Milking it

Bicycle content is hard to come by in, let's face it, what is rapidly becoming LATE November.  So if you have anything at all you have to milk it.  The sun didn't come out much today and when it did sun's extremely low position in the sky meant that whatever radiant heat we received wasn't going to be able to do much with an atmosphere that is still keeping the outdoor water in one or another of its solid states.  Ice.  Or snow.  That's a roundabout way of saying that it was cold out there today.

Not riding weather.

I repaired a flat tire.

This first one is early in today's activity.  The old tire is off, the new tire is half mounted.

Also visible are a couple of basic tools of the process, the tire levers, a specialized tire mounting tool, and one of my pumps.  Right.  I have two pumps.  I think just about everyone has at least two pumps.

Here is the nuts and bolts of tube repair.  I located two leaks.  It looked to me like I had a puncture which was in the process of going down and then with low tire pressure, I had a pinch which abruptly completely finished off my air pressure.

Find the leak, mark it, sandpaper to roughen the surface, rubber cement and patch.

It might seem tedious, but for me personally, I take a certain small amount of joy from extending the life of the tube.

Here is is all fixed up and ready to go.

The next time I ride on my front wheel I will be palping a tire in a green colorway.

So the story is about when the previous set of green tires ended its run.

I knew that the tire set had been on there for quite a while.  I knew that I had mounted those tires late in the year LAST year.  But I wasn't really keeping track.  So I had a flat on the front. The procedure is to locate the puncture in the tube and then use the tube to locate the sharp object which caused the flat.  This object is usually still lodged in the tire.  I found and repaired the puncture and then started feeling around the tire to find the sharp thing.  It immediately struck me that the tire felt inordinately insubstantial.  There didn't seem to be much rubber there.

So I keep track on my BikeLog of the mileage when I mount new tires.  I went to the log and was a tiny bit stunned to discover that I had 2,410 miles on that set of tires.  A couple of times in the past I have attempted to stretch a new set by trying to reach 2,000 miles and have even done it ONCE.  That time I tried and failed to reach 2,100.  So 2,410 is a record by quite a huge margin.

The replacement used tires lasted about 300 miles and I am now on the new rubber again.

It isn't much but it IS bicycle content.