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Sunday, June 14, 2009

«Fucked Over By This Town Again»

So I had bought a new bicycle at Costco while on my vacation. (Click an image to view full.)
New bicycle from Costco.

This picture was taken outside of Junction City, Oregon on May 17th, 2009.

I get it home to Ketchikan and it's not too long I get a flat front tire. It's nothing I ran over. It turns out the little rubber rim liner was off center, so when the tube was inflated it caused 2 little half-circle cuts in it. (Picture below)
The culprit for my flat tire.
Ok, so I straiten that out, and I go buy new tube at the Tongass dock store; there is no bike shop in town. Turns out the new tube has some sort of funky Presta valve that I can't air up anywhere. And no, I can't buy a foot pump or an adapter in this town that will fit a presta valve, either.

So, the next day (today) I bring back the tube. They didn't have a tube of the correct size (700c) with the common Schrader valve, so I went to the local Walmart (the only other place that sells bike parts). They had one style of tube that was the 700c size and had the Schrader valve. So I buy that. However, because my bike rims are "deep dish", the valve stem of this new tube is not long enough.
Valve stem too short for deep dish style rims.
So I'm fucked over by the limited options in this town again. I'm so pissed right now...

And no, I'm not going to patch the old tube. Every patch1 I've tried on a bike tube has failed, and so I don't trust them.

1: "Every patch" in this case refers to the only patch I've tried. The fact still remains that I don't trust bicycle tube patches, and I refuse to use them.

3 comments:

  1. That sucks. How long does the stem need to be? I would think if it is poking up at all, that is good enough to fill it. No?

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  2. I must have every kind of bike spare part in my garage, but they are always inventing something new. Usually I carry the long stem prestas, but little will protect me from flats. One reason I took up trail running was to save on the costs. Maintaining a road bike is almost as expensive as maintaining a car if you ride a lot!

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  3. @ Monique: No, I need enough sticking up to get an air hose over and seated onto it.

    @ Looney: I seem to be cursed. I literally can't go 100 miles before something happens. The pedal arm stripped and came off of my old bike. It wouldn't be such a big deal if there was a bike shop in town, or at least somewhere I can get parts!

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