Man, oh man, yesterday I had two flats at once and it was a pain in the ass.
I picked up some goat-head thorns during one of Ruby’s and my excursions into the West Bottoms. The dog likes to run, and I don’t, so what we do to compromise is I leash her up and we roll down to the bike/ped bridge into the Bottoms and then cruise up and down the alleys in the bottoms for a little bit until she gets the naughties worn off.
She’ll run flat out across the bridge and well into the bottoms…she’s been known to keep up a steady gallop until we reach the halfway house that’s probably a mile and a half from our house. Then she slows to a four-beat trot that she’ll carry on for another two miles before she starts to show signs of flagging.
The other day, City crews had been mowing alongside the walkway just east of the bridge, and a lot of the trimmings and crud were heaped up on the walkway. Apparently, there were burrs hiding in the chopped up vegetation, and some of them worked their way into my tires.
I noticed my front tire getting low on my way to work, but it was a slow leak and I was able to make it in to the office. I mean to go out to the library on my lunch break, so I figured I’d just change the tube then.
Well, by the time my lunch break rolled around, my bike was sitting on two flats. So I pulled the tires and found the tubes had been Swiss Cheezed by a good half-dozen thorns each. Moreover, somehow or another, my pocket knife which I always keep in my toolkit had gone missing. I didn’t have any needle-nose pliers or even any tweezers, so I was kind of screwed.
I went back into the office to see if any of my co-workers had tweezers, but when they heard I wanted to use them to dig thorns out of my bike tires, they were less than willing to admit to tweezer-ownership. Goodness only knows why! They suggested I ask the maintenance guys if they had some needle-nose pliers I could borrow.
I went down to the maintenance shop and learned that while they do have some needle-nose pliers, their needle-nose pliers are roached and were certainly unfit for plucking thorns out of a 28C road tire, Moreover, I also was reminded why I hate to ask most guys for anything related to tools and fixing things.
Because so many guys get all grabby and want to butt in and take over when their help is neither wanted or needed. Before you know it, three different guys were hovering over my tire jabbing at it ineffectually with blunted needle-nose pliers. When one guy started prying at my tire with a flat-head screwdriver and another suggested a pair of wire-clippers, I got a bit shirty and insisted they hand my tire back. If anyone was going to ruin my tire, I’d just as soon it be me.
I eventually managed to get the thorns picked out by misusing a large-sized safety pin and a lot of cuss words. And when I got home, Joel gave me a spare pocket knife that is quite a few steps superior to my old one, so I’m ready for the next time I need a knife.