| sharps & flats
Wouldn't ya know it? I'm out & about yesterday,
and on the return leg I got a rear wheel flat,
5 blocks from home. Too close to home for field
repairs. So I hoofed it for the remaining distance,
suffering the ignonamy of walking my crippled bike.
Anyway, when installing a tube, I always line the
valve stem up with the "inflate to" markings on
the tires.
This morning I dismantled tire & tube, pumped up
the loose tube, and noted where the air was hissing
in relation to where the valve is. I then inspected
the corresponding location in the tire in relation to
where the "inflate to" markings are, and immediately
homed-in on the offending li'l bastard -- a tiny, pointy
glass shard. I gingerly flicked it out of its nest with
the tip of my toad-sticker pocketknife blade, and
reassembled the works with a fresh tube.
The whole process only took about five minutes.
Subsequent handwashing is still ongoing, though.
I guess a lot of that gunk is brake pad rubber.
Maybe a fringe benefit of Kool Stop salmons is
cleaner wheels when dealing with flats. I'm
going to have to resort to a palmful of laundry
detergent powder to get my hands comfortably clean.
Or, as Claire once jokingly suggested: bake some bread.
Fortunately for me it wasn't a slow leak -- sometimes
it takes quite a while to find the causes of those.
Now I get to ride down to Mountain Equipment Co-op
and buy a new spare tube. I'll patch the old one
later; it'll doofer a spare spare tube.
Knowing where the valve stem is in the tire
really does help to find the causes of flats.
Having a point of reference beats having do
do random searches.
And having "icky" hands just drives me up the wall.
And having to walk one's bike tastes bitterly
of defeat.
cheers,
Tom
--
Nothing is safe from me.
Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats curlicue vcn dot bc dot ca
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