Up a road without a tire

Two days ago my uncle and I rented bikes to ride down along the Rheine river and lunch at a restaurant in Nierstein, some 20km away. The bicycles looked like they were at least a decade old, and the odometer on mine read 1637km. Regardless of that, and the drizzling rain that was perversely falling all of that day despite a forecast for sunny weather, we set of accross the city towards the river. The Rheine is very beautiful, but as 10% of its water passes through the largest chemical treatment plant in Germany, it's not a place you'd actually want to swim in. We rode down through alternatively scenes of natural beauty (swans and trees and wildflowers) and old industry (cement factories, railroad tracks and truck depots) Early on, the pavement ended, and the road became a gravel path, muddy from the intermittent rain. In some places the path was blocked off, so we'd cut through fields until the road was open again.
It was probably during one of these off-road trecks, that Igor punctured the front tire on his bike. When the tire gave out, we were on a dirt road surrounded by fields of grapes on picturesque hills-- 16km out of Mainz, basically in the middle of nowhere.
We ended up having to walk back to a small town called Nackenheim and wait half an hour for a train back to Mainz, where my uncle got a replacement bike. And then, not to be put off by a minor detour, we set back out again for Nierstein. Total distance travelled- 53km. Still, tasting local cuisine at a family restaurant in a town surrounded by nothing but grape fields made it worth all the trouble.