My bicycle tire was flat yesterday. I had been planning to ride it to work like I do most days. I seem to have the worst luck with bicycle flat tires. I have been riding to work for the last year for several reasons: my car doesn’t run well, it saves gas money, and I was diagnosed with hypertension at only thirty-one a little more than a year ago. So I started exercising, getting some cardio, and since my work is only a mile-and-a-half away, this seemed like the perfect solution, killing two birds (exercising and commuting) with one bicycle-shaped stone.
In this last year, I’ve had had six flat tires. I don’t know if that’s the average for a year spent riding my bike five days a week to and from work, or if I’m breaking the curve. My work’s not even that far, just a ten minute ride. So yesterday’s inconvenience brought all my bad bike luck flooding back. My first flat happened on the way to work. I had run over some woman’s earring. My tire went flat, my bike started wobbling. In disbelief I stared at a cheap cubic zirconia, cracked and crushed, set in a gold-plated stud embedded into my tire’s tread.
Since my job involves driving around Pierce County, I found myself on break by a Walmart. So I headed in and picked up fix-a-flat. My shift ended, I returned to the yard, filled my tire up with the greenish fix-a-flat foam, and peddled home. The fix-a-flat held, and the next morning my tire still had air. Cool, I thought I was in business. I rode to work, the fix-a-flat seemed to be still holding. After a long day of driving and dealing with passengers, I was ready to peddle home. The tire’s flat. Fix-a-flat has failed me. I called my roommate, we went to Target, and bought a new inner tube—a self-sealing inner tube—along with a patch kit.
I rode off to work on my new, self-sealing inner tube, confident that it could take anything the rough shoulders of Parkland, Washington had to offer. My tire deflates; I had ran over a thumbtack. Just a block from work, my tire found a stupid, bleeping thumbtack, and my supposedly self-sealing inner tube revealed just awesome it was (not much). Turned out, I could have saved myself four dollars and just bought the regular inner tube. So the next day I ride to work with the patched inner tube. Of course, the patch didn’t hold. I wish I was making this up. But for nearly a week, I had a flat tire every morning. This time I bought a few inner tubes, and cursed every buying a bike. But my bad luck finally seemed to have broken, the inner tube held, for a while.
Over summer, and into fall, I had no problems. I was riding my bike, enjoying the sunshine and the air whipping through my hair. And then one morning, I found my rear tire is flat. I’m not sure why. By now my roommate had bought his own bike. He’s a bit of a copycat—if I upgrade my computer, he has to upgrade his; if I buy a bike, so does he. In fact, he bought the exact model I did, so I just borrowed his. His seat was uncomfortable—he had a new, ‘comfy’ seat, whereas I was using the stock seat and my butt had grown used to it—but I made it to work. When I got home, I couldn’t find the spare inner tube I bought (our garage is a bit of a mess). So I just rode his bike the next day, and the next day. Days turned to weeks turned to months. I made it through winter and into spring with no more flats. And then the missing inner tube was discovered in the excavation of our garage, and I finally replaced my flat tire.
Three days after fixing my bike, I had flat. Of course! Just three days. I opened the garage and found my tire flat. So I borrowed my roommates bike. I kept meaning to replace the tire, but I was busy and my roommate doesn’t actually use his bike. And now, just a month later, another flat on his bike! So I don’t know if I have the worst luck ever, or if averaging a flat tire every two months is something I should expect as a bike owner. I’m heading off to work soon, my fingers crossed that my new inner tube hasn’t magically gone flat over night.
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