Inner-Tube Torment

There’s something soul-destroying about the soft fishtail feeling that means your back tyre’s on its way down. As with any mechanical you can try and ignore it, but it won’t be long before you start bouncing on the rim, and you have to accept you’re in for a puncture repair.

You might get away with a patch, but when the inner tube you take out looks like this then you’re almost certainly going to have to replace it.

I am not bad at changing or fixing inner tubes. I can do it pretty fast, and have been known to do it in all kinds of conditions on a mountain bike. However I have developed a nemesis in the form of the, otherwise excellent, Continental slicks I use on my commuting bike. I seem to be unable to do anything with them simply – they’re incredibly tight on the rims and make it next-to impossible to fit new tubes without pinching it between the rim and the tyre and having to start all over again.

I settled into a session with the rubber.

After puncturing and then fixing one tube three times I gave up and left it over night. To be honest it wasn’t a brilliant inner tube, let’s face it, if you inflate it out of the bike and it makes a shape like this then you start to realise that buying a cheap tube is perhaps a false economy.

Getting up early to find the tyre flat again, against all of my hope that it would magically stay up, I headed off to my nearest bike shop.

Equipped with two new, and better branded, tubes and a fresh puncture repair kit I settled in again.

Once again the tube pinch-punctured on the first attempt.

I fixed the hole and tried again, this time trying to work the opposite way from everything you’re told, and finishing at the valve. This seemed to work, at the expense of a tyre lever which snapped, and I was able to set of to work.

By the time I got to work the tyre was soft again. This displeased me. I calmed down through the morning and then decided on a lunchtime attempt.

Lunchtime brought the discovery of another hole, and the remains of the snapped tyre lever, although the two were, strangely, not connected. It also brought some puncture repair zen moments, another wrestling match with the tyre and an afternoon of crossed fingers that this time I’d got it right.

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