Coming to a screeching halt: When you get another flat right away

For those of us who have had the excruciatingly frustrating experience of get­ting a flat five minutes after repairing the first one, we know there are many more descriptive and colorful words come to mind than our publisher will let us print in this book.

If a flat tire strikes twice consider the possible causes:

✓ More than one puncture is in the tube and you only patched one of them.

✓ A shard of glass or some sharp object is hidden in the tire and has re­punctured the tube.

✓ When you reinstalled the tube, part of it was pinched between the rim and the tire.

The solution is to take a deep breath and repeat the process, being extra vigilant when finding the puncture, inspecting the tire, and installing the tube.

Of course, there is always the chance that you did everything perfectly the first time and it just so happened that you had the incredibly bad luck of running into a second sharp object on the road. The good thing is that, over time, the odds even out, and the next time you’ll be the one taking the bath­room break while your riding partner is on her knees with tube in hand.

A Pound of Cure: Preventing a Flat

The obvious choice of any bike rider is to avoid flats. Although this might be impossible for any wheel system that uses tubes, prevention is the next best option. To help prevent flat tires, proper maintenance is key:

✓ Keep your tires inflated to the proper pressure as indicated on the side of the tire.

✓ Replace tires at the first sign of worn tread or deteriorating sidewalls.

✓ Replace tubes that have already been patched more than a dozen times.

✓ Inspect tire tread for objects stuck in the tread that may cause a puncture.

If you’re willing to spend a little extra money to prevent punctures, con­sider investing in Kevlar-reinforced tires. The composite fibers that make up Kevlar are strong enough to resist punctures that would normally occur from contact with sharp objects. Kevlar tires typically run about $15 to $20 more than regular tires.

If Kevlar tires aren’t in your budget, try tire liners, which are made of strong, lightweight fibers and line the inside of the tire to provide extra protection to the tube. Other options are thorn-resistant tubes and tubes with flat sealant that fills small holes from the inside without the rider even knowing he’s had a puncture.

Even if you take all the preventive steps mentioned in this section, you’re still likely to get an occasional flat. Once, on a trip from Ireland to Italy with a heav­ily loaded bike, Dennis went three months without a single flat. A few months later, on a trip in the United States, he was pulling his hair out on the side of the road after five flats in one week. Go figure!

If you keep a patch kit, tire levers, pump, and spare tube with you while you bike and you practice the steps described in this chapter, the chances are good that you’ll be able to fix a flat and be back on your bike quicker than your partner can finish off a PowerBar. This will give you the confidence to take long, worry-free bike rides and save you from the embarrassment of having to ask another biker to show you how to change a flat or from walking your bike home.