In an effort to enjoy the outdoors more and rely on cars less, Mike and I have been riding bikes to run errands and sometimes get to work. I've had a decent bike for a few years but lately have had problems with chronic flat tires. Today Mike was out of town, so I thought it would be easier on myself to just ride his nice shiny new bike to work instead of worrying about whether my tire's slow leak would become a fast leak.
Halfway home, with 2 miles to go, I hit a hard bump. Then I got a flat tire. Then I regretted riding Mike's bike.
I walked the bike home and prepared to demonstrate how handy and independent I am by patching the tire.
Mike hates when I do this to his shiny new bike. He probably didn't know it before, but he does now.
I found the leak! Hey, that wasn't so hard! There it is.
Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I patched it up and started inflating the tube. Then I realized that there were two holes. My thumb was blocking the second hole in the previous picture. Drat.
Because I know without asking that Mike wouldn't appreciate me doing not just one but two amateur, janky patch jobs on his tire and calling it a day, I threw away the old tube and just put on a new one. Approximately 200 pumps of our tiny travel pump later, the bike appeared good as new. But when I get up tomorrow morning, I won't be able to relax until I've given the tire a squeeze to check that it's really all better.
And that's how you turn a 20-minute commute into a 2-hour-long ordeal.
