Go Away Cheap Tires

The Captain America of bike tires.

I'm all done buying inexpensive tires, especially for the rear wheel. The other day I had a flat while out on a ride with the Hub. You know the kind—a disheartening psssst sound erupts and the tire immediately deflates. Close to home, I walked the half mile and patched the tube in the comfort of a lawn chair with a cold beer.

Nary a week later, while commuting to work, I encountered another leak. I limped to a known neighborhood bench. This is where it gets weird. Using my new mini pump for the first time, I gave it a few strokes, identified the leaky area, and pulled out a few inches of the tube. Dang, if it wasn't the same hole as before, only this time a tiny spot blew through the patch. I checked out the inside of the tire. There wasn't additional debris so I presume the pressure forced the patch through the tire hole? Either that or it was an incredible coincidence. I was a bit flabbergasted by what happened—the diameter of the cut in the tire is only .25 ". I admit I like high pressure, especially on 1.5" tires for the longer miles to work. I guess it was too much for the damaged tire to handle. My solution to the current dilemma: boot the inside of the tire with an elongated patch, then fix the tube's current pinhole with Park's thin glueless Super-Patch. (I re-inflated the tube with 35 pumps with Mini-Morph, yay!)

As I continued to work, I thought about how I've become a flat expert. It all started with traveling across the country with my husband. He had blown tubes galore. Me, I was smug. I rode a new bike and went 1000 miles before I had my first problem and that was a puncture. It was a teaching moment for him and bike mechanic school for me. He didn't touch my bike, but sat and talked me through patching my first tube. Since then I can, and do fix my own flats. I stop and lend assistance to others. But this isn't necessarily something to be proud of. And the more I thought about it I realized I do not need any more practice in the flat department.

So I went and bought a tire, which cost more than I would normally spend. It happens to be called the Nimbus Armadillo with Anti-Flat Technology. I know, it sounds like a Harry Potter broomstick with anti-ground warp speed features. Or maybe I'm be able to fly to work instead of spinning wheels...Whatever the fancy name, as long as it provides Kevlar-type properties, it ought to suffice.