Mechanical Problems

You know, I'd always assumed a bike is a reasonably simple machine. 2 wheels, a frame basically consisting of two connected triangles, some gears. This past week has disabused me of that thought process.

About two weeks ago, a bit less, I ran over some caltrops. Caltrops basically look like the metal things in a game of jacks, except without the little balls on the end. They were invented to stop cavalry charges about 3000 years ago, you'd seed the field with them and the horses would get their feet messed up by running over them. In the ensuing 3 millenia, however, apparently their purpose has changed somewhat, in that they are now designed solely to piss me off.

So I ran over the caltrops, which didn't just fuck up the tubes in my tires, but the tires themselves. I didn't realize that at first, naturally, so I just replaced the tube and it kept blowing up within 3 seconds. The tube was poking out of a gash in the tire, and popping from being under too much pressure. At this point a reasonable person would've simply replaced the tire too.

"Nonsense" I declared (to my cat), "I'm not going to spend TWENTY DOLLARS on some new tire when all this needs is a bit of clever monkey wrenching!" First I tried just inflating the tube to 40 PSI, instead of 110. This worked for a little while, but the extra heat that created (I don't know why underinflated tires heat up more than fully inflated ones, ask someone smarter than me. They just do) caused the rubber to start to fail even worse around the gash, so the tube started popping out again and blowing up.

So then I decided to use some tire patches on the inside of the tire, which would prevent the tube from sticking out. "Genius!" I cried (to my cat, who gave me a look of deep disdain and wandered over to the corner to lick her own crotch somehow) and figured all was well. Except I still had a small tube graveyard, and no new tire tubes to replace it with. I decided that it would be foolish to buy new tubes, because if I did that I'd spend as much as I would've on a new tire, and then this whole sequence of events would've seemed stupid because if I'd just bought the tire in the first place I wouldn't need new tubes and I'd have a shiny new tire. With me so far? Yeah neither am I.

So I figured I'd find the least damaged tube, patch it up, and use that for awhile. I'm not sure what my end game was at this point. Eventually tubes (and even tires) wear out, so I guess my thought was that if I somehow coaxed another, oh I don't know, 1000 miles out of this horrible configuration, then I'd have vindicated myself somehow and could claim I'd have needed new tubes and tires anyway. But to my dismay, I'd used all of my patching equipment for the busted tire.

"Curses!" I exclaimed, causing my cat to jerk awake, look at me with contempt, and finally don a miniature fedora and suitcase and leave the house, slamming the door behind her. Now I was in a pickle, because a patch kit costs about 8 dollars at the good bike store (which is far away), but to get there I'd have to go buy a tube from the much closer, crappier bike store that doesn't sell decent patch kits. I was stuck!

But then true inspiration occurred. What if I put glue on the back side of the patch I put inside the tire, and put the damaged part of the tube inside the tire at that exact spot? Fantastic! So I spent, honest to God, three hours setting that up, then inflated the tire and rushed to the good bike store. By the time I got there, the tire was basically flat again. Apparently the tire didn't seal up right against the patch.

So now I've got the tube glued to the inside of the tire. I can't get it out without ripping off the original patch and starting from square one. Except I'm at worse than square one because now I have a ruined tire, ruined tube, AND I'm 10 miles from home. When the bike store guy saw the corpse of my tube dangling from inside the tire, he said "Dude, what are you DOING?". Suddenly I realized: I'm an idiot. With a sense of deep shame, I bought a new tire, new tubes, and a new patch kit. Grand total: 75 bucks. For those of you keeping score (editor's note: Fuck you) that's 55 bucks more than if I'd just bought the new tire to start with.

The lesson to be learned here is that A) Seriously, I'm retarded and B) you can't mickey mouse repairs on a bike. I'm going to have to radically rethink my packing list in terms of spare parts, because I CANNOT be going through this shit when I'm stranded in the middle of black bear country or something.