Punctures, punctures and more punctures

It's a long walk home with a flat tyre.

Last week I had more mishaps in the puncture sense than I've had in the whole of the year.Starting on Wednesday night with Dougie and Mark, my bikes tyres seemed to find every hidden sharp object that could pierce the rubber and render the sealant inside the tubeless tyres useless. On Sunday the misery continued when I was out with Baz and Clive and the vocabulary of foul language was excercised to the full. I ended up doing a 6.5 mile journey back home with a bit of walking and a bit of sprint biking after blowing up the front tyre about 15 times and managing about 400 yards at the most before it went flat again! There's been a fairish bit of repair work going on to the tyres as they've still got a lot of tread on them and I've discovered that a big hole can be repaired back to tubeless status with a patch vulcanised on the inside and super glue to stick the rubber together on the outside. O rings are easily made with super glue to any size from round lengths of rubber and never break so why not use it on tyres, that's my theory anyway and it seems to work! Clives' bike was given a makeover with a new chain set and bottom bracket, my method of press fit bottom bracket removal wasn't pretty (it involved a hammer and a punch) but it was effective and the bike's running sweet again. Another happy customer with the usual 5 minute guarantee or the extended one which goes to the end of last week. At least one bit on the plus side last week in that I passed the 5k mark in off road miles for the year so now I can relax a bit and it can snow if it wants!