Brought to you by the letter 'D' for Dimwit

New tube and tire levers in hand, this weekend's project was to jaunt over to Bosco's and fix the lame bike that has been there for over a week. The hardest part turned out to be getting the tire off itself. Amazing, that such a simple technique is NOWHERE detailed on the web! There were websites with the very helpful instruction to "pop the tire off" or "remove the tire with the tire levers" (umm, DUH!) and several that even glossed over the whole procedure, jumping straight to removing the tube "After removing the tire...."

My PSA for the day "How to use a tire lever": When repairing a bike tire, place the fat end of one tire lever between the tire and the rim and pull towards you until part of the tire pops over the rim. Repeat this until you have a 2" section. Then wrangle the fat end under this section and pull it around the wheel like a zipper.... the whole tire will slip off effortlessly!

I take no credit for figuring this technique out; it was all Bosco...quite impressive considering it was his first tire change. Even more impressive was his pointing out my incredible folly. When inflating the new tube, I put my Presta valve adapter on the air compressor and fired it up. No air. More adjusting and refitting of the pieces commenced. Not even the slightest whiff of oxygen crawled into the tube. Bosco took a look at the setup, fiddled around a little bit and then had me turn the compressor on once more. Air flooded into the flaccid rubber, creating a giant black hula-hoop. To my horror, the "miracle" that had just been performed was courtesy of adjusting the top valve crown to its open position. Mensa-candidate that I am, I sheepishly asked, if since that let the air IN....it could possibly let the air OUT too?

Yes, it could in fact. When adding air to my tires, I had not closed the valve.... heck I didn't even realize the significance of said piece as this was probably only the 3rd time these tires had been filled; and the other 2 times weren't by me! We had just replaced a perfectly good tire!

And, since I apparently was too busy eating pudding during this episode of Sesame Street, here's a little refresher for everyone else out there. Sorry Bird Bird, I know you tried!


Even Grover didn't get it the first time around!