Day 41: So many punctures today so go tubeless which causes more problems
I should stop thinking days will be easy as that is just asking for trouble. The day started with having to deal with about 100 ants inside my tent. After I solved this, I discovered something had eaten through some of my food bags which I had put in a very very shitty bear box in the camp. I guess maybe mice or squirrels.
When I did hop on my bike, the rear tire was flat. So I pumped it up hoping it wasn’t a puncture. I then followed Garmin’s directions for 3 kms through walkways along the park which was nice until I hit a dead end that Garmin didn’t know about and had to retrace my steps. A pointless 6km but all good, the day was young and was a good warm up for the legs.
Maybe 5 kms later and the rear tire was flat again. So I patched the tube, did a quick check for glass/etc in the tube and was off again. This time last month I had never patched a tube before. LOL!
About 10 kms later the same thing happened again. So did another tube patching session. I am getting good at this! My arms were getting tired from all this pumping of the tires tho. At this point I decided to reroute to the nearest bike shop and go tubeless. I would need to do this anyway for Baja and why not now to give myself some experience of tubeless in the relative safety of the USA.
After chatting at the bike shop, we decided to just go tubeless on the rear tire for now. After converting my tubeless ready tires to tubeless, we had to wait for the sealant to work. I guess all those punctures over the last few weeks need to be sealed in. After an hour or so, when it appeared to work, I rolled it as far as the door and felt the tires needed to be pumped again. Pumping them seemed to reopen one of the punctures but we decided that maybe cycling on it for a while might fix it. The mechanic sold me some more sealant just in case.
Not 3 minutes later, the pressure was gone again from the tires and the sealant was pouring out. I tried inflating it but 3 mins later I was in the same position again. But at least now we are in the process of learning tubeless stuff so it feels somewhat productive. I need to go through this process at some point anyway. I guess that maybe I had lost loads of sealant so I took off my wheel again to add the spare sealant I had. I added maybe 20 psi of pressure. Wanted to add more but couldn’t get the gauge to go above 20 so decided to try this.
This kinda worked. Had no more problems and could roll slowly to my hostel for the night. I had decided yesterday that I would stay in a hostel tonight so this decision is unrelated to tire problems. After checking in I go to the RSI store to pick up more sealant just in case as well as a couple of other things. I asked if they could do a service but they told me it would be a few days which is a no go. I asked if they would pump up my tires to proper pressure which they did which again blew out one of the old punctures and leaked a load more sealant all over their shop. The mechanic did a quick fix by spinning the wheel and apologized that he didn’t have the time to take a proper look but said I need to get it checked properly.
We will see how the tire is in the morning. But I guess I should take a rest day here to try to solve this problem if I am anyway unsure in the morning. Am in Santa Barbara which is a big town so there should be loads of bike shops. Also will need more storage capacity on the bike which proberbly means getting a front rack. Will check this tomorrow too.
Today was a 40ish km day. Hostel is good. Met a USA guy called Jacob on a round the world bike tour but currently working at the hostel to save up money for his next leg. Currently someone is playing panio and singing in the common area. First hostel of my trip so far and definitely a different vibe to camping.
