venta | Punctured bicycle, on a hillside desolate

Since I moved to London, I've been commuting via a walk-train-bus-combo. My plan was always, once the weather picked up a bit, to move to a walk-train-bicycle-combo.

Last week, I rescued my bike from the shed in my previous house in Oxford. I considered cleaning it up. I remembered that I'm going to be leaving it locked up overnight at Reading station, so I left it grubby to make it look as unattractive as possible.

You see, the plan is that my bike lives in Reading. Taking bikes on local commuter trains is a pain best avoided, and I have nowhere in my flat where a bike can be stored conveniently. Accordingly, I'm going to risk leaving my bike locked up at the station. If/when it gets stolen, I shall examine prices and consider whether a nicely-portable Brompton (or similar) is a better approach.

Ably assisted by a cycling colleague, I ordered some new tyres, inner tubes and a pump off t'internet. The existing tyres were making nasty crackling noises and showing no inclination to inflate. The existing pump was gently disintegrating and appeared to have suffered some form of internal violence. Mostly I required assistance to work out which selection of letters on the tyres correctly identified the ones I wanted, and which of the vast range of tyres in that size were appropriate

Today my box of goodies arrived, and ably assisted by a committee of cycling colleagues I have now put new tubes and tyres on the bike. I've actually never changed/repaired a bike tyre before. I have no idea how I got through four or five years at university without a puncture. Maybe elves patched up my tyres overnight.

Things I have learned so far today:

1. Changing a bike tyre is *way* more complicated and requiring-of-strength than changing a car wheel. The only issue I've ever had with cars is not being able to get the wheel nuts off. At the point at which you've successfully wrestled the nuts which hold the bike wheel in place, your problems are only just beginning. My thumbs hurt now.

2. That said, taking the back wheel off without causing Scary Derailleur Crisis is not as difficult as expected.

3. When a bike pump is sold by length, they measure unsquashed size, not squashed size. This seems counter-intuitive to me, and results in the frame-fit pump I ordered not fitting the frame I own. Ah well. Probably shouldn't leave it on the bike when I park up anyway.

4. My ability to turn a spanner the correct way to tighten/loosen a nut is entirely intuitive, and the moment I start to think about it I get confused. Confusion increases directly with number of spectators.

Things I have yet to learn today:

1. The route from my office to the station, using the cycle paths; it is possible to do the entire trip without interacting with a road. I think. I know approximately how this works, but am a very navigationally-challenged person as a rule and may end up anywhere.

2. Whether I can still ride a bike. I mean, you don't forget... do you ?

I'll let you know how it goes :)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Most excellent indeed - some bike tyres can be a pain to remove indeed.

Consider pitlocks or equivalent for your wheels/seatpost etc. Use 2 good locks see: http://www.lfgss.com/thread17938.html (Locks that work) and read it. 18mm D lock x 2 if you want to keep it.

The only other thing missing from that list is some training :)
highly recommended and possibly free for you! well worth it.

edit: it's £5 for you - you live in Ealing ISTR?
http://www.ealing.gov.uk/services/transport_and_streets/cycling/advice_and_training.html

You generally get these courses for where you live or work - so you might beable to get some through Reading council as well. Highly recommended!

(if you're at Whitby later this week, grab me :)

Oh dear, and there was me thinking I was well-prepared because I had a D-lock (of unknown brand) :(

I believe Reading only offers training to kids, other than that they just refer you to RoSPA for courses. If I can work out where to put my bike over the weekend at home, I'll have to give one of Ealing's courses a try.

Thanks for the links!

They might be able to lend you a bike in Ealing for the lesson, I hear that's possible in Cambridge. Though of course I presume you'd like to get a feel for your own bike again too.

Unless you have a nick-worthy bike, a D-lock is probably sufficient. Bikes with no resale value are really pretty unlikely to get stolen.

I suspect my bike has little re-sale value. It's in reasonably good nick, but it's 20 years old and looks a bit run-down.

I suspect the biggest risk to bikes where I've left it is people coming out of the station late at night and pinching one to get themselves home, and I'd hope not that many of Berkshire's late-night drinkers move with bolt-cutters always in their pockets :)

Mm, you'd need pretty big pockets, and that might interfere with the main business of the evening. ("Is that a pair of boltcutters in your pocket, or are you just... oh. It is.")

My ability to turn a spanner the correct way to tighten/loosen a nut is entirely intuitive, and the moment I start to think about it I get confused.

I get that too, especially when my head is upside down and I'm working from the opposite side of the bike. I do have some mnemonics that have saved me from shearing bolts off:

Righty-tighty, loosey-lefty.

Or if you're geekier:

Anticlockwise to unscrew

(i.e. the negatives go together)

Righty-tighty, loosey-lefty.

Which is fine, until you discover that the drive-side bottom bracket cup/off-side pedal/lockring is reverse-threaded. Attacking those from the wrong side really does my head in.

drive-side bottom bracket cup

Steady on! "Fork" is about my limit of part-identification at present.

When I have to think about it, I always imagine unscrewing the top of a bottle of pop, because I know what shape my hands make (and which way they're pushing) when I do that :)

You should be able to go Suttons -> TVP -> Canal Path -> Tesco -> Station with minimal car-interaction.

As for pumps, I have one of the 'mini' pumps that sits inside my pannier, and a track pump at home which makes life much easier.

If I worked on Suttons that might work :)

Our current office is down on the "International Business Park" by the Madjeski. I know the route in theory, it's just the tricky bits like spotting how to get to the cyclepath from the office door, and remembering when to get off it :)

Ah. Hadn't realised you'd moved. There is a cycle route that follows the canal, which I think the Madjeski bit joins (the section that goes under the A33 is a lurking point for assorted unsavory types. Anyway, follow the canal path up into town and you will arrive in the Oracle. You should then be able to follow the canal to Tesco, and .....

I started doing this route from Burghfield to Suttons twice a week just before I moved across and on a good day its a very pleasant run.

Yup, that's the route I'm aiming for, as recommended by Lee and Davek.

Unfortunately - to me - being told a route is about as much use as someone trying to draw me a song. It doesn't really mean anything until I've actually done it several times, and probably got it wrong at least twice.

The only section I repeatedly got wrong was navigating my way through the Oracle, where the cycle route diverges from the canal path. The rest of it is really just following the canal.

Oh! Remind me where you work? (I'm in Reading but can't cycle, so no help there.)

I work down near the M4/A33 junction, in one of the big office blocks by the Madjeski stadium.

.. and another thing.

Get another bike for the London end :)

Long term: yes. However, one of the reasons for cycling at the Reading end is reduction of costs. There's only so many new locks, helmets, coats, tyres, tubes, pumps, extra bikes and so on I can buy before it becomes cheaper to stick with the bus :)

I re-started about a year ago having not so much as sat on a bike since I was a low-to-mid teen and it's going pretty well so far (especially given I never really graduated onto the roads when I was younger)- knowing how to drive goes a long way it think

I recommend CycleStreets, if you're not already using that.

Edited 2010-04-19 22:46 (UTC)

Punctured bicycle, on a hillside desolate

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