Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Successfully Changed First Flat Tire

Well, I got up this morning to ride and was all set to go out at 3:45 a.m. Just before putting on my riding clothes I checked my tires. My front tire was flat! I was about to blow off riding when I thought "Hey! I'll try and change the flat myself."

Now I've only changed one flat on my bike for a couple of reasons:

1. I have not had many flat tires. I think I have had only 4 flats, including the one today.
2. The only one I changed went flat the next morning so I obviously did something wrong. Since then, I have had the bike shop change my other flats.

Everything went pretty good. I got the tire off okay, I got the old tube out, put the new tube in, and got the tire and tube back on the rim. I struggled a little bit getting the last section of tire back on the rim but I think that's fairly normal as that is the hardest part of changing a flat anyway. I think I remember when I changed my other flat that I tried patching the tire instead of just putting in a new tube. That may have been where I messed up previously. It was much simpler and quicker to just replace the tube instead of messing with patching it.

To top it off I went ahead and compeleted my normal morning ride and ended up with a top 4 time and average speed for that ride. Guess I'll be changing my own flats more often!

Monday, February 19, 2007