Screwed!

Last month I wrote about my amazing luck involving a nail in my tire. Yesterday morning, I had a similar, yet different experience on my ride in to work.

Now, I'd been meaning to get a spare tube for my new little Dahon, but I hadn't actually gotten to the point of purchasing a 16" tube. Now I wasn't totally tempting fate, I was carrying a patch kit. But sometimes that's not enough.

So, in the small hours of Thursday morning I'm headed to work and Blammo!, I run over something. A drywall screw to be precise. My rear tire is instantly flatter than an Edward A. Abbot novel. I coast to a stop and survey the damage.

Rather than fix the flat there on the roadside, I roll the bike over to the nearest bus stop, fold up the bike and hop the next bus into Seattle. I figured I'd patch the tube at the office.



Now here is how the world works. If one time, you get away with running over a nail and your tire does not go flat, sometime, within the next month, things will balance out. That stupid little screw punched a couple of holes in my tube, shredded the rim-strip. In my brief little roll to a stop at least a dozen little micro-pinch-flats formed in the tube. I used 11 patches and still had air leaking out of some tiny holes. And we were out of patches at the Bikestation and we didn't have any 16 inch tubes in stock.

Luckily my buddy Brad stopped by and he said he was heading by a bike shop anyway and he'd be happy to pick me up a tube or two and some patches. I gave Brad the cash for 3 tubes and a patch kit. It pays to be prepared. And even when you're not prepared, it sure helps to have friends. Without Brad, I would've been really screwed.