So lately, when I have a free moment, I'm faced with two choices - service my hub, or go ride. I've been picking go ride. I've been riding on my oldest tubular wheels, my "beaters" that I use for the early season dry/dusty races, or anytime the course seems like it might eat a tubular. Really, it probably would be fine to be riding my clincher hub that needs servicing, but the tubulars are on the bike from the last geared race I managed to make it to, and rather than take the time to switch to the clinchers I think "...those clinchers need servicing, I'll just ride these."
I'm sure you can see where this is going.
Today, right after I dropped my kids off at school, up the mountain I went. Forty five minutes later - "pfffssst". Crap. It deflated pretty quick, probably not a small hole. To prove that I'm not a total moron, I had at least brought a CO2+flat fixer canister along with me. I had bought it to take to races thinking that if I flatted during warm-up, maybe it could fix it for the race. I also had my phone with me, so I took so crappy pictures of my ordeal.
Read the instructions. Found the hole in my tire. Didn't look promising, I must have hit a sharp rock which gashed the tire and put a decent hole in it. Still it seemed like it might work. Read the instructions again. Shot the gunk into my tire and the air just shot out the hole. Dang. Spun it a few times to see if I could get the gunk to seal the hole. No luck.
Started the long walk home. I live down there. Way. Down. There.
On the bright side, it was a beautiful day, the sun had burned off all the early morning coolness. After about 5 minutes of walking, a guy going up hill let me use his pump to see if perhaps the sealant had filled the hole, still no luck. Oh well. A lot of the trail is fairly smooth, so I was able to ride a lot of it which got me home quite a bit faster than if I had to walk the whole way.
Learn from my mistake. Don't be lazy.
And for those of you wondering about bottles, I ordered another batch (luckily that was higher on my to do list than servicing my hub). The status of the order is "In Process" which doesn't tell me much, but it has been a couple weeks, so hopefully they'll show up before the end of the month. Same design as last time except with a clear top rather than black. When they arrive on my doorstep I'll post a note here. Yeah, I know, my bike needs a bath too. That is on the same line of my to do list as "service clincher hub", a few lines above the new entry, "glue on spare flexus".
1 comments:
The other day I was up in the park, doing hot laps of a left-over club cross country race course. It was super fast, and the laps were super hot. One of the last accelerations I made, I heard a click, like my chain tried to climb the ramp of a cog and failed.
Or not.
It was more like a non-drive side spoke on my Mavic Cosmic Carbone (clincher) cracking under what was hopefully 700+ watts. Ok, 300. Er....maybe less.
Anyway......I ended up walking home all the way down the hill in my Shimano "not for walking" M300 shoes. Yes, they are not for walking.
The point of this long-ass comment is this:
My wheel was so out of true, I couldn't push my bike, so I had to shoulder it and walk. Now, I either looked like I had a flat, or looked like I was getting shouldering practice in. I think they lay person went with the former. Which is my point:
Not one person stopped and asked anything. They just gave me the "oh that stinks smile...and yup, here were are the red light....and you're still walking....and I'm still driving down the hill in my car....solo" look.
It's a menacing look.
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