Bike tyres, and sperm whales
Adventures in compressed air
“Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe. — The Hollies”
The Sperm whale is able to hold her breath for up to an hour and a half as she dives into the great unknown deep watery abyss in search of food for herself and her baby calf. Upon reaching the surface once more the great whale expels her spout of misty breath high into the atmosphere and then takes in some more again, inflating her gigantic lungs back to capacity, in order to dive down once more.
But this is the story of a bike tyre, or inner tube, if we are to be correct. Perhaps a rather large stretch around the bike wheel as a point of comparison, but bear with me. I own a folding electric bicycle and I ride it to work every day, when it is not raining, and when my tyres aren’t flat. Lately the rain has stayed away, but alas, my back tyre has been expelling that air like one great, long revolving whale, forever coming to the surface.
It is perhaps because the majority of the weight of the bike, the battery and electric motor and myself seated on the back, is positioned towards the back, that there have been so many times I have had a flat back tyre in the lifetime of this bicycle. A while ago I even got sick of taking it in to get fixed at the bike shop and ordered a few inner tube replacements over the Internet. One of these tubes had a special green slime inside that was supposed to harden once exposed to air and so prevent the tube from going flat in the event of a puncture. This could have worked well, but I never got the chance to test the green slime tube, as the valve broke off one time when I was inflating it and the slime went everywhere.
I also had a hell of a time removing and refitting my back wheel. So I decided to just leave it to the professionals after that. And this worked well, until they “fixed” a puncture one time but I noticed that my back wheel was deflating slowly, day after day. The new inner tube they had fitted must have had a tiny hole in it. I thought about taking it back in, but instead I just lived with it, pumping it back up to full capacity every few days or so. For months this slow breathing in and out went on, just like rhythms of the whale. It was fine. Until one day, a few weeks ago, the breathing became too heavy. I was almost home, but my tyre was flat. I had to walk the rest of the way and grab my van to go pick up my bike.
Over the Christmas holidays I had some spare time and decided, what the hell, I’ll try patching up my tyre again. So I did, and it was great, and for a moment it seemed like the air inside had been contained. It wasn’t slowly leaking out any more. I rejoiced. But the moment was fleeting. Just a few days later, on my way to work for the first time in the new year, along the bike track, someone had left a nail there and it had gone straight into my back tyre. Another flat! How unfortunate. I locked up my bike at the Roma Street Parklands took an electric scooter the rest of the way to work.
I would try to patch my back tyre again. And it worked, again. And then again the air went out once more. This time I had successfully made it to work tyre inflated, but then by the end of the day it was flat flat flat. I was pretty much ready to give up.
Last Saturday I tried to take my bike to the bike shop, just because I was sick of dealing with the problem. Was this a sign from the universe not to ride or something? It was getting ridiculous. And of course, the bike shop was closed.
One last try!
I still had two inner-tubes that I ordered online sitting under the house. These were special thick thorn resistant ones. This time getting the back wheel off and back on again wasn’t too difficult. I pumped it up at last and it was all good. All this week we’ve stayed inflated.
But for how long?
And if you’ve made it this far through my long-winded rant about my the back tyre of my electric bike I want to heartily congratulate you. Like the sperm whale holding her breath, you’ve dived to the depths of inanity and survived.
Congratulations, you may now come back up for air.
