Macgyver eats Granola bars

(this post has been sitting for a while. so this was about 3 weeks ago)
After my last ride down the mountain I couldn't wait for the next one. I'd sit in my office and dream about loose, rocky soil; thorny bushes scratching at my arms; the dust hanging in the air when I stopped to rest...
So all week I waited and planned and dreamed.
And finally on friday afternoon I jumped back on my bike and raced back up the mountain to sniff out some new trails.
This time I found a twisty little piece of trail that ran up and over a small hill next to the rocky road that I rode last week. Up and over the crest of the hill, through some tight and twisty turns and back down over sheer rock faces and gnarled roots to the jackhammer staircase from last week.
Now as everyone knows, there are really only two ways to ride really rough trails, either really slow or really fast. If you try to ride it in between you'll just get bounced around too much and end up off in the bushes (which here are all really thorny and nasty, unless you have the good fortune to take a tumble into a sage bush, then you come out smelling all sage-y... not that I would know). So if you get going fast enough you can just skip along the tops of the rocks, instead of running into each one. And besides, the faster you go, the more momentum you have and it's much harder to get knocked off course by baby-head-sized rocks, right? (Though to be fair, by the time you get going fast enough to skip over the tops of the rocks if you do get knocked off course you'll be in the bushes before you have time to do anything about it).
So here I was, racing down the mountain, skipping over the tops of the little babies' heads and dropping off of stone ledges, grinning like a fool. I stopped about half-way down to catch my breath, get some feeling back in my arms and enjoy the view of the Mediterranean sparking down below me. I sat for a moment enjoying the sun and the fresh air, already planning my ride for the next day.

Now, have you all seen those cartoons where the cat goes through the big slicing and dicing machine and then comes out the other end in one piece? And just when you think that he miraculously escaped the whirling and spinning blades he collapses into a little pile of cat-cubes?

That was exactly what happened to my tire. There I was, sitting and enjoying the view when suddenly pssssssssssst.... my rear tire goes completely flat. Like it was just sitting holding it's breath, waiting for me to decided to push off down the hill again. stupid tire.

Luckily I have a bit of the boy scout always-be-prepared thing so I was carrying spare tubes and a pump and tools and water and a rag and chain lube and an apple and a granola bar and... so I found a nice flat rock to sit down on and pulled my rear wheel off and went to work. I checked the tire for signs of thorns or glass or sharp pointy stones. Finding none, I pulled the tube out to try and find the source of the leak only to find that my tube had split along one of it's seams. Weird.
So I put it aside, pulled out one my spare tubes and pumped it up a bit. pssssst. My spare had a hole in it too. Also split along the seam. huh.
No worries. I pulled the second spare tube out (see? always prepared), put a bit of air in it and... silence. sweet silence. I tucked the tube into the tire, put the whole thing back together and finished pumping up the tire.
psssssssst.
not funny.
I pulled the tube out and saw that it too and had along its seam. So here I was, half way up a rocky and rutted trail, three punctured tubes and no more spares. right. Macgyver time. I pulled out my granola bar, ate half of it and then ripped a piece of the wrapper off and tucked it into the tire over the whole in the tube. Holding the tire to keep pressure on the hole I pumped the tire back up. and.... silence once again.
I know, I'm just as shocked as you. I felt like getting up a doing a little dance. Instead I jumped up, packed the useless tubes back in my bag and put the back wheel back in the bike. I flipped my bike over again and was about to jump on when I noticed that... my... front... tire... was... also... flat. (I know you're all thinking this is the lamest made-up story ever, but really it was flat. totally, completely flat)
Giving up on the whole Macgyver style, I just grabbed my pump and furiously pumped it back up again in the hopes that it was just a slow leak and it would hold until I made it down the mountain. Well, the front held for a while and the back slowly leaked away, so I stopped again near the bottom and filled them both a bit, carrying on I noticed the front getting flatter and flatter and although I stopped a couple of more times to pump it up, it just wouldn't hold. So I ended up walking down to the beach and catching a ride back with a friend of mine. So now all rides are off until I can get some new tubes. sigh...

and an interesting footnote: Although my front tire is still pathetically flat, my Macgyvered rear tire is now holding air just fine. Maybe I should forget the tubes and just get some more granola bars...