I had a hellacious time on my ride to work today! Until I ran over what turned out to be the blade from a DitchWitch — a metal bar about 8 inches long, and sharpened like a lawn mower blade at each end. It tore a hole in my tire, took a small chip out of my wheel, and made a lovely slice through the tube.

Naturally, I was prepared for this eventuality. I had an extra tube, a pump, and patches, if it came to that. And given that the tire was torn up, I even knew what to do about that — simply make a “boot” out of a dollar bill. A boot holds the tube inside the tire, even if the tire has a big hole in it. So, no problem. After about fifteen minutes of taking the wheel off, taking the tire off, putting in the new tube, and pumping, I’m back on the road.

For about five minutes. As I go around a corner, I hear a bang and instantly my tire is flat again. The pressure of the tire blew through my boot, the tube blew out, and there I was. I’d already used my spare tube. I now have a hole in the tube, so obviously that needs to be patched, and the patch will also serve to back up the boot — and I’ll make the boot stronger, by folding the dollar bill twice, making four layers of dollar bill instead of only two. No problem, easy-peasy.

Then I start pumping. Pump pump pump. Hmmm, tire’s not getting full. Pump pump pump. Still no air going in. I guess I’m walking the rest of the way to work, or at least to the light rail station. That’ll be a twenty minute walk, with the bike rolling on one very flat wheel. Better start walking.

But I know I have to try one more time. I pull off the tire and take a look at the patch I applied. Problem 1: I did a sucky job installing that patch. Fix 1: reglue it. Pump pump pump. No air. Ha! Can’t get out of that so easily, can we? Fix 1a. Tear off the first patch and put on another one. Carefully glued. The patch sticks down very nicely — beautiful. Pump pump pump. No air. We’ve now arrived at Problem 2: What’s going on here?

I’m confident my patch is working – there must be another hole. I pump one handed, and use my other hand to feel for leaking air. Aha — about four inches away there’s a “snakebite” puncture, where the rim slammed down on the now-empty tube just after the blowout. End of story, basically. This time, I didn’t inflate it as high, and I rode very slowly to the nearest light rail stop, about a mile away. I rode the tram one stop, got off, rode the rest of the way to work (about 1/2 mile).

It took me over forty minutes of fixing after the initial blowout, and ten minutes waiting for the tram. It will end up costing me a Continental Grand Prix 3000 tire ($40), two tubes ($3 each).

Basically, not the best bike ride to work today.

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