The flat gods sure work in mysterious ways. The last six flats I've had have all been garage flats. Two were big punctures that must have happened in my gravel driveway, one was a very slow leak in one of my patches, and here's today's:



I guess fixing a flat in the kitchen is easier than in the cold rain by the highway.

Nice Wire....

How jammy can you get?

I thought I was living right by having my last two flats as indoor experiences. One was a valve stem failure and the other was a tube simply dieing of old age; it literally fell open in my hands as I removed it. The funny thing was that I laughed at the directions on the new tire I had recently put on that said one should always replace the tube when replacing the tire.

gives a whole new meaning to ride (fly) by wire

You've got tire worms!

Good thing about those wire thru the tire punctures is - patching can be done without removing the tire or the wheel.


You say a patch was leaking on a previous flat, was it a new-fangled self stick press-on patch?

Yes, that's exactly what I did. I love when that happens, especially on rear tires.

No, surprisingly it was the old-fashioned type -- the type I've been using for 30 years. The leak was so slow that I only found it by submerging the entire tire. My wife hadn't ridden for three weeks, so it had time to flatten the tire. I will be more rigorous in applying the goo from now on.

Nice work. You can patch yourself on the back
(of the tire).

I'd much rather fix a flat while dripping with sweat, on the edge of the road and being swarmed by mosquitos. The very idea of fixing one while sitting on a chair, in the shade with a floor pump to re inflate gives me the hee bee jee bees.

You should be OK after your post. The flat gods every now and again pick some poor unsuspecting rider and punish him or her until the cry for mercy is shared with other riders. This is just their way of letting us mortals know who is in charge. We see one of our fellow riders go through this and say "thank, God it wasn't me." So, thanks for being the most recent target of their wrath and for taking the bullet for the rest of us.

I think the Flat gods get us all now and again. It seems they come in cycles. To brake the last cycle I replaced my Gator Skins and finally I got shuck of the Flat gods.
There is a section of road on one of my routs that seems to have a disproportionate amount of those wire shards from radial tires and whenever I take that route I seem to get flats.

Clearly the lesson learned here is to never keep a bike in your garage.

OK...I'll bite...how do you do that?

The location is known. You just remove one bead of the tire,pull out that section of tube and patch on the bike.

I actually always try to locate the puncture before removing the wheel (feel for object, pump up and listen for air), and succeed about 20% of the time.

I thought you just stuck one of scab patches right on the tire, aired it up and good to go.........

Even though it is more comfy to repair them at home, it is just as irritating to discover a flat just as you are all geared up to go. The ones I dont mind are the ones where I picked up a thorn, nail, screw or whatever 25 yrds from my door.

Since you're trying to find a reference point anyway, if you always stuck the tire label at the same spot on the rim (like the valve hole, say) then you would have a better idea of where to find the offending object once you've removed the tube. In either case you'd still have to put some air into the tube to find the hole(s) to patch.

Al,
Now you know what happened to the garage door opener antenna .