"We've got a tube but it's the wrong size"

[Kim]

The above method does not work if you are not an attractive young woman.

I dunno, I've stopped and provided mechanical assistance (usually chain-related, for some reason) to random middle-aged blokes before now.

[clarion]

OK.  The exception is for very kind women passing   Or Regulator, if one is a fit young adonis (not Lord Adonis)

But I could be waiting a long time...

[Steve Kish]

I always offer to change tubes because I actually like doing it.

[damerell]

The above method does not work if you are not an attractive young woman.

I've been offered assistance once or twice, and I ain't a young woman, leastwise.

A few years ago I was on the London->Cambridge (yes, charity ride, gah!) with a friend who punctured. He had no spare tube or pump (or any puncture supplies); I had them, but he had a big hole in a Slimed tube so there was no getting a patch on it... and to be frank, besides the 26" vs 700C issue, I was not going to give up my spare tube when I might need it later for someone so ill-prepared.

[DrMekon]

I've been guilty of assuming that I'd get away with Marathons + slimed tubes. The other evening, cornering very hard on the cargotrike, the outside front tube blew spectacularly - green gloop oozing out from under the bead. I don't know if the cornering was somehow responsible, but the tube had ripped across the seam. Couldn't see that anything had penetrated the tyre. Anyway, the effort of riding a cargotrike with a 5 year old in for a couple of km on two wheels was enough to make me form a very strong prospective memory to take spare tubes and a pump from now on.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I reckon these guys were suffering from an overdose of specificism. It tends to be related to overconsumption of TV ads and general marketing guff, and can also be known as unitaskism. In general, the belief that everything has to be perfect and only the correct, manufacturer recommended, TM and C, item will do.

The above method does not work if you are not an attractive young woman.

Fact.

I'm not young, not a woman, and definitely highly unattractive in every way imaginable   but whenever I got a puncture in India I was alway quickly surrounded by "helpers". Sometimes genuinely helpful, at others their "assistance" consisted of crowding round me as tightly as possible asking how much the bike cost and telling me there was a garage at such and such a place. But I guess that's India specific, rather than me!

The "best" puncture I ever had was also in India and on an MTB. Zooming down a hill I suddenly saw an object about a foot in front of my tyre. I realised it was a screw or bolt and remarkably it was standing on its head, vertically. Immediately, kerthunk, I rode over it. There was a ping and another kerthunk as it shot out from under my front wheel and hit my back tyre. How dead straight a line does everything have to be in - the initial object on the ground, both my wheels and my direction of travel, all lined up perfectly - for that to happen? And then there was the inevitable hiss. From "ooh, what's that on the road?" to "Shit, puncture!" in less than two seconds.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'd rather knit my own tube from beetles than call a taxi.

   

Such a wonderful line I think I'll have to sig it, if you don't mind! 

[Jasmine]

Most people on yacf seem to like fiddling around with their bikes.  I like to ride mine.  I get no joy whatsoever from cleaning/adjusting/faffing around with it.  

Heresy!  


(I have no particular love of faffing about with tyres, unlike more satisfying forms of fettling, but I'd be too embarrassed to not sort it out myself.)

I know.  I'll get thrown out of here soon.

I know how to do all types of bicycle maintenance.  First step is find 'a man'*
I even have a man to clean & lube all my bikes.  If I've been to an event and left a bike in his car it will come back to me clean & serviced the next day.  How nice is that?!  
I probably should be embarassed, but I'm just not**  



*where 'a man' is a non-gender specific term for someone who does it for a living or enjoys doing it.

**the above approach may be less successful for those people whose other half is not a bike mechanic

[Arch]

If you're happy leaving it to someone else, and they are happy to do it , fine.  My caveat would be though, to make sure you CAN do stuff, even if you never think you'll have to.  Otherwise, one day, you will be miles from anywhere, alone, with no phone, no one around and stuck. All the fluttering eyelashes in the world won't help then.

If I'm out with certain friends, I know I won't get a look in at a mechanical, because they'll be falling over themselves to fettle it. Not, I'm sure, because I'm a girl, but beause they're all keen macklers.  As a result, they'll probably be much faster and more efficient than I would be.  But at least I know that when I'm out alone, I can tackle most stuff I'd need to.

[Jasmine]

Oh, I can change tubes, and I can do it properly without using tyre levers to get the tyre back on.

tbh, if I'm out with other people then they will usually have offered before I've even identified the source of the flat.  I have almost no feeling in my hands, so whilst it's funny to watch me try to drink out of paper cups (think alternating between dropping and crushing), it's just painful to watch me doing anything that requires fingers.

[hellymedic]

Dervla Murphy can't fix a puncture. This did not appear to impede her adventures awheel.
Personally, I do not recommend this approach.

[CrinklyLion]

I can fix a flat.  And indeed have - on all our bikes when necessary, and a couple of bikes belonging to EldestCubs mates.  But I take blinking ages about it because I am a complete klutz.  If I was riding with someone more adept than me I'd have no qualms at all about letting them effect a repair because that would get us on the road and moving again significantly quicker.  I do carry the necessary - although I ought to get a couple of replacement spare tubes because the ones I have were a bit fat for the old 32s, so with the new 28s my chances of getting a tyre back on without cocking it up (see above reference to klutz-ishness) are not great.

