I blew a tire and fucked up my tail light today. Unrelated incidents.
I don’t know when I lost my taillight, but it was on the back of my bike this morning and the light part was gone when I got home tonight. The backing, mount, and clip are still attatched to the seatpost, but the lens and the bit with the battery, bulb, and computerly stuff that controls the blinking apparently fell off at some point. I rode home from work on my lunch break, so it could have happened on my way to work in the morning, on the way home at lunch, on the way back at lunch, or at some point on my way home after work.
I had a rear-tire blowout on my way home. The city has been doing all sorts of sewer and water main work lately, and apparently Water Services and Public Works can’t co-ordinate, so Water Services cuts huge fucking holes in the street, does their work, then piles gravel in the holes until Public Works can get it together to come out and replace the asphalt.
For the past two weeks, I have been skirting around this huge fucking hole, because my skinny-tire road bike goes all squiffy in loose gravel, and I am not fond of going all squiffy on city streets. You’ll understand.
Well, today, 12th Street, east of Benton, was unusually heavily traveled, and I was thwarted in my usual routine, involving looking over my left shoulder, moving into the center lane, skirting the huge fucking hole in the street, and then moving back into the outside lane after I’m past the HFHITS. Therefore I had to take the HFHITS and gravel patch head on. I hit the gravel, heard the dreaded “Fffftsquee” that anyone running high-pressure road tires knows and hates, and came out the other side of the gravel patch wobbling. I dragged my bike up onto the sidewalk, pulled the rear wheel, pried the tire off one side, pulled the tube out, felt around in the tire for glass, nails, etc. and didn’t find anything. I checked the tube, but in my haste to pull it, I managed to bust off the screwy bit of the Presta Valve (so buggeryfuck, I can’t patch that tube and re-use it ever). I put my spare tube in, aired up the tire as best I could with my frame pump, and limped it home. Luckily, just east of Benton meant I wasn’t more than 10-15 blocks from home (I’ve never counted). I got home and figured it was just as well to get out the floor pump and air up that tire properly. Pump, pump, pump, 90, 100, 110BANG! The cat jumped about 4′ straight up into the air. Shit, the tube blew. Maybe there was something stuck in that tire after all, or maybe I just did a shitty job of mounting that tube and it got a pinch flat. Whatever. I pulled the tube, patched the hole, which was a considerable one, let the patch set, put the tube back in, aired it up again. 50, 60, 70 80, 90, 100BANG! Shit. Maybe the patch wasn’t set all the way.
Pull wheel, pry off tire, pull out tube. Nope. New hole. New hole on the other side of the valve stem, almost exactly the same distance as the first hole. Waaaaaaait a second here. This tire merits closer investigation. Closer investigation yeilds about a .5cm cut all the way through the tire. When I got the tube near max pressure, it ballooned through that little hole and popped.
So, I have a 3-month-old tire that’s probably so much garbage and a brand new tube with two patches in it. And a missing tail-light.
Do I need this? I’m trying to save money for winter gear and shit.
Mountain bike for me tomorrow. I guess I will drop a few of my hard-earned bucks on a new tire, a spare tube, and a new tail-light. Dammit.