Jolt Country

I don't know anything about anything, which is why I have to ask this:

My bike has a flat tire. I have a replacement "tube". And a pump.

How do I fix it?

PUMP IT UP!!

HAHAHAHA. Oh man. That is awesome.

But just to clarify, I believe that the TUBE is punctured or otherwise broke, so I think I need to replace the bad TUBE with the good TUBE.

But I don't know how to do that to a TUBE.

You have never changed a bike tire?


This is incredible...


THE
JAW MEET FLOOR
AARDVARK


(you are just kidding, right. RIGHT!)

Take the wheel off the bike (most bikes have a little lever on the end of the axle that allows you to do this easily), then take the tire and tube off the bike.

If you want to install a new tube instead of just patching the old one, cram the new (deflated) tube into the tire so that the valve is pointing towards the center of the tire.

Replace the tire on the wheel, taking care that (a) the valve goes through the hole in the rim and (b) the tube isn't pinched anywhere between the tire and the rim. The tube should be completely inside the tire.

Inflate the tube. Unless you fucked something up it should be fine.

If you want to just patch the old tube, go down to the hardware store/bike shop and buy an inner tube repair kit. They cost like five dollars and include patches of different sizes, a rasp, and some glue.

To find out where the hole is on the tube, get a bucket of water and put the tube in it. Pump up the tube while it's in the bucket and look for any tiny streams of bubbles coming out of the tube. The bubbles signify the location of the puncture.

Mark the hole with a Sharpie or something, dry the tube off, then use the rasp to lightly roughen up the area around the hole. This helps the patch get a good grip on the tube and makes it much less likely to come off in the future. Be sure not to apply too much pressure when using the rasp or you might really fuck up the tube.

Flatten out the tube. Spread a light coating of glue where you want to apply the patch. Stick the patch on, making sure to adhere it as uniformly as possible.

Inflate the tube to make sure it's going to hold. If all seems well, deflate the tube again and replace the tube and tire as outlined above.

Hope this helps.

Thanks!

No, I've never changed a bike tire.

I'll let you all know how it comes out...

...in PHOTOGRAPH FORM!!!

hygraed is the poster of the year for 2007. I don't care if the next three guys to register are Steve Meretzky, Rickey Jackson and one of Rickey Jackson's 7 kids, this is the earliest done deal since Secretariat defeated an entire track full of horses in a three mile race by four miles.

AArdvark wrote:You have never changed a bike tire?


This is incredible...


THE
JAW MEET FLOOR
AARDVARK


(you are just kidding, right. RIGHT!)

Where did you grow up that you had to change bicycle tires often enough to get good at it, the Nakatomi Plaza Building?

I practically lived on my Schwinn Sting-Ray. I hold the second best record for jumping over neighborhood kids. This involves

1) One shopping cart (stolen) from Rite-Aid.
turn said shopping cart over and prop--
1) One Board. so it makes a ramp.

Place these items in the middle of your back yard, then have several neighborhood friends lie down behind the JUMP (the two boring objects magically transmogrify themselves into something exciting the minute you place them in proximity with each other) the neighborhood friends are side by side, not lengthwise, the ones farthest away from the jump are either better, more trusting friends or just dumber.

Then, starting in the street out front, pedal as fast as you can while avoiding the back gate, which has been propped open for this event, and ride up the jump. You become airborne! Free as a bird, sailing on the winds for about one whole second.

The record was set by my brother on a Schwinn Sting-ray (I had the BMX version with the knobby tires and ball padding on the goose neck) He had a regular Sting-Ray with much better speed. Eight kids. The last one was kinda skinny, thank god, or he woulda landed on his chest.

My record was five kids. Ho hum.

That whole story was to set an example of the bike related stuff that happened when I was a kid. I must have patched or replaced the tubes on my bike once a month or so until I learned to drive.

Remind me to relate the games of bike polo with hockey sticks or the apocalyptic bottle rocket battle while riding doubles. Oh yeah, Also had a paper route at one point. Used the bike for that.


THE
THOSE WERE THE DAYS
AARDVARK

Did you ever, you know, not quite make a jump?

Frequently. The wheels of the shopping cart stuck up on both sides of the board so that the takeoff was kinda tricky. You had to hit the board right down the middle. If you were to catch a pedal around one of the back wheels of the cart then you would be whipped sideways and thrown off the bike. After a while we got pretty good at avoiding painful errors of judgment but the early, experimental part was similar to a Jackass clip. Why we didn't produce a more hazard-free ramp was (and is still) beyond my ken. photo


THE
NOSTALGIA
AARDVARK

Sorry about the huge picture size thing. I thought it would auto- resize or something.

I originally had the picture embedded but the size is unmanageable. I linked it instead for your safety.

The only difference between this image and mine was

no yellow sticker reminding about wet stopping distances
no hand brakes
no front fender
metal pedals, not rubber, known as rat-traps
not as good condition as the one shown



THE
I'M HUGE
AARDVARK

Well, turns out, all it needed was to have "air" pumped into the "tire". This seemed to work pretty well.

Since pumping air into a tire is somewhat anticlimactic after all this, I didn't bother doing a photographic journal of the event.

In it's place, here is a picture of a one-armed meerkat that we saw at the San Diego Zoo last weekend:

Ah. Well, you see, by specifically stating that you had a tube, you led me to believe that you had already ascertained that it was indeed the tube which was at fault. Crafty indeed, good sir. Crafty indeed.

Well, it was weird, cuz it was all: A couple weeks after I rode the bike, I saw that the back tire was completely flat. Since this had never happened before -- usually it stayed at least a little full for months and months and months, I assumed that it was broke.

Then when I went out yesterday to fix it, I noticed that BOTH tires were completely flat. This seemed to indicate that it was not a problem with the tire being broke, but that somehow, in the atmosphere in our garage, tires just go flat really quick.

So I pumped it up, and bingo. Bike.

pinback wrote:a one-armed meerkat

I bet there's a really funny story behind that.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:hygraed is the poster of the year for 2007. I don't care if the next three guys to register are Steve Meretzky, Rickey Jackson and one of Rickey Jackson's 7 kids, this is the earliest done deal since Secretariat defeated an entire track full of horses in a three mile race by four miles.

As of today, Rickey Jackson is an NFL HALL OF FAMER.

Anyone that can post a picture of a one armed meerkat in the stead of a bicycle tire and come off totally cool about it deserves to be in the poster HOF. With an asterisk, of course.



THE
THAT'S NOT A BALONEY SANDWICH!
AARDVARK