Originally Posted by
Kapusta
You don’t have to do any extra swapping out. You keep a spare tube on hand and use it when you get a flat, Then patch the flat one at the time and place of your convenience and it becomes the spare.
Right ... the whole idea that you swap a tube on the road and then patch the old one and put it back in ... why would you do that? I patch the old one and put it in by seat bag for the next time I get a flat. No extra tire changes necessary.
True it can take as much as five minutes to patch a tube, if the hole is really small .... I might have to immerse it in water---and that is Really hard, exceedingly time-consuming, back-breakingly laborious. To me though, t is really worthwhile because the sort of invisible punctures thus located often also reveal the location of that hidden bit of tire wire which will puncture the new tube, and every other tube I use, until I scrap and flex the tire enough to get the wire to poke out so I can grab it with tweezers.
I usually buy a eight or a dozen tubes, about every five years or seven years .... I keep two on each bike (which is a dozen right there) and a bunch more on the shelf, some patched, some new, all ready to be used as needed. I buy patches and glue in bulk online every few years .... and for some reason I get more flats than any two riders I know (bad flat-karma?) Most of you who seem to get maybe two flats in every 5000 kms .... you could get by on a seventh of what I use.