Having said that. It was a cooler morning so I decided to check the air pressure in my tires before heading out for my morning ride to the transit station. I usually need to leave the house by 4:30 in order to bike to the station, lock up the bike and get in line for the bus. So, at 4:15 I locked the front door and headed into the garage. When I checked the pressure in the front tire, it was as I had suspected, a little low so I pumped her up, checked again and moved to the rear tire. It too was a little low so I pumped it up as well. However, I could NOT remove the pump from the stem to save my life! At first I just thought it was a little stuck (like you can be a little pregnant...right?), anyway, I pulled and pulled, yelled at it to "LET GO!", cursed loudly, watched the time tick by and also, to my dismay, watched a tiny bit of the tube pop through the stem hole. I had pulled too hard. Too much vigor. Too much anger. This is not good, I thought to myself. Then it appeared. A tiny bubble...and it started to grow and within a minute my tire had blown! Shit! Thankfully my car DID start and I was able to drive to the transit station to catch the bus (it's been forever since I've driven my car so I wasn't too sure it would turn over).
(click for biggerness!)(Scene change....Later in the day after work...)
Let me further explain, I had yet,up until this point, ever fixed my own flat on my own bike. So I thought about this all day at work. I knew I wanted to try and fix it myself, be self sufficient, etc, etc. I also knew that I would need to remove the wheel to do it, further more the real wheel, which meant I would need to deal with the chain and the derailleur. Oooo scary!
After getting home from work I changed out of my clothes and into sweats and headed out to the garage. After a good long look at the rear wheel and replaying in my head everything I had read earlier in the day online about how to remove the wheel, handle the chain and fix a flat, I dug in. Got the wheel off, laid the bike down on it's left side to protect the derailleur and proceeded to remove the tire from the wheel in order to extract the tube. After 20-30 minutes of hand greasy fun I was finished, wheel on, pumped up to 40 lbs (all we could do with our little hand pump). Feeling mighty proud of myself and looking at my WHOLE bike all put back together we find an extra part on the garage floor! Shit! Shit! Well, I don't know where it goes, don't remember it even being on there...but what the hell!...I have David load up the bike onto the back of the car and drive me to the bike shop. There he (aka the bike guy at the shop) looks at my bike, looks at the part and says it doesn't come from a bike at all (later we discover it's part of our garage door...who knew?). The bike guy said I did a great job and pumped up my tire the rest of the way to 80lbs for me and we left on our way. I gave her a test spin when I got home, it held! Again, I am super proud of me!! However...still can't get all the grease off...
Until later...Peace out!
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