decidedlyodd

After getting my bike back this morning, I decided I should go for a ride. 20 feet down the road, I stop to adjust my seat (since the guy moved it when he replaced the tube) and hear a loud hissing. Fucking thing is leaking again! I go back home, annoyed and shortly the tire is totally flat. The same exact tire as before. Arg.

I ate some lunch, regrouped and back down to the bike shop. At first, when I explained the story to the gal working up front, she asked “so when did we fix your tire?” Oh, about 3 hours ago… “oh ya, I remember now”… Hmmmm… The mechanic takes off the tire and shows me a rusty staple stuck in the tire. He claims that I must have picked up on the driveway, because a sharp straight object like that would have blown the new tube as soon as he put it in and inflated it. I see his point, but I’m still skeptical. I’ve ridden that bike over 224km (and I rode many times before I got the speedometer working) and never had a flat. Yet, 30 seconds of riding on a new tube, it starts to leak? The guy was pretty cool about it all though. He just charged me for the new tube and I was on my way.

Hopefully, there won’t be any new surprises with this tube. I really should just buy some extra tubes, a pump and that tool you pry the tire off with so that I can fix my own flats in the future. At least throughout this whole ordeal, I’ve mastered taking the front wheel off to put the bike in my car…