Day 77: Learn How To Change A Tire

     Remember that thing I said about me knowing just about nothing when it comes to cars? Well, that kind of translates into bicycles. I guess I'm just mechanically inclined. And that sucks because (unlike cars) I really enjoy ridding my bike. I wish I was one of those guys that could tinker with the moving parts without fear of demolishing my bike. I've tried to do some pretty basic renovations to a couple bikes, like painting it or changing the handlebars, putting a new chain on or messing with the sensitivity of the brakes. It seems like each time I screwed with any part of the bike, it turns straight to poop. My basement is littered with the carcases of old bike projects that never really took off. I hope that it's only a matter of time before I actually learn a thing or two about bikes because I'm around them quite a lot. So my front tire was flat the other day and I watched my friend Mac change out the tire tub in a matter of minutes. He made it look easy, like, real easy. He unscrewed the bolts that held the tire in place, plopped the tire off of the rim with the slicing of some nifty lil' tool, he placed the new tube in place and inflated it just a little before putting it back on the rim. It looked so easy in fact, that I thought that when I needed to change my back tire today, that it would be too easy of a challenge to count. My mindset was like, "OK, just switch these tires right quick and think about what new thing you could do before work". It would have been like that if I knew what I was doing.

      I went to Walmart to acquire the tube, but I couldn't remember what size my bike was. So I texted Mac and asked him. I was waiting for his reply while browsing the different sizes and shapes of tubes. After a while I suspected that he wouldn't get to reply because he was at work. Thats when I took my best guestament about what size I needed and just picked one and bought it. I wasn't very sure it would fit but I didn't think I had any other options. I was walking to the car in the parking lot when I got the reply from Mac, and of course, my shot-in-the-dark of a guess was completely wrong. Apparently I needed 700x25c. So, I walked back inside and explained to the greeter lady that I suck with bikes. She let me exchange the tube for the right one and sent me on my way. So now I had gotten the easy part out of the way. I gathered my tool box and set up camp in the garage. Basically, I tried to imitate, step-by-step, how Mac remedied the situation before. I got to the part where he used that nifty lil' tool to get the tire off when I realized that I didn't own one, which isn't nifty at all. I fumbled with it for way too long and ended up using two flat head screwdrivers to pop the tire off. Changing out the tubes wasn't hard, but getting the tire back on was about as much fun as my jazz midterm. I fumbled with it with the use of my thumbs and the screwdrivers until satisfied. Then it was time to pump that baby up. After I filled it up, I took it for a test ride and noticed a large bulge in one spot on the tire. It felt like I was ridding over a prairie dog (a pretty small one) with my back tire every other second. So it took a good 3 or 4 attempts of me deflating and re-inflating the tire to get the bulge to go away. For the most part, that was it. I rode it to work and to my friends house that night to test the integrity of my patch job. I made it there and back so I'd say it was a success. My tire changing skills are pretty bad compared to Mac's pit crew speed, but at least I got it done. Ah yea!