Another flat tire

[pegkerr]

It was so beautiful this morning that even though I was running a little late, I decided to bike all the way in, rather than hop on the light rail. Alas, I ended up being even later.

I was really enjoyign the ride until a shard of glass flattened my brand new rear tire. Instead of sucking it up and trying to figure out how to pull it off and fix it, working around the panniers and derailler, I weaseled out and called Rob to pick me up. He's going to drop the bike off to get the tire fixed at the Hub.

I've been shown how to change a flat several times, but have never attempted to do the rear tire myself. I am calling myself all sorts of hard names as a result. Rob is not always going to be there to rescue me. I really need to suck it up and learn to do it myself.

Comments

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

That's almost certainly caused by pinching the tube with the tire levers, or having a bad rim strip. When you've got a tight tire, you've got to be really careful not to use too big a tube, and not to pinch the tube before inflation.

[katakanadian.livejournal.com]

The tire was so tight that I was unable to get it off without using a screwdriver which I know is risky but out of >100 flats in over 30 years (mostly changed using a screwdriver) I have only had 1-2 problems in the past. This time I did put a hole once (out of ~10 changes) in a tube. 1-2 of the first flats may have been due to bad rim tape so I replaced that. I had a bike shop person (over the phone) list off multiple things that I should be doing/should have done and I said 'yes' to all of them (except avoiding screwdrivers). Most of the flats seemed to be unrelated to each other (holes in different places, different patches used, failure to complete inflation sometimes, 2 days riding sometimes, tube appeared to be too small, etc, etc). I finally gave up and bought another new tire and have not had excessive problems since.