One Less Brain Thorn

Good memories often come with souvenirs. Sometimes, the bad memories have souvenirs too. I got rid of one by sneezing.

If you're the sort of person who gets grossed out, have no fear. This isn't a gross post. Only certain types of surprises are allowed in my posts.

This post is about a spooky front tire on my bicycle. Halloween is coming up, and supernatural forces did make the short list of probable factors, but this isn't a violent kind of spooky. It's the head game kind of spooky. Head game surprises are allowed.

I can't say what month or year it started, but the mystery has always been associated with my front tire. In the middle of riding, the tire would slowly leak air, but I could pump it up and keep on riding. Weeks later, about the time you could start to believe the mystery went away, the tire would go flat again.

I like a puzzle and this was turning out to be a good one. I started to study the different angles and take some notes, but this only served to document the degree of weirdness.

One morning I noticed the tire was completely flat, like "someone was playing a trick on me" flat. I pumped it up to the max and waited. It held air. I came back the next day and it was still full. Day after day, the tire would be full so I would get bored and stop watching. Then, it would go completely flat again.

Someone was playing tricks on me. I thought the best thing to do would be to pretend like it didn't happen and just pump it back up to the max. I actually thought pretending would work.

In the beginning, it only happened once every few months, but as summer rolled around, it was happening almost every ride. Since the whole group would stop while I pumped up the tire, everyone I was riding with was also getting "tired" of the tire. My brain thorn was pricking other minds besides the mind that was mine.

We had our theories. Since it didn't matter if it was a new tube or an old tube, 19mm or a 26mm, high pressure or normal pressure, we thought it might be squirrels that latch onto my wheel while I was riding. They would wait until I was on a downhill with the wind at my back so the wheel would be spinning around so fast that you couldn't see the squirrel, and then suck out a few puffs of air through the stem and then run away. Of course, it was the front wheel they targeted because they wouldn't have to worry about the derailleur getting in the way.

This theory matched the facts, but we felt compelled to come up with other theories. One theory was that a special straw-like device stuck itself in the tire. This device could create a hole and meter out the air at a controlled rate. It also had a way to tell when I pulled the tire off so it could automagically patch the hole. A remote control option was considered, and that was the brain storm that led us to the next theory.

The mental powers of any cyclist who needed to catch their breath may have been sufficient to make my tire go flat and stop the ride. Around the middle of July, people realized that everyone expected Jett's front tire to go flat, which removed all suspicion of supernatural involvement, and allowed anyone to secretly flat my tire. The overnight flat tires challenged that theory until we realized that this would be the perfect cover.

Some mastermind had it all planned out: Make Jett's front tire go flat a few times to build up his reputation, and throw in a few overnight flats just to throw everyone off the trail. We started paying attention to who was out of breath when the flat occurred.

Of all the souvenirs I collected over the summer, this brain thorn might have occupied the largest share of my remaining brain cells (4 out of 6). Saturday, it was with great relief I removed that thorn from two places at the same time.

Wednesday's ride I did something a little different when Old Faithful began to leak. Instead of pumping up to the max, I put in only enough air to make the tire safe. This meant pumping it up three times on the way back home, so I was ready to trash the cursed tire. She didn't look like a witch, but I was ready to burn her. (It did occur to me I could dress her up a bit.)

The softer tire also meant the sharp piece poked the tube in multiple places and that made the hole bigger. Submerging the inflated tube in water -- which hadn't worked in the past -- revealed the hole. I matched this up with the tire and put the tire under the spotlight. Usually you can find the sharpness that punctures the tube by feel, but this one I found by looking at the outside of the tire while pinching it to open any gaps in the surface. There was a tiny bit of metal flash under the bright light. In the past I had pulled out tiny pieces of wire worn from the tread of a steel-belted car tire, but those had been much easier to find than this one. The piece of wire I found was shorter than the width of my tire -- no more than 2mm long -- polished on one end and needle sharp on the other. Neither end of the wire protracted outside the surface of the tire. The culprit had lain hidden beneath the surface.

How did it patch the hole it was making? Well, I've got another crazy theory. The piece of wire was actually too short to damage the tube. I think that while riding, the needle point of that little wire would tickle the tube instead of puncturing it. The tube would laugh so hard that air would escape one molecule at a time.

For the overnight leak, someone was playing a trick on me. That's the only explanation that lets me keep on pretending that the mystery really is solved.

What does the sneeze have to do with this? Well, I wanted to take a picture of the piece of wire, but I sneezed and now it's gone.