I was getting a bit Nutsy, but it’s 8 o’clock and all’s well.
The vast, vast majority of out-there bicycle mechanicals start with maintenance. Maintenance performed speciously. Maintenance deferred to the point of disaster. A crack uninspected, a fraying cable left to unravel, a flaccid disc brake lever that can be pumped up to perform until it can’t – all just waiting to become a JRA.
As much as I carry as many tools into the woods as anyone I know, I loathe the rare occasions when these sorts of cycling catastrophes unfold upon me. The time all the alloy nipples on my ENVE wheel disintegrated and my spokes started pulling out with the threads unscathed comes to mind. How the heck did I miss that happening?
And so, you’ll understand that recounting this failure in basic maintenance is just a touch painful for me. All the same, I love it when products perform as expected so I figured I’d share.
To be completely fair, to me, the story actually starts with some performance-enhancing preventative maintenance. I’ve had the same SKS Airboy in my pack for a long while now and the other day when I used it to pump up the Clairebarian’s tire a touch before a ride I notice the action was getting a bit sticky.
Now, by most metrics, this pump doesn’t owe me a thing but I’m certainly not going to replace it while I can still eke a few hundred more cycles out of it so, as I have done before, I opened it up and rubbed a nice sheen of Slickoleum onto the seals. Pump, pump, ah yes there’s that beautiful action I remember!
As you’ve likely already guessed, the first failure in this tale of woe-turned-wonder is not my SKS pump dying at an unfortunate time. Rather, I failed to put it back in my pack post-service and the smug cylinder thought nothing of just sitting there on my workbench without so much as a quiet reminder.
As I roll out of work on Saturday night, after one or few beers, I immediately notice that my Waltworks is steering a bit slowly. But then, it was a long day and the 2.8″ WTB Vigilante is about as far from being a smooth pavement-friendly tire as they come so I put it out of my mind and kept on spinning. I even did a long stretch of road with no hands on the bars.
I really notice something is up when I popped out of the saddle to attack the first wave in the assembled army of uphills that take me up from sea level to home. Yep, my tire is flat-flat-flat. I pull over and open the valve and there isn’t so much as a pianissimo psssst to placate my peevishness. I pull over and proceed to thrice vacate my pack before remembering my pump is still on my workbench. “MERDE!”
Now, I’ve run-flat-ridden CushCore equipped bikes downhill before both on purpose to test it (front & rear) and by necessity (rear only) with really good results (rear only) and a better-than-walking experience from the front. But, I’ve never done any real climbing with air voided and there are certain spots I have to stand to climb on the way home on my #1FG.
So up I went. It squirbled around whilst out of the saddle on the gravel climb. It garum-garum-garumed loudly rolling along on the flat pavement. Then it did the shimmy-shimmy-shake-and-quake when I had to hit the brakes hard coming down the hill when a car lept out of its driveway. Finally, without event and only a bit slower than usual I arrived at home. No pushing involved and no phone call begging for a pick-up.
Then the next day I topped up the tubeless sealant and solved the problem with more permanence. Well, at least for six months until the sealant is dried out again. Phew.