The other day Brombeere and I came out to go on a bike ride when, lo and behold, she had a flat tire! It was totally flat, the rim was resting on the ground flat. It had been a week since we'd last been out, there was no way to remember if we'd hit any road hazards but we must have because there was the flat. So we pumped it up and did the rest of all the stuff we do to get ready to go for a ride. Ten minutes later, when we were actually ready to start, it was still up so we took off. The ride we went on that day was short, only about five miles, and we kept an eye on that tire; it did okay and still looked fine when we got back so we thought maybe all it had needed was air. That has happened before. But the next day, when I went for a ride by myself, I checked the tire and it was again flat as could be.
It had been a long time since I had patched a tire. I did have a patch kit, one I had bought a long time ago when the kids were littler and rode bikes. You could tell by the price tag: $1.29. Now days a similar kit would be over $5.00. So I got my stuff out and set about fixing this flat.
One thing I like about Brombeere's bike is that flats on the back tires can be worked on without taking the whole tire off the bike, they're open on one side. And that's where this flat was.
And it already had all the air out so all I had to do was pull the tube out.
I pried the tire out of the rim ....
... and began pulling the tube out. Pretty soon I had the whole tube out and was ready to patch it.
All I had to do then was find the leak.
That was the fun part; get the bucket of water out, fill the tube, and put it in the water. Pretty soon the little bubbles were rising to the surface and I had the leak.
So I marked where the leak was, dried the tube off, and slapped the patch on. Then I was ready to put it all back together.
I got it all back together and began pumping it up but then I ran into trouble. When I got it to about 40 pounds suddenly a loud bang rang out, it even got Brombeere to peek out into the garage to make sure everything was okay.
It sounded like a shot but it was just a blow-out. Bummer, I didn't have a tube that size. I was going to have to get one from the store. Judging from where it blew out, I most likely pinched it when I was putting the tube back in. I'd had trouble getting the tube in correctly there by the stem.
Anyway, there are two kind of tube stems, one smaller than the other. I hadn't realized that the hole through the rim was matched to the kind of stem so I had bought the wrong kind the first time and had to go back for the right kind. But, once I had the right tube stem, it went in much better. I was more careful tucking the tube into the tire and getting the tire in position on the rim. This time it blew up to full pressure quite nicely. I'll check it again before we go for our next ride, I usually do anyway. But I don't anticipate any problem. I think we're back in business! And the whole operation all happened while the weather was bad so we didn't miss any biking days. That's a happy thing!
