Today was one of those days, but I still managed to ride to work. I've been out of town for three days, so that threw me off my regular schedule. Last night I went to install my Cygolite rechargeable light on my bike as the mornings have been getting pretty dark. That's when I noticed my rear tire was flat. That was odd because it wasn't flat a few hours earlier and I hadn't ridden the bike in 4 days.

I removed the tire and found a large hole right at one of the eyelets, and the tube had a dimple at that spot and all of the eyelets. My suspicion was that I caused the problem last week when trying to get the creaking noises out of my wheels, which are old Open Pros and prone to squeaking. While replacing the tape, I found a lot of oxidation around the eyelets inside the rim, so I cleaned it off and then put a drop of 3-in-1 oil on each eyelet, wiping off all the excess oil. Apparently enough oil was left that it seeped through the cloth rim tape and caused the rubber to fail in the tube. I wasn't aware that oil would do that. My suspicions were confirmed when I found the front tire flat this morning before going to work. I found the same sort of bulges in the tube at each eyelet, and the leak was from a large hole at one of the eyelets.

Long story short, I was running late today but was more fortunate than usual with the redlights, so got to work only about 5 minutes later than usual. There was a lot more traffic. It's surprising what a difference 5-10 minutes can make with the traffic congestion early in the morning. The kids have also returned to school, so the buses were out in force. I had to stop for one of them that was loading kids, and another one passed me before a traffic light and then moved to the right of the lane to prevent me from going around him.