I Got a Bike

08/06/15

Yesterday, I finally got around to grabbing my dirty, flat-tired bike and getting it ride-ready.

The bottom parts of the tires had a nice coat of dried mud on them, and there were spider-webs and various debris all over the bike itself. I took the bike over to my hose and rinsed it off. I then took each tire off and rinsed those off.

I then took the tires off, and rinsed out the insides. I believe an ant colony may have been living in the back-tire.

I also managed to find a thorn embedded in the back-tire, which led to the fateful flat that led me to switch to busing almost a year ago.

I lined the wheels with "never-flat" bike-tire protectors, grabbed a replacement tube, and started reconstructing the wheel. I put the reconstructed wheel on the bike, and went through the same process with the other one.

I then inflated the tires. First the front, then the back. While inflating the back tire, I heard a very loud pop, as if someone had exploded a balloon right at my left eardrum. My left ear throbbed for a good minute. Just thinking about it now makes that ear hurt.

At first I didn't understand what happened. The tire still had air pressure. After careful inspection of the tire, I had found that I did not careful enclose the tube within the tire, and the bit that was outside the tire had exploded violently, but the pressure from within the tire had sealed that giant hole, allowing pressure to remain in the tire.

I had momentarily considered still riding it, for various reasons, but had decided that I could spend a bit of today grabbing a new tube and not risk my back tire suddenly losing air pressure, or worse.

Overall, however, the bike looks like its in decent shape. I can't wait to start riding it. What's great is switching back to a bike will save me about $42 a month. As long as personal bike maintenance is below that, this will be a profitable as well as healthy transportation switch. And I believe maintenance costs will be much lower than that.

I just bought some chain lube, a chain wear measurement device, and some degreaser for less than the cost of a monthly bus pass, and I won't have to buy more of any of those things for a good long while.

Though, I will have to slowly build my bike maintenance tools, so I won't be seeing 100% of that $42 savings per month. Still, though, the stuff I buy will lead to the building of some new skill, however minor, whereas a bus pass just gave me a buffet of bus rides per month. Definitely a worthwhile trade on my part.