Project 365 Day 147: Always Be Prepared

And as a co-requisite to "Always Be Prepared" one should also remember "Always know what the heck you're doing." Let me explain.

Tonight we were riding our bicycles back from an evening at Cafe Diem downtown. It was a beautiful night for a bike ride, and was actually a tad chilly for shorts and t-shirts on the way back. As we're cruising down the path along 24th street back towards our house, I notice my ride starts to feel a little odd and soon I realize that I have a flat tire.

No worries though, because I am prepared! About a month ago, after Amy experienced a flat on her bike very close to home, we got a couple of spare tubes and a portable air pump to take with us on rides, so that in an event such as this one, we'd be able to change the tube on the spot and not have to walk bikes home on flat tires, or get a car and then come back to get the bike.

Now we were less than a mile from home and could have easily just walked the bikes to the house with the flat tire, but I'm thinking it'd be good practice for RAGBRAI to stop and change the tube on the spot. This way I would know if we really had everything we'd need to change a tube with us. So we pull off into a parking lot close by, and I start changing the tube out. As I get the tire off the bike, I find the culprit of the flat in the picture above, a nail that I was unlucky to ride over. You can also see the old tube with the puncture wound close by.

So I struggle with getting the tire and flat tube off the steel rim, and then I struggle with getting the tire and new tube back on to the steel rim. For this last act, I decide to whip out my trusty Leatherman multi-tool (knife, screwdriver, martini swirler, etc) to get a little leverage. I extend the flathead screwdriver tool, wedge it between the rubber tire and the steel rim, wiggle it a little, and then I hear this:

"Fwoosh"

Uh oh. I've just punctured the new tube, which I had inflated slightly inside the tire to give it some shape. So now I've got two useless tubes on my hand, one flat by an Act of God, and one flat by Act of Foolishness On Adam's Part.

We ended up walking the bikes home, mine on a flat tire, anyway. But we also learned some valuable lessons:

1. Being prepared for anything includes practicing and learning from your mistakes.
   
2. There is no problem a Leatherman multi-tool cannot solve. Unless that problem is getting a bicycle tire and tube back on a rim.
3. For crying out loud, get a real tire-changing tool and don't use a sharp Leatherman screwdriver head for leverage near a bicycle tube! Who would ever do that? Geez!