JQR’s secret city

Ongoing repair work in Upper Manhattan extends past the 181st Street IRT station to the handball courts in Fort Washington Park,
near 158th St:

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Twice in a week on the ride downtown, my friend has run into these giant metal flat-causing objects: the first one, the bobby-pin shaped thing, actually did not itself puncture the tube: the pictured object had run itself into one of the rubber studs on the tire and out again, without puncturing anything airtight. A similar one had gone in at a deeper angle, passed through the tube and out again, and left two holes. I only found the pictured one while inspecting the tire after patching the flat.
 
Today's evil coil of wire had such a latent desire to come along on our journey, it had managed to lodge one end of itself into the tire and through the tube. I could hear the other end flapping against the bottom of the luggage rack as she rode along. A hundred meters later, she halted, and I held it the coil in place while deflating the tube, then popped the bead off the rim and saw it projecting a half-inch through the tire and into the tube.
 
While I glued on the patch, she went to investigate: apparently as the workmen resurfacing the handball court scrape the cyclone-fence door open and shut, the metal pieces break off and stay in the pathway, waiting to ambush passing cyclists using the Hudson River Greenway. 
 
Maybe slick tires are the answer, because the detritus seems to stick between the studs and work itself into the tube. Any thoughts?
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Flat_me.zip (776 KB)

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I know my current audience for bike-related news and tidbits is just
about zero, but bear with me here: last night while mounting a new
tire I blew out my old and broken-down wheel's rim. This has never
happened before to me. Pictures follow.

 More embarrassing perhaps was that I was on the phone at the time,
with a relative.

 Or is it more embarrassing that for the first time in five years (at
least) I have a bike-repair problem that has made the bike completely
unrideable? When I started riding, this would happen all the time, but
lately I've been able to ride to the shop for repairs, even the last
time the frame was cracked; I noticed the swaying motion and rode down
to the shop to mount the wheels and parts onto a new frame. So no loss
in ride time.

 Earlier in the weekend I had swapped out the front wheel for a new
one; the old wheel had been visibly worn down around the outside of
the rim where the brakes land. I hadn't noticed it so much on the rear
wheel, but I guess that one was about ready to go as well. The tire
had a large rent on the side, which had caused a puncture over the
weekend. Yesterday morning I had mitigated that problem by putting a
boot into the tire (nice piece of thick cotton fabric) to keep the
tube from exploding out the hole in the tire. It was OK except for a
rattle where the extra-fat part, with the boot, scraped the fender on
every revolution.

 The only saving grace is that of all possible days to take transit to
work, today is perhaps the best possible one; the Michael Jackson
memorial events will occlude my favorite parking spot during the day
today (Tuesday). Last week I was able to move my bike just before
folks started filing into the corral that included the parking meter
where I'd locked up the pony. Some lowlife, however, stole my bungee
cord from off the luggage rack at the second-choice parking spot.

   

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Bwanggg_Compressed_air_and_fre.zip (63 KB)

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For my visual learners out there, here's a slideshow about
Presta-valve tubes. They come in differing stem lengths, and I usually
end up with many tubes on hand, all of the wrong length. Not an
insuperable obstacle, however; watch the slides for details.

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I fixed another rear-wheel flat this afternoon. This one was a
good-sized tear right by the valve, forcing the issue of whether to
patch the tube or to replace it. So I duped my buddy Tom into helping
me with the chain tension by first listening to him tell me about his
Ancient Order of Hibernians chapter and then telling him about this cylinder recording of Edward Meeker singing 'The A.O.H's. [sic] of the U.S.A.' from 1915.
 
It was a little tricky because the new tube had a shorter valve stem
than the punctured tube, and its business end was just peeking out of
the tube, not far enough to attach the pump. So I remembered a trick
I'd used before and pulled out the Schraeder adapter, which was able
to screw onto the end of the valve and allow me to fill the tube with
air anyway.
 
The funny thing is that I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering if
there was some kind of bad mojo that had caused my flat. I keep having
to remind myself, "There's plenty of air in the tube. I could hit a
shard of glass or a staple any time. I had enough air in there for a
week, so it's not like there was some kind of slow leak. It's a tear
in the tube and there's nothing I can do about it."

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I apologize in advance for the annoying camera strap that gets in
picture no. 3, but if you can ignore that, you can see the business
part just fine.
 
My new thing is to stick a safety pin gently into the puncture and
leave it there while I sand and spread the glue. That way I never lose
track of where the hole is. When I pull it out, I get a nice obvious
glue bubble too, which makes it easy to center the patch on the hole.
 
Picture no. 1 is the tube at the puncture site, picture no. 2 is me
cleaning out the inside of the tire with a rag (use a cloth rag that
will catch on anything stuck through the tire), picture no. 3 is the
safety pin in place.
 
In retrospect, I think I must have done a shoddy job of cleaning out
the inside of the tire, because I discovered another slow leak this
morning when I got back on the pony after my dentist visit. My gauge
told me it had gone from 100 psi to 60 psi in three hours, so I filled
it up again, went to the post office and to lunch, and then patched
the new hole in the siesta hour after lunch. (I would have
photographed that exercise except that I ran out of batteries after
this morning's series.)

     

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New_wrinkle_for_flat-tire_fix.zip (365 KB)

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