LITTLE ROCK — My favorite adventure on Bike to Work Day in central Arkansas involved a flat tire and employees of the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture’s Cooperative Extension Service Bike to Work team.
Wearing matching red and white custom jerseys, these middle-aged cyclists stood in a circle at 6:45 a.m. May 18 beside River Road and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge in North Little Rock. Birds chirped and trilled above; rosy-fingered dawn splayed pretty fingers across the dirt.
Before them lay a bicycle, on its side. The poor thing had run over a broken beer bottle. Its tube was done for.
As befits Extension Service employees, Bobby Johnson, Rick Johnson and Joe Ginn came prepared to deal with flat tires.
They took that wheel off the bike in no time and used tire levers to free its bad tube. Although they could have patched the tube then and there, they decided instead to save time by installing a backup tube.
But this tube was the sort with a fat Schrader valve, resembling the valves of automobile tires. Their bike pumps were designed to work with Presta valves, which are skinnier and have a twist-top assembly that bobs down to let air in (and out) when you press it.
Drawn by their laughter, I stopped to help. Proudly I offered them my spiffy frame pump, confident that it was up to any inflationary duty.
Unfortunately, I was not. Although I remembered quite clearly that my pump is a type that can be reconfigured (somehow) to accept either Presta or Schrader valves, none of us could make it reconfigure itself.
Four adults standing around one flat tire, all scratching our heads.
To appreciate this anecdote, you also need to know that the group of 25 or so Extension Service workers had planned their convoy down to the most remote of potential glitches. They even had a tag car meeting them here and there along their route. Driven by Mike Carter of the University of Arkansas System headquarters, this car was never more than 5 minutes away, and it was stocked: extra water, air compressor, first-aid kit, automated external defibrillator (AED) ....
LaVona Traywick, associate professor of gerontology and one of the convoy leaders, pedaled up with co-worker Pam Ferrill. “You want to call for the compressor?” Traywick asked.
No, we wanted to take my pump completely apart first, which I proceeded to do, accompanied by some wrongheaded praise and encouragement.
Then someone produced a valve adapter, a little bronze bit that supposedly fits over or into troublesome valves so tubes can be inflated by any old pump. But we couldn’t work that thing either.
Finally Matthew Morton, a public safety officer with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock who was riding with the convoy (as yet another just-in-case provision), cut to the chase with a carbon dioxide (CO2) cartridge and a trigger attachment that did fit the tube.
He applied it decisively, and that tube inflated with such ferocious alacrity that everybody jumped. Somebody, I won’t say who, squeaked.
Flat fixed. And it only took more than 12 minutes.
Meanwhile, the whole convoy was running behind schedule. Ours was the second flat, and someone else had some kind of problem with a saddle. But for this group, Bike to Work Day was more an adventure than a rush to clock in.
GEARED UP
Training for the big day began nine weeks before.
Every Friday, 20 to 30 Extension Service employees practiced pedaling around their headquarters and the adjacent campus of UALR using bicycles on loan from Fike’s Bikes and the C.A. Vines Arkansas 4-H Center.
The Friday rides included advice on traffic safety and bike handling. They were led by a committee: Traywick and Bobby Johnson, Aly Signorelli, Martha Ray Sartor, Jon Flaxman and J.J. Pitman.
On May 18, the convoy contingent met at 6 a.m. on the grounds of the University of Arkansas System president’s home in Cammack Village - about 3 1/4 miles from Extension Service headquarters. Although a few immediately pedaled south toward work (2301 S. University Ave.), 18 of them and guest Susan Bobbitt, wife of system President Don Bobbitt, took a more circuitous, 18-mile route to work - via downtown North Little Rock and Little Rock.
They swept down Overlook hill to the Big Dam Bridge and crossed to North Little Rock. They stopped for snacks at Fike’s Bikes before re-crossing the river to Little Rock using the Clinton Presidential Park Bridge.
“We made it to the Capital Hotel for their breakfast, and they had a lovely spread out there of juice and fruit and different pastries and granola,” Traywick says. “We sat and had a snack and rested.
“From there we continued on to the Capitol and made a group picture on the steps of the state Capitol.
“And from there we rode our bikes on to the Cooperative Extension Service - where we also had snacks.”
They’d planned to reach work by 8:45 a.m., but “we rolled in here about 9:30. So we were about an hour behind schedule.”
But they didn’t use any of the emergency supplies in Carter’s car, and everyone reached work in good health.
STILL GOING
These riders included some who were not athletic before the Friday rides, such as Ferrill, 57, manager of the Extension Print Shop.
Bike to Work Day was her longest ride: “ever,” she says.
“My confidence is really growing on the bicycle,” she says, “and I love it.”
ActiveStyle, Pages 28 on 05/28/2012