I have to chuckle at the guys at work who see me pull up on Lady Blue and say, "Yeah, I suppose I ought to be doing something like that" - but they never do, even though they only live across town...and it's a small town.

Here's an update to yesterday.

Riding home yesterday, I had my first flat on the EZ Sport; front 20" tire, a cactus thorn over 1/4" long, buried to the hilt in the groove of the tire, caused a fast leak.

I had just rounded a curve after one of the nice downgrades, so I was probably running at just under 20 mph. If any of you fellow motorcyclists here have ever had an at-speed fast leak in the front tire, you know exactly what the feeling was because on my LWB it felt EXACTLY the same: first there was a shimmy to the front wheel, as if it were bent or something, and then there was the odd feeling that the front wheel was not headed in the exact direction the handlebars indicated.

It must have taken less than two seconds for all of the air to go out of the 20" wheel, and I knew before a second had gone by what it was.

Stopped in the sun, but some clouds intervened during most of the fifteen or twenty minutes it took me to swap out the tube (Hey! I've never done it in the field before!) Put just enough air in the tire, using the mini-pump, to get me to my LBS about three miles down the road. I bought a new tube (no patched tubes for MY beauty) and as he was topping off the front tire to 100 lbs I noticed I had put the tire on backwards on the rim.

So I got home and turned it around the right way (only took me about ten minutes, so there).

I didn't see any date on the tube, does anybody know if they have tire/tube dating on bicycle tires like they have for automotive tires?

Far as I know, there's no dates associated with bike tires.

I'm not the least bit squeamish about patched tubes.. I usually let them pile up until I have several to patch at once, though. If I didn't patch, riding would get very expensive at the height of goathead season.

Come over here and ride for a few weeks in early fall, we'll get you some roadside flat repair practice!

Mark

Mark:

Hmmm, well, I figure I've had the Sport for right at 4-1/2 months now, and this is the first flat I've had on it, so if I only have to buy three tubes a year, at seven bucks a tube, it won't break me.

(I'm keeping --- and patching --- that tube though. Just in case what we laughingly call "a change in season" in Phoenix generates an uptick in road hazards and flats.)

BluesCat, you are almost a virgin. Yesterday, I had 2 flats within 2 miles on the bike trail. One flat per day on the diabetes tour.

If I didn't have patched tubes, I wouldn't have any tubes, at all. That's the problem with 650c tires. They're almost all the race version, not much rubber between me and the glass. Looking for some gator skin on e-bay.