Self sufficiency

25/06/23 22:04 Filed in: Riding

I worked in a bike shop for a number of years. I never understood the number of customers who brought their bike into the shop to have a puncture repaired.
Now this is actually a very vital activity for bike shops all over the world. Fixing flats keeps the doors open in some cases. But it isn't very difficult and it is extremely annoying to have to prematurely end a ride just because a tube was punctured.
That doesn't even begin to cover the issues on the mountain bike side of things. There was a guy at Whistler, far enough from the top that he didn't want to walk back up to download, but so far from the bottom that he would take ages to walk down as well. He offered me at least 20 bucks for a tube for his bike. Loads of people ride bike parks without any spares or tools. I get it. But you will get a flat (or less likely a mechanical) and you'll lose that run, and probably some others (due to the time element) just getting to the bottom to repair it. It is particularly precarious at Whistler if you're up the top of the Garbanzo zone (or Top of the World) because it is 30 minutes at race pace for world-class riders to get down to the village from the summit. That's several hours walking with a dead bike.
I no longer carry a tube off road (but always carry at least one on road). Since all of my mountain bikes have foam inserts, there is nowhere to put the insert and I probably can't easily get the tyre open on the trailside anyway. Instead, I always carry my tyre plug tool. I use Dynaplug, but there are numerous effective brands on the market. If the damage is small, the plug fills the hole instantly sealing it airtight. The tyre can usually be used for the remainder of its service life with the plug in there. Tiny, thorn-sized, holes will seal with the sealant. Moderate holes can be plugged with the tool. For any big holes, I am relying on the ability to ride slowly on the foam insert to get off the trails.
But a small hole can let a lot of air out of the tyre prior to my sealing it. So I also always carry a pump. I used to need the pump a lot to refill a burped tyre, but since Cush Core I haven't burped a tyre once. My pump hardly ever sees use these days. I like it that way.
The third thing I usually carry is a multi-tool. A few common Allen keys, screwdrivers, chain tool and so on. Being super compact, they are far less easy to use than individual workshop tools, but the number of times that one has allowed me to fix the problem is high.
One of my coached riders also carries these tools (because I told her to?) even though she doesn't know how to use them. On one race she broke her chain mid-lap and someone stopped to assist her. He was able to get her going again with her own tools because he knew how to use them, but didn't carry them himself.
Most of the time I will deny carrying anything because I don't really want people to rely on others out on the trails. I was in front of the Brumby distillery on my way to Thredbo when I got a puncture off something sharp on the shoulder of the road. Some guy with a car covered in bicycles stopped to lend me his floor pump. How nice! I was just starting with my mini-pump so the floor pump got me filled with air quickly. He jumped back in his car and drove on. Then my tube exploded out of the unseen large hole in the tyre that caused the original puncture. I ate my snack and used the wrapper as a tyre boot with my one remaining tube. This time I pumped it with the mini-pump. And I turned around and rode back to Jindabyne as any more punctures would see me stranded. In Jindabyne I bought another tyre and grabbed two more tubes from my collection, threw the bike on the car and drove out to where the puncture happened. From there I rode out to Dead Horse Gap and back. In the end I got my full intended ride completed.
The tool that most people seem to want for on the road or trailside is the pump. Not so long ago I had a puncture about halfway home from work. I changed the tube and started pumping it back up when the head broke off the pump and let all the air out of the tyre before I could react to stop it. It was an old pump and the joint between the metal pump body and the quite robust plastic pump head was a pretty delicate looking piece of plastic that must have gone brittle with age. The air pressure as I neared full was sufficient to blow the pump body off the head. I had to get an Uber to get home that day.
On my commuting bike I have gone through several pumps. After the pump broke, I returned to the "frame fit" pump. Only no pump fits a modern carbon frame as there are no sharp corners where the tubes meet to lock the pump into. I had a super-short Zéfal frame pump (size 1 - the smallest) in my spares collection. It happened to fit perfectly between the seat stay:seat tube junction and the through axle lever. Back in the day, lots of people carried a pump between the QR skewer and that same tube junction so they could have 2 bottle cages. That was great until I had a puncture and I must not have returned it to position quite right. I got to work and home a couple of times before one night, in the dark, I heard a noise. I didn't realise that noise was the pump jumping ship until I got home and saw the pump was missing. I looked where it had fallen off the next morning, but some lucky rider had already taken it I guess. Now I am using a mini-floor pump. It doesn't really sit on a frame well. So it lives in my pannier, with a mini tool and some tubes. I've also got one of those tool bottles on the bike with two tubes and some tyre levers inside. If I was really forgetful and didn't take my pannier or a separate pump, I'd still have a supply of tubes and then maybe I could borrow a pump (I know, it's hypocritical of me to not lend my pump but plan to borrow someone else's).
My new Slash has in-the-down-tube storage like so many carbon mountain bikes these days. The opening is not large enough to get a pump of any description that I own inside. There is room in the frame bag to put a pump, but without bending it (pumps don't bend!) it won't actually go in the hole. Tubes do bend - and CO2 cartridges are short: those are what Trek expect me to put in the frame bag. Imminently as I write this I am expecting my warranty replacement Checkpoint frame. The new one has storage in the frame. I believe all the Trek bikes use the same door on the portal. Meaning no pump will go inside of this bike either. Which is kind of sad because it would be so cool to have a pump and a tube always hidden inside the frame.

Take a simple mechanics bike course. Learn how to change a tube, brake pads, adjust rear derailleur, join a chain, tighten a seatpost - simple things that can interfere mid-ride. Then carry the tools to fix those simple things. I'd rather carry them unneeded for years than be without them even once when they're required.

Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

Self sufficiency