As my adventures in bike maintenance continue, it never fails to amaze me how something so simple as fixing a puncture on my bike seems to throw up a new problem every single time. But as puncture season (approximately October to September round here) continues in full swing, the surprises continue, and now I’ve apparently got an intermittent puncture which is a new one on me.
I’ve long argued that there’s no such thing as a self-fixing puncture, although I also believe in ekeing out a slow puncture for as long as I can, mainly because as soon as you actually repair them you just get another one. So when I set off home from the Pepperpots last week and discovered my back tyre was flat as a pancake, I pumped it up (hooray for the miracles of my tiny folding track pump) and took it home, meaning to deal with it later. The next morning it was still apparently holding air so I assumed it was just a very slow puncture and took the bike into town and back. The next day it was a little soft so I pumped it up and then we seemed to settle into the normal pattern of pumping it up daily until I had the time and the energy to fix it properly. Fast forward to the end of this week and it suddenly went flat on me after five miles. Fair enough, slow punctures usually become fast ones in the end, so I pumped up enough to get home and resolved to fix it at the weekend.
Anyway, this afternoon I duly took the back wheel off, removed the (once more flat) inner tube and started hunting for the culprit, to no avail. No hiss of air when I pumped up the tube. No tell-tale bubbles when I dunked it in a bucket of water, not even from the valve. And nothing inside the tyre that might have caused the puncture in the first place. Odd. This tube does have slime in it (apparently, the bike shop replaced it when I was getting the bike serviced) but I can’t see any sign of where it might have sealed up a hole. Or work out how it could do it while the bike was sitting in the garage with a flat tyre. But if I couldn’t find the puncture I couldn’t fix it so all I could do was put the tyre back on, pump it up again, and hope for the best. Perhaps my bike just wanted the attention. Or decided I needed the practice. Either way, we will see what tomorrow brings.
Meanwhile, I do have Tannus inserts on order, which I hope will sort the problem out for once and for all. Although I do realise that the Puncture Fairy laughs in the face of such optimism.