I needed to dispense with some stress after a long 4 days at work so I took off at the end of the day and headed for the only mountain nearby, which is about 18 miles away. I was cranking along happily until about mile 16 when I hit a sharp bump and the back end started to feel, uh, soft. So I pulled over in front of a house that happened to have two overturned recycling bins in the front yard and changed my first flat on the bike with the use of the makeshift work benches. I extracted a tiny metal shard from the tire which was the cause of the delay. Not a big deal - I had a tube, pump and backup CO² (not needed) so twenty minutes later I was back on the road and headed for the climb. In the end it was a minor incident and the only bummer was that it made me later than I wanted to be getting home and didn't allow for as much in the way of stress relief.