Despite what I said in my previous post, this morning’s commute was eventful. I thumb-checked my tires before heading out, and thought the front was a bit soft, but, “nah, it’ll be fine!”. Halfway to work, I rode onto a bridge over a metal expansion joint, and heard, and felt, a thunk. “Yup, that’s a pinch flat” I thought. Sure enough, by the time I was halfway across the bridge, the tire was almost flat. I’m prepared for this. I pulled over, got the wheel off, got the tire off, replaced the tube with a brand new one, put the tire back on, screwed on the mini pump, pumped up the tire part way, heard some hissing at the nozzle, unscrewed the pump to see what the problem was, except (and some of you already know where this is going) I unscrewed the core out of the tube stem. Who the %#$% thought removable cores were a good idea? What possible use case do they have? I know Darth will have a response, but it’s not valid here. Mountain bikers don’t pump their tires up to 90PSI. I don’t like compression-fit mini pumps for high-pressure tires. Yes, it’s my own fault for buying the blasted things, but to be fair, the fact that the core was removable was not printed on the box. Worse, the core was now jammed inside the pump nozzle and I couldn't get it out, so even if I patched the old tube, I wouldn’t be able to pump it up.

I called my wife and had her meet me at the closest access point to the trail I was on. It was a 10-minute drive for her, and a 15 minute walk for me, mostly uphill. My cycling shoes are supposedly walkable, but they rubbed my heels raw anyway. My wife brought me home, where I grabbed another bike and rode that in, uneventfully.

It’s a bit weird going from a fixed gear to a geared bike back to back like that. Firstly, because the handlebars on my geared bike are way wider than on the fixed gear. Secondly, because I can coast! What a novelty! The ability to shift gears is tertiary. I tend to ride my geared bike like a single-speed anyway and rarely shift.

And to the person who invented removable cores...