A carnival of technology

Wow, it’s been three weeks since I last made a bicycle post. Let’s do one of those.

(I would first like to apologize for the title. Using song lyrics or any phrase that happens to pop into my head from three degrees away from the topic is a bad habit of mine, I know it’s confusing, and I apologize. I’m trying to evoke a sense of the sound of gunfire.)

I’ve had some people suggest to me that I get tubeless tires. My boss has long been extolling their virtues, though not very successfully (the sole argument is usually that tubeless tires don’t need tubes), and more recently someone at work, who, though car inspections pay his bills, has a good deal of experience with bicycles, suggested them to me with some more attractive points. Traditional bicycle tires are, granted, kind of weird; they take a hollow circle of rubber, the sort of opened toroid with which any tire might begin, and then stuff some more rubber inside of it, a huge butyl doughnut, all hole and not at all delicious, making the tire itself not a container for pressurized air but rather a kind of shield, separating the more delicate pneumatic cushion from the world’s harsh terrains. You don’t see that sort of thing much in other types of tires. Is this an obsolete holdover from days past?

I guess tubes have the greater history of the two tire types, but they do have some advantages. Tubeless tires have less rolling resistance, are usually more resistant to puncture and can operate at lower pressures, but, for one, they’re more expensive. The main concern for me, though, is that you can’t easily fix a flat tubeless tire. If I get a flat on the road, I can just pull out the old tube, slap in a new one and, after five or six hours of inflating everything with that goofy little hand pump, I’m back on the road. I’m not even sure how one would fix a busted tubeless tire in an emergency. I assume it would involve some kind of patches. All I know is that I don’t want to mess with that junk while sitting on a curb. Once the tire is damaged, that’s pretty much it. These hard-soled shoes weren’t made for walkin’, but they’ll have to do.

My ignorance about bicycles is astounding. Despite bicycles being one of the seven simple machines, acts of maintenance are strange and difficult processes involving specialized tools and, in the case of fancy road bikes, tight tolerances. A year ago I didn’t even know how to change a tire. In an effort to reduce my dependence on bike shop service, I’ve been trying to acquire as much knowledge as I can—through books, the Internet and that one class I took at REI—but knowledge is not experience. Changing tubes is one of those actions that has a simple process but a lot of opportunity to screw up. One of the things I remember from that REI class was the three ways to blow out a tire. Each one means that you messed up, but two of them mean that you messed up real bad. Let’s review:

1) The first is the thing that’s not like the others; the damage to the tire is done beforehand, and there’s no earth-shattering kaboom, but the final product is the same: a rapid loss of pressure and a damaged tire. If there’s a hole in the tire where part of the tube can peek out, it’s eventually going to get punctured or just give up on its own, and you end up with a sound like letting the air out of a balloon and a sudden difficulty in pedaling. These aren’t actually too bad—you can usually patch the hole with a dollar bill—but it’s something to watch for.

2) This is the funny one. Pumping tires is hard, so some people get the idea to use the free air at QT. Bicycle tires have higher pressure than car tires, but much lower volume, so that couple of minutes you spend filling a flat on your Toyota becomes a few seconds and POW! At least there’s a pay phone nearby. Don’t fill your bike tires at a gas station.

3) This is the annoying one. When replacing a tube, it’s easy to stuff it into the tire such that, rather than being the perfect, pliant doughnut of its design, it becomes pinched against something: the rim, the tire or maybe a scrunched up piece of itself. It’s hard to catch these, and the tube won’t necessarily fail right away. Maybe it’ll take five minutes, maybe it’ll take a week, but eventually the pressure in all the wrong places will take its toll and BANG! there’s a new hole in the tire.

I have committed sin #3 exactly twice.

I’ve already written about my first time. That was my first attempt at changing a tube, and inexperience was my downfall. Since then I have learned a new careful technique, and I have had no trouble except with the usual hazards of the road. An extra minute or two of examination as everything falls into place back on the rims can save a lot of trouble later on, and I’ve learned the movements well enough that I can quickly replace a tube without fear of blowouts. Except today.

Earlier in the week I picked up a tiny puncture of the weaselly sort that doesn’t release a steady stream but can drain fifty pounds of pressure over the course of a day or so. After refilling the tire a few times and denying that I had a problem, I finally got out a bucket last night and found those tiny, intermittent bubbles. I think it was glass again, or maybe some grit came in through the old glass hole. Whatevs, I patched it up and put the tube back in. I got cocky. I gave the TV more attention than the tire, and this afternoon I was greeted with that sound I won’t soon forget. While my first blowout just put a hole in the sidewall that probably could have been fitted with some kind of patch, this time the sidewall actually tore away from the bead, leaving a strip of bare steel and a flap of rubber that refused to stay inside the rim. Crap. How am I going to get home? Walking sucks, but I can’t use this thing. Can I? Could I have been better prepared for my own mistakes? I’m not about to carry a spare tire with me everywhere. This blows.

I probably could have gotten another couple of miles out of the tire by switching it to the front. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a flat front tire, probably because it doesn’t carry much weight, but I think my brain subconsciously vetoed this idea. It would have been a lot of pumping. Instead I tried riding on the bad tire where it was, using much less pressure than I should to keep the bulge from looking too bad and sticking to coasting on the sidewalks instead of riding in the road. I didn’t make it very far. I made it home on foot and on bus after the tube deflated again, and I have at home everything I need to replace the tire, but I don’t feel great about having to learn a lesson twice.