Totally tubular

Wednesday, August 20th

#344 / #148

Ha.
I'll bet you thought I'd forgotten about the ride numbers. Nope.

Anyway, Red Leader and I got tired of the extra short valve stems on the cheap tubes we bought earlier this year. And we've had enough flats (thank you, goatheads!) that we were running low on tubes. I read up on Presta valves (did you know they come in different lengths? I did not) and searched Amazon for a good price and free shipping for some Schwalbe tubes.

Why Schwalbe? Because they are one of the few tube manufacturers who state how long the stem is on a given tube. That's why.

It might be our Park Tools floor pump, but neither of us can start a tube from 0 pressure with that thing. So we are always busting out our mini-pumps. We had hoped to avoid the multi-pump tango with the longer stems, but it was not the case. I had another flat starting out (3 in the last 4 rides) and RL decided to change out one of his old tubes (Kenda) for a new one.

Interestingly, to me anyway, Red Leader's tube in his Schwalbe Marathon tires did not want to fill out the tire in the area of the valve. So I told him to stop trying to pull every last millimeter of the valve through the rim, deflated the tube, checked it was not twisted, and did it again. All OK. Now, these tubes are the narrowest that his tires will take, so maybe that was it. But I still think it was his yanking on the valve.

After all that tube-fun, we had a nice ride along the American River Parkway, chatting with one of the usual Saturday Recumbent riders whom I have not seen in ages. He left us in the dust after our chat.

Red Leader might head out on his own on Saturday, or we might ride together today (Friday). We'll see.