I left to bike to work one day last week, only to find out that my back tire had gone flat overnight. I quickly swapped tubes, and the tire proceeded to immediately go flat again. So I gave up and grabbed a different bike to ride to work.

Unsure of what was wrong, I seriously looked into things again during the evening. It turned out that the relatively new wheel was not very good. When the spoke holes in the rims were drilled out, huge burrs were left. Eventually, the burrs punctured the rim tape, and then punctured the tube. So I used a grinding bit on a Dremel tool to remove all of the burrs and slightly radius the spoke holes. I should have been good to go.........

I replaced the rim tape, threw on a patched tube, pumped it up, and everything was good with the rear wheel. While I had the bike on the rack, I decided to clean and lube the bike chain. While I was cleaning the bike chain, head positioned very close to the rear wheel, it went BAM!!!!!! The tube blew in a big way, simultaneously deafening and scaring the crap out of me. Turns out that the old patched tube blew at the valve stem.

So I tore everything back apart, AGAIN, put in brand new tube, and everything looks okay now. The bike has hung on the garage wall for a week now, and it's holding air. But I can't get myself to ride this bike to work. I feel like it's cursed and hates me.