And I am to this day eternally grateful to Mseries, Deano and toekneep (who had an appropriate spare cable with him despite it not being needed on his or GillP's bike and who went up and down Little Fryupdale a frankly silly number of times because of my mechanical) for fettling my Stupid_Disk_Brakes into submission on the KTTR ride, because my only other option was a very long walk to a very long wait at an infrequently served train station.  This is the reason that a) I now carry a spare brake cable and b) any n+1 in my life is unlikely to have disk brakes - I can almost understand rim brakes, and would have a chance of figuring out how to fettle them.  But disks are strange and perplexing voodoo.

[Kim]

I do carry the necessary - although I ought to get a couple of replacement spare tubes because the ones I have were a bit fat for the old 32s, so with the new 28s my chances of getting a tyre back on without cocking it up (see above reference to klutz-ishness) are not great.

So you literally do have a tube, but it's the wrong size  \o/

This is the reason that a) I now carry a spare brake cable and b) any n+1 in my life is unlikely to have disk brakes - I can almost understand rim brakes, and would have a chance of figuring out how to fettle them.  But disks are strange and perplexing voodoo.

Cables are well worth carrying, I reckon.  But not those double-ended ones (road and mountain brake lever knobbles on the same cable, if you've not met them), unless you're also carrying something that's up to cutting the wrong end off and awake enough to make sure you don't cut the right end off instead.  Don't ask how I know this.

I'm suspicious that your disc brakes are a particularly awkward example of the species, having had a brief look and decided that on account of it being 1am and lacking a workstand, it wouldn't be a good idea to fiddle.  As you say, there may be a low-end Shimano factor, especially regarding the thickness (or lack thereof) of the rotors.  My low-end Tektros (and the truly awful disc-brake-shaped-object on the tandem) do at least have the decency to only have two clearly defined adjustments to cock up, where yours are bristling with tweakables.

I reckon a decent set of rim brakes are absolutely fine for most bikes though - with decent pads they're fine in the wet.  Discs are great for mud or having to dissipate abnormal amounts of heat (as on a tandem or recumbent), but aren't really an advantage for normal use.

[henshaw11]

>I'm not young, not a woman, and definitely highly unattractive in every way imaginable  demon but whenever I got a puncture in India I was alway quickly surrounded by "helpers". Sometimes genuinely helpful, at others their "assistance" consisted of crowding round me as tightly as possible asking how much the bike cost and telling me there was a garage at such and such a place. But I guess that's India specific, rather than me!

A mate did a motorcycle tour round africa some years ago (on a Royal Enfield too,subject to some rather misplaced logic, but there y'go..). The inevitable happened. Tyre levers bend - he's not tried using them before (despite having a spare set of tyres strapped to the bike that he was expecting to swap over at some point).
Enter local wanting to help, and assorted rock-on-tyre violence 'til the tyre's off. New inner tube in, assembly's the reverse of disassembly via aforementiond rock...and the new inner (probably c/o the assorted violence) is holed too !
Starts walking with bike, gets round corner and finds a bike shop that sorts it out for 1 euro 

[Cudzoziemiec]

10 rupees I paid (about 13p) for a puncture on my Hero Hawk to be fixed.  

[GrahamG]

I helped a guy out a few months ago on the bike path here in Brizzle - he'd just moved back from living in China for a few years so his excuse for not carrying a tube or spares was that he was just too used to being able to just pull over and get one of the dozens of roadside bike mechanics to fix it for like 10p!

Nice chap - returned my loaned tube (I squeezed my 700x25 into his 38mm hybrid tyre at low pressure ), and gave me a bottle of wine!

[Bledlow]

On an MTB with knobblies, I'd have thought you could ride a fair bit on a flat tyre, if you put your mind to it.

MTB tyres are often less of a tight fit than road tyres. The tyre might come off on its own if ridden when flat. I've seen it happen.

[richie]

On an MTB with knobblies, I'd have thought you could ride a fair bit on a flat tyre, if you put your mind to it.

MTB tyres are often less of a tight fit than road tyres. The tyre might come off on its own if ridden when flat. I've seen it happen.

My MTB runs Mavic Rims and Fire XC 2.1 tyres.  The tyre will fall off the rim on its own accord if totally deflated.   Seems fine when pumped up though.

On another note, during the cold spell before Xmas i was pedalling  some Exmoor lanes at night in -3 temperatures when i got a rear wheel puncture.
Just as I was finishing the repair, a helpful car driver stopped with the advice 'be careful, it might be icy'.

Not sure how i managed not to be offensive as i gazed around at the rime-encrusted landscape and just said 'Thanks for letting me know'.

 

[Salvatore]

On Sunday, far from home and 15 km from the nearest Halfords, I needed an inner tube for the 16" x 1.75" tyre on my Bob Yak, the original being irreparably split. I did have spare tubes, but as these were for 700x23 tyres, some might say that at twice the circumference and half the cross-section, they were "the wrong size".

But it occurred to me that looped round twice, it is roughly the right circumference and roughly the right cross section, so I tried it. And it worked, and got me home.

[TimO]

Funnily enough, my Bob Yak has a flat at the moment, and I know I've got a spare somewhere, but I'm not sure exactly where!  It'll probably be easier to just pop the tube out and repair it.  I don't think I'll try you're twice around the wheel approach.

[The Seldom Killer]

On an MTB with knobblies, I'd have thought you could ride a fair bit on a flat tyre, if you put your mind to it.

Done about three miles at night at the end of a day when it was cold, wet and I was in no mood to stop to do a repair. It would have been about seven miles but by then my girlfriend had got to a pub and bribed a man with a van a pint to come and scrape me off the road.

I then set in a pub with my new friends while my girlfriend went and got our van, which was nice.