BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Nice job, man. Cycling diplomacy.

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/morning-file/random-acts-of-kindness-how-officer-kuzaks-dogs-comforted-our-mother-in-a-precious-moment-657018/

A flat bike tire brought out two-wheeler solidarity ...

On Saturday, Sept. 22, my wife Laurie and I loaded up our bikes for an urban bike ride around Downtown Pittsburgh. An hour into our all-day planned ride, I went off a curb and suffered my first flat tire.

As we walked our bikes toward the gas station with air pumps in front of Station Square, we were blown away by what happened.

A motorcycle rider saw us walking our bikes and stopped to ask: Did we have a flat tire? After we said "yes," he got off his motorcycle, took off his backpack, asked me to steady my bike. He took off my front tire and in his backpack he had a tire removal tool, tire repair kit and bicycle pump. Within 10 minutes he had my inner tube off the rim, found and repaired the small hole and pumped up my tire after putting it all back together.

I told him more than once how he saved our bike ride day. He then shared that everything he just used to repair my bike was available at REI, also conveniently right off the bike path in SouthSide Works.

Thirty minutes later we were at REI and bought everything to repair my own flat tire in the future. If you read this and know "Chase" -- who shared that he is a bicycle messenger and employee of Zipcar -- please tell him that you read this letter. His kindness and knowledge allowed us to continue our trip and included a tire repair class for me on how to fix flat tires in the future.

Thank you again! Only in Pittsburgh would something like this happen.

DAN O'CONNELL

Upper St. Clair