched each tiny hole.
But now he had his biggest problem yet:
A tire needs air to keep its shape and roll,
But air out here would be quite hard to get.

He'd lost his pump just after his third flat;
The fourth he'd fixed with CO2 instead.
But that was gone now; so he simply sat
A moment as he tried to use his head.

He saw some scattered litter – styrofoam,
Those little peanut looking bits of fluff.
He thought, 'That just might get me home.
I'll stuff them in my tire; that's good enough."

He jammed and crammed the pellets in his tire,
Then wrestled as he popped it on his rim.
It wasn't quite as nice as you'd desire,
But hey, his plight was looking much less dim.

The fix was sloppy... but it worked okay.
He had to take it easy through the turns.
The ride was rough; he felt his tadpole sway.
Then all too soon he had some new concerns.

He'd made it back within a mile of home,
Before he heard a horrid awful POW!;
His left front tire had blown out like a bomb.
"Good grief!" he screamed, "What else can go wrong now?"

He saw the sidewall had a gaping rip.
He taped the wheel to try to save his rim,
Then hopped back on to end this horrid trip.
He rode on feeling very glum and grim.

He thought about the damage on the way:
Let's see: two tubes, at least one tire, a pump.
And how much money would he have to pay?
He flinched; his rim had touched down on a bump.

At last he limped back in and reached his van.
His spirits sagging low, he packed his stuff.
But still he wasn't quite a beaten man.
'Today,' he thought, 'I've simply had enough.'

Adversity is part of ev'ry sport;
Some thrill is in the challenge, so to speak.
It's rarely fatal when you come up short;
The next time that you climb, you make the peak.

Today had been his worst day ever on a ride,
But still he wasn't wretched, not by half.
In fact he'd had some fun – the flats aside.
He smiled, then grinned and broke out with a laugh.

So what's the point – the moral, if you will?
In cycling, as in life, some days are bad,
But BAD days on a trike are better still
Than any day at work you've ever had!

POW Index

Last updated Mar 12 2005