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By far one of the biggest cycling downers is a flat tire. A flat can put a damper on any ride. It also sucks when you go to grab your bike only to realize a slow leak has rendered you unable to hop on and ride. This happened with both my front and back tire this past week on back to back days. Ugh!

One of the biggest enemies of a plump tire is a shard of glass. Whether you know or not, you probably pick up shards all the time. A big one will put you out of commission immediately, but small shards of glass can get embedded in your tire and over time, continued riding will force the shard deeper and deeper until it sinks its sharp edges into your helpless tube.

One thing you can do to avoid this is to use some down time to remove the shards. All you have to do is remove all the air from your tire, pinch your tire, and scrape the shards out. I find that a really cold beer and a sporting event on T.V. makes the chore very enjoyable. After my two flats this past week I decided it was time to spend some time pinching. Here you can see a glass shard that is embedded, but had not made it’s way through the tire quite yet.

A simple pinch and scrape with a fingernail and the problem is solved.

This was a particularly nasty one that left a pretty big crater in the tire. If a shard does puncture the lining of the tire, you can take a piece of duct tape and put it inside your tire. While I would not recommend this if the tire is in really bad shape, if it’s just a small hole it can help to extend tire life.

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Filed Under: commuting, maintenance