May 5th, 2008
Puncture Hell
Rode out on Thursday night and picked up some punctures. Fixed four of them Friday evening.
At the same time I fixed a couple of punctures in Zak’s spasticar cripplechariot*.
Eva and ‘Puncture Boy’
Saturday morning and Zak gets another puncture. My rear tyre is flat too, so I find the one I’d missed, fix that, and sort Zaks cart out again.
Sunday morning taking Zak for his walk before we set out for SSUK and he flats again. At Drumlanrig I have some time to kill before the race, and find and fix five punctures in Zaks wheel. I’ve no patches left and still it deflates. I have to buy another set of patches from Rik’s Bike Shed (no 14″ tubes in stock), and, you guessed it, still it goes flat. I find two more I’d missed, and it seems to be holding. Ten minutes later, up by the castle it is flat again.
I have fixed more punctures - fifteen, count ‘em, fifteen - in the past two days than in the past three years. This afternoon shall mostly be spent with a bucket of water and a pile of patches.
* wheelchair.
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May 5th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Seems to be the time of year for punctures. I found at least a dozen thorns in a pram tyre that came in for a new tube the other day.
May 5th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Must be the hawthorns shedding or something - all of ours were thorns.
I can’t believe I’m even considering tubeless, but if someone does a kit for Skyway Tuff 14″ BMX wheels they get my credit card number ;)
May 5th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Thought about bunging tyre liners in there?
May 6th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Just jam a 20″ tube in :-)
May 7th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Tubeless conversion kit and a load of sealant. Job done. Cape Epic tested :)
May 20th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Can Zak still walk unaided or is it total loss of back legs which happened to our alsation too.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Tom,
it’s a total loss of feeling and use in his back legs. The technical term is chronic degenerative reticulo-myelopathy.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Wish I’d known 15 years ago that they could run and be happy with a trailer.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:09 pm
It’s impressive to see him getting on so well with it, despite the apparent mechanical ineptness of his owner ;-)
How does he fair once it’s flat? Have you considered solid tyres?
Dogs are ace aren’t they? No worrying about their condition, just carry on with it.
June 4th, 2008 at 11:14 am
He carries on regardless of whether he has air in the tyres or not, though slightly slower on flats.
I gave up fixing flats in his left hand wheel at 11, especially as he’d also flatted the already repaired right hander again. I went and bought some tubes. When I got the tubes out there were another 5 punctures between the two wheels, bringing his grand puncture total to 20.
With fresh tubes (only one of which had a leaky valve) and 20PSI in his tyres he’s back on form like Valentino Rossi, lifting the inside wheel on corners.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:02 pm
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