Tire Patch
I guess it is a pretty good average considering this is the first flat I have had on the road in 11 years. I was riding the high road with my friends. Of course I left my fancy flat repair kit at home thinking “I won’t need it”, “Do those flat repair kits even work?” and “Marc has a kit if anything goes wrong”. Exiting the town of Vadito on the way to Sipapu, I ran over what looked to be rock in the road. That put me on alert so when the front end became almost impossible to steer I knew I had a flat. I reduced speed and limped to the Sipapu turn off where my buddies were waiting. Marc and Richard had ancient tire repair kits that came with their BMWs so we were ready to do our first on-the-road tire repair.
We put the bike up on the center stand to see where the rear tire had lost air. There was a ¼ inch size round hole in the tire which explained why it lost air so rapidly. The glue that was now moldable rubber was stuffed in the hole and the rubber piece was threaded through the “needle”. The hardest part was inserting the needle with the rubber into the tire. I watched, Marc worked. Once patched we used three CO2 cartridges with only inflated the tire to 16 pounds. We were back on the road in 20 minutes! We went to Sipapu to have lunch as planned.
On the way back, we stopped in Penasco to air up but there is no air in Penasco – so I used 2 more cartridges from Richard’s kit. If you do not read any of this article read this: to inflate a 180 rear tire to a full 36-42 pounds you will need 6-7 cartridges of CO2. Always carry a modern tire repair kit. They do work and although I only watched, I could have repaired the tire myself.