Bikeuser shared blog

We could do with more information about interesting cycle events, and less of my ramblings, what?

Lots of cyclists don’t fix their own punctures. They think it’s hard or something. It’s not. The only “hard” part is getting tight tyres on and off.

Here, have an article about puncture repair.

Here, have some comments on it.

- you don’t have to take the wheel off unless you need to replace the inner tube (well, or the tyre). If you’re only patching it, you can do it while it’s attached to the bike. No really. Don’t take the wheel off. It’s a pain. Especially if you’re in a field and forgot your spanner. The first time I fixed a puncture on the back wheel of my old bike, it took me 45 minutes to figure out how to get the chain fixed around the gear mechanism when I went to put the wheel back. (If you think you might have this problem, draw a picture before you take the wheel off. I learnt.)

- but that means you need to find the puncture without dipping the whole thing in a bowl of water. Well, if you’re in a field and forgot your spanner, you probably don’t have a bowl of water anyway. Personally, I favour pumping the tube hard, and then listening for a hiss, or moving my hand around until I feel air escaping. Failing that, a bit of spittle will do for wetting the tyre one section at a time to look for bubbles. I’ve rarely needed to do this.

- On a carpet? Put some newspaper down first.

- When you’re fitting the tyre back, you shouldn’t need to use tyre levers. A couple of tips:
first, a bit of lick-and-spit to wet the tyre can make it slip on easier. Apparently washing-up liquid is even better, but I’ve never bothered. Second, move around the tyre to the furthest point from where you’re stuck, and pinch the tyre in. Work back to the stuck point, pinching your way around, and you should get it a bit further in.

- Snakebite punctures rarely happen if you keep your tyres pumped up hard. Keeping tyres to the recommended pressure or a bit above makes a lot of difference to the ride, too. Every time I pump mine up and set off somewhere I think “wow! I should pump up more often!”. Then I don’t get around to it…

Any more puncture repair tips and tricks?

The university has a new transport manager.

From the unilink website,

“As Transport Manager here at the University, I shall be responsible for a variety of tasks, namely cycle storage and security, the control of student parking, and the highly successful uni-link bus network. I hope to be able to bring my own sets of specialist skills, both in roadcraft and psychology to the role. The job will provide a number of challenges, including solving capacity issues on uni-link, where we have just carried our 10 millionth passenger since services began a little over 5 years ago. However, having seen the extremely busy nature of Hong Kong’s 10,000 strong bus operations at close quarters over many years, I might be able to suggest a few solutions!”

It’s good to see him mentioning cycles in his task lists, since the uni-link website itself seems to have scrapped all the cycle info (much of which can still be found in google’s caches) in favour of being a bus-only site. (Go and fill out the comment form!)

I think he must be this one.

His email is alec.gore @ soton.

It’s been a month. It’s passed me by rather in a daze. I’ve travelled up to Lincoln twice, and Bristol once, and been glad of taking my bicycle everywhere. A series of errors led to me sitting in a bus stop by the M3 junction at Bagshot in the rain at 3am, with a puncture. I thought about hitching, but most of the traffic was going in the London direction - and it was all so wet, and the bus stop had a roof. So I stayed there till it got light, by which time it had stopped raining, and then repaired the puncture and went on to Woking. It’s the inner tube with the continental valve, which is neither Schrader nor Presta; fortunately my pump (which I always carry on the bike) is capable of handling it. It was a German puncture repair kit too, but fortunately I’ve fixed enough punctures not to need to be able to read the instructions. The outer tyre is also German (hey, guess where I last had bike problems!), and I don’t know what caused the puncture; couldn’t find anything in the tyre. Some thorn, I guess. Always carry your puncture kits, kids, especially if you plan to cycle around the countryside at 3am in the rain.

They closed the railway bridge on the Southampton side of the Itchen bridge for a few weeks. The route around via St Mary’s involves two mini-roundabouts which are unexpectedly scary between 3pm and 6pm. When they re-opened the bridge, it was with proper bright green cycle lanes. Hurrah! The traffic used to queue along here waiting for the roundabout onto Itchen bridge, hanging right up against the curb and making it awkward for bikes. They seem to have achieved the cycle lanes by making the middle of the road narrower.