My first cycling flat tire

Yesterday I had my first bicycle flat tire. I am so thankful I was cycling with a friend… and that my friend took it all in stride.

I was cruising along, having a pretty good ride. But then we turned a corner and the pedaling became much more difficult. My first thought was that we had turned into some wind. I pedaled harder and my friend zoomed past me. As she was growing smaller in the distance I looked at my speedometer.

I was moving at 13 miles per hour. This was definitely slower than I would have expected for myself, but I was putting in all the effort I could muster.

Then I noticed the road felt rougher than it looked.

I wondered if I had a flat, but was afraid to attribute my out of practice condition to the bike.

Eventually I decided I had better take a look.

It didn’t take long for me to see that I did indeed have a flat tire.

I pulled off the road, flipped my bike over, pulled out my tools and began changing the tire. At this point my friend noticed I was missing, so she circled back.

I tossed her my phone and asked her to document it. (I am a blogger and scrapbooker, after all!)

I pulled the wheel off, got the tire off, pulled out the tube and inspected the tire for the gash. I found the rock that had penetrated my tire, pulled it out and was feeling pretty good about myself.

Then, I ran into a bit of difficulty.

One part of the tool for using my CO2 cartridge was missing, but I improvised by wrapping my glove around the tube to keep my hand from freezing. Then the tube just would not hold the air.  I thought perhaps I didn’t get the cartridge off the stem quickly enough, so I pulled out my second cartridge and tried again. Again, the air came right back out of the tube.

My friend cycled to our cars, drove back and we called it a day.

This afternoon I just went through the exercise with my husband. I again wasted another CO2 cartridge.

We used the pump to check the tubes and BOTH OF my spares had holes in them!

I hadn’t done anything wrong, except for the fact that I had bad equipment!

Realizing that, I felt much better about my tire-changing skills, although it is still bad that both of my spares were faulty.

But now I’ve been through the tire-changing exercise successfully and I’m ready to roll again.

First, I need to buy some more CO2 cartridges, that missing tool… and maybe a few more tubes.