So... its a bright, sunny, happy, day and your bombing down a hill and you hear/feel a tire flat. Not a big deal. You pull off and notice that there are to many holes to patch and where is that extra tube. Oh yeah you left it at work.

So you walk in your bike shoes and cleats for three miles on a busy highway shoulder just to get to downtown and then another mile to get to work.

At least the weather was nice.

My cleats were dead before that happened and now they died. That was actually nice because I discovered something about the cleats and pedals I was using, but that is another thread.

I all ways make sure I have the patch kit and tube before all rides. Oh and the pump.

the only time i've ever had to do the walk of shame was when the rear derailleur on my bike snapped in half and crumpled the chain into a knot of twisted metal. the bike was completely unrideable and not field repairable, so i had to walk with my bike about 3/4 mile over to the nearest el station and took the train home (i was still 9 miles from home).

luckily for me, i use SPD pedals with a recessed cleat shoe, so the 3/4 mile walk over to the el station was a piece of cake.

it's nice to have a bike commute that parallels a train route.

Never happened to me, but...

1) I never forget my tubes
2) I wear normal shoes and use flat pedals

At times it happens to the best of us.

If it hasn't happened to you, yet, it will.
Things just sometimes go out of wack, and the dreaded call, or
walk of shame is alive again.

It's like the old saying of motorcycle riders, "two type of riders, those who have been down, and those who are going down."

Same thing with bicycles. It just sometimes happens.

I used to make sure that I always had a pump and a brand new tube or two with me at all times. But I haven't bothered in years now. I found that those items were just another entry in the list of those things that I had to keep track of, day after day after day. Then when I'd finally need them maybe I'd find that the pump didn't work worth a darn because it hadn't been used in so long.

Just a couple of weeks ago I had a flat on my way to work. I only had another half mile or so to go. I locked the bike to a street light and walked in. It was a nice change of pace. I called my wife and told her to pick me and the bike up at the end of the day and replaced the tube at home. Had she not been available I would've walked home and figured out some other way of rescuing the bike. No big deal.

I remember one other time in, say, the last five years when I had to walk home with a flat. I'm pretty sure that these are the only two times in maybe ten years. And that's with an awful lot of riding, too.

I have two daughters who can ride a bike for quite some time without needing any repair. My wife and one daughter on the other hand can't ride a bike more than a mile without destroying it.

I can't explain the difference other than the feeling that some of us understand our machinery and what forces it can endure better than others. I'm one of the lucky ones.

I had a flat about 1/4 mile from the office at 7:30 one morning. I just said "f it" and walked the bike over. Patched the tube at my desk.

My boss would have flipped.

I am going to ask the building where I work to install repair stands in the garage where are the bikes are stored. In Portland we have Tri-Met and they have storage areas for the bikes and in the storage areas are these metal bike supports that you can sit the bike on to work on them and they have a hand pump installed on them. It would be nice not to have to flip the bike over to work on it.

A few years ago, I got in the habit of just carrying a spare tube, patches and two CO2 cartridges with no pump. Then I got two flats in one day, my second cartridge failed and I had to walk 3.5 miles in my cleats, pushing my bike. I only had to learn that lesson once. Now I always carry a frame pump in addition to the other flat repair items, and that has saved me more than once from having another walk of shame.

You know, it's nice to have one thing that might be a bit better here than in PDX. I might not have anything resembling bike infrastructure, but bah gawd I can take my bike inside and patch a tube at my desk.

My bike parking spot is actually the empty cube/work bench next to mine.

I had a Van Ride of Shame in 2009 when I got into road bikes. I had a snakebite flat, which drove home the importance of checking tire pressure before leaving, and having the necessary tools on hand at all times. Haven't had a "...of shame" since.

Is the walk of shame better than the call of shame?

*Insert generic comment about the superiority of platform pedals here*

Tough luck bro! I've gotten into the bad habit of leaving my pump at home on commutes less than 5 miles. Let's see how long theses marathon plus tires can go without a flat!

I've never done the walk of shame.

I've made the call of shame quite a few times though.

I just walked it to work the first time, and found out my minipump needed a part to work. The GF gave me a ride home that night. The second time was last November when it was raining and in the high 30's when I ran over some glass. I called the GF for a ride then, her daughter has a pickup and the bike went in the back.

Luckily I'm a barefooter, so if that ever happened to me I would just pull my cleats off and BF it to where I needed to go.

I did on my first day of commuting, Aug. of last year. I had the spare tube, I had the patch kit, I had the pump. I had it all covered, right?

Wrong, I didn't have a wrench for the 15mm nuts on the rear hub of my then-new DaHon Curve 8. I was so used to QR hubs from 30 years of road bike riding, it didn't even occur to me that anyone would use nuts! How primative.

Now, thanks to suggestions from commuters here on the forum, I carry a Portland Tool that has a 15mm socket on one end and a handy (if kinda thick) tire lever on the other. Six flats since, no problems, no walking!

On the actual "Walk of Shame" day I walked for a mile and a half before my wife could get to me and pick us (me and my bike) up.

Rick / OCRR

Not commuting, but I rode to the start of a charity ride a year and a half ago and had a mishap with another rider. He was flying through the crowded parking lot; I veered a bit left in reaction to another bike on my right, and the guy who was flying crashed into me. I thought everything was okay and went to line up for the start of the ride, but then the chain caught and pulled the derailleur around to a ghastly angle.



I had an offer of a ride home, but decided to walk it; I was too P.O.ed and needed some quiet time. The high school where the ride started is about 4 miles from my house, so I just walked it.

I gave up on the derailleur and made a diamond frame cruiser out of it.

The jockey wheel on my rear derailleur self destructed one morning on the way to work. About 150 yards short of the office. I don't carry a chain tool (another topic somewhere recently!) but I was close.

The tube/tool bag that's always on my bike has bus fare in it. I've never used it, but probably will some day. I wonder if I've updated since the last fare increase.

All the buses in greater Vancouver are equipped with bike racks, so any time I've had mechanicals that I couldn't fix in the field(like a blowout that destroyed a weakened rim braking wall), I just wait for the next bus, pop the bike on the foldout bike rack at the front of the bus, and ride it home. I usually keep a book of transit tickets with my work ID/prox card. The transit tickets also come in handy when I come home from airline trips and land at YVR (Vancouver Intl Airport). There is a light rail that runs right from the airport to within 2 or 3 km of my house. But if you buy your ticket at the airport, $5 is tacked on to the price of the ticket, just because it's at the airport. But if you have the book of transit passes, you just use one ticket to get yourself on, no surcharges!

Luis

Why is it shameful? Personally, I have no desire to fix my own flats. Yes, I carry a tube, a patch kit, and a pump. But I'd just as soon turn the work over to someone else. That's why I make sure I have bus money.

My method is crude. Uphill going away, downhill coming home.And the RTD buses have bike racks.

I just hold my head high and grin. When people laff at me I laff too.

Snapped a chain while pulling away from a stop sign, a long walk home was the result. A new multi tool with a built in chain breaker was on the next day's purchase list.

I have made the "call of shame" and taken the "bus of shame," but I don't use those terms. Stuff happens, and those were my backup plans.