Yep, more tire problems.
This morning, as we expected, Jon’s rear tire was flat. Unlike yesterday, however, when we were able to ride 10-12 miles before having to add air, we couldn’t even make it through breakfast. Jon fully inflated the tube before coming to eat, and it was already flat when he got back to his room.
No problem, or so we thought: we’d gotten pretty good at tube removal and repair/replacement on Sunday, and we would be that much better if we could do the repair work from the comfort of a hotel room, vs. the side of a road or a gas station parking lot. We took out the tube, found and patched the holes (plural), confirmed that the holes weren’t still leaking, and put the tube back in. But by the time we got out to the parking lot, maybe 15 minutes later, it was apparent that the tire was still losing air.
We decided to forge ahead and see how far we could get before having to add air. Mentally, I put the over/under at 5 miles. It was under; only 3.3. At this point, it was my turn to throw the Hail Mary pass: I called the son-and-heir, Andrew, and tasked him with fetching his mom’s car from her work (the two-bike rack is on her Murano), and plotting an intercept course to meet us. Meanwhile, Jon and I kept pedaling in mile-and-a-half sprints between pumping air. The two lines converged in Elkhart, only 13 miles south of Lincoln, but even averaging more than 14 mph, it took us almost 90 minutes to ride those 13 miles.
We dropped my bike and our gear at my house and headed to Scheels. It took a while—including a side trip to another bike shop to find the right-sized inner tube—and included the extremely loud blowout of the wrong-sized inner tube… which sounded enough like a gunshot that I am sure several shoppers were reaching for their phones to call 911. The culprits turned out to be two small wires that we stuck in the tire. Kudos (for the second year in a row) to the team at Scheels, who spent a lot of time on Jon’s bike… and charged a whopping $11 for the parts and service. I think our lunch there cost more.
Six-plus hours later, and the new tube is still holding firm; I just checked. Flat tires are a titanic nuisance, but they’re better than mechanical failures, and this one happened at the right point in time, when the family SAG car was nearby. It will be great to get back on the road tomorrow and hopefully have the same-old tire(d) story behind us.
Rideworthy 