The Story You Are About to Read…

…is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Rider B was not having a good day. His tubeless tire set up, normally so reliable, was causing problems. First he diagnosed a slow leak and added air with a mini pump. Then the slow leak became less slow, so at the Dustin Road regroup he dragged out the heavy artillery. Rider L carries one of these new fangled battery powered pumps and offered to loan it in lieu of a CO2 cartridge.

Rider B put the device in action, but nothing happened. The pump made pumping noises but no air seemed to be getting into the tire. Someone asked if Rider B had unscrewed the Presta valve. Oops! After making the adjustment the air flowed and we rode on.

3 miles later at Acampo Road, the tire had gone down again. This time a CO2 cartridge was used and the tire got hard, but after another mile it was nearly flat and it was time for a major repair. On Orchard Road Rider B pulled off and told everyone else to ride to the coffee stop a mere 5 miles away.

Rider F and Rider R ignored him and stopped to assist. These two are old hands at dealing with flats, dating back to a day when a nature break in a goat head infested walnut orchard caused a Four Flat Fiasco. In 2 miles! You can read about that here.

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Tubeless tires have sealant inside, and that stops most punctures. However if the cut is large enough the sealant won’t work. Also if the sealant has all leaked out or dried out, you need to try an alternate fix.

One way to do a fix is to put a plug in the tire. Rider F offered to do so, and produced his plug kit. Despite multiple tries he was unable to push the pointed brass head of the plug through the Gator Skin tire. Rider R, who also has experience with plugs, couldn’t do it either. Gator Skins are known to be heavy, long lasting road tires that are puncture resistant. Whatever Rider B hit on the road managed to get through, but our plug efforts failed.

Puncture Resistant, not Puncture Proof

We are running out of options. Time to remove the tire and put in a tube. Did I mention that Gator Skins are also very difficult to get off of the rim? They are. I once broke a plastic lever trying to change a tire for Rider J, who identifies as female with she/her pronouns, and was happy to accept the help. Chivalry is not dead.

Rider B managed to remove the tire, and as expected there was very little liquid sealant left, and quite a bit of dried stuff that is useless for sealing new punctures. He put in a tube and unscrewed the Presta valve, not making the same mistake twice. He reinstalled the tire and used his last CO 2 cartridge. The CO2 hissed out but the tube remained flat!

It turned out that Rider B’s emergency inner tube was defective. It happens. Tubes can get old in the saddle bags, and sometimes they get wet and we forget to dry them out, so the rubber breaks down.

Without Rider F and Rider R on the scene, Rider B would have been on his cell phone begging for a ride from his wife. He was out of flat fixing supplies. But Rider R provided a tube, Rider F produced a CO2 inflator, and voila! We are back on the road.

We made pretty good time to the coffee stop. Rider R and Rider F kept trading short pulls into the wind, and Rider B hung on. We finally arrived at Brew House Coffee, where our fellow riders sitting on the patio gave us a (slightly derisive) round of applause. At least I didn’t have to wait in line to order my panini.

How many riders does it take to fix a flat, especially if two of them might be Italian? Oops, maybe the innocent are not being protected…