I'm over 50 and just starting up again. I'd post this in the 50+ forum, but they'd just tell me to get a modern bike. Since my question relates to an old bike, not the old rider, I'll post it here. I'll also tell the background story.

To start off with, I went to a bike shop tonight and rode around on a Trek 7.5 fitness bike. It was very difficult to resist. I decided to go home drag the Raleigh Super Record out and see if I could live with that and save some money. I'd just put new tires on it last week and had not been able to take it out yet due to commitments and weather.

I rolled the Super Record out and noticed the rear tire was offset in the rim. I deflated it some and tried to reset it to no avail. it was still offset on the rim right where the valve is. (I took it out anyway and blew the tire off and had to walk it home, but I deserved that.)

Anyway HOW can I get the tire to seat properly? The rim seems in the round. At first, I was using a compressor to fill the tire, but reverted to a hand pump, thinking that maybe it was filling too fast to seat properly. Are tire's bigger than they were a decade ago? I was thinking that maybe the 27x1 1/4 tire was labled so but really a metric nearest size.

?