The bead came off the rim, the tube swelled out the side and wrapped around the axle, but I didn’t get the cameraphone out before it exploded…
Archive for the ‘bike’ Category
Hall Ranch blowout
Tuesday, May 20th, 20081st trip back (not so baby steps)
Monday, April 28th, 2008Way back when; seems like the dawn of time now; I was told by a famous and skilled surgeon that it would be 6 months after the surgery before I could start to work on getting back to my previous fitness level. He was about right. 6 months, and my first bike trip out to Moab with the team. I took my place at the back of the peloton.
A couple bad crashes, and cleaned a couple things I’ve never managed before. I’ve had better trips, but I’ve also had worse. My knee held up pretty well; I joined the body armor crew, though just knee pads. I was mighty grateful at least once.
We checked out the shiny new Free Lunch trail in GJ on the way out. I didn’t hit the big stuff, but had a little fun anyway:
Presta inflator on the cheap
Thursday, April 10th, 2008One of the best things I got from my brother when he moved out of his huge house into a small apartment was his compressor. It’s amazing how useful air is.
So most bike tires these days have presta valves, which are not nearly so easy to deal with as schraeder valves like those on cars. There are adapters that sort of convert presta to schraeder, but they’re kind of a cumbersome, and I wanted something more convenient. Surfing around, I found a tool that does it commercially available for $50.
But since I already have a blower tool, and I’m terminally cheap, I decided to try build one for less.
Voila:
And just screwing around a little, I turned it into an Instructable.
Baby steps
Monday, February 11th, 2008My knee has been feeling pretty good in the last week, aligning this weekend with warm temps and very little wind, so I put flats on it and took the hardtail out for a spin. I gotta say that after years with clipless, the flats just killed me. Or maybe that was the surgery.
Eventually I got to a section of trail still in meltdown; PPDM (postponed due to mud).
