Coffs BUG BLOG: Bush mechanics!

You can learn something new about bikes every time you ride with a group, and yesterday's BUG ride to Nana Glen was no exception!

[Firstly I learnt - when I dropped my chain at the top of the Big Banana hill - after we opted to do the extended ride from Home Base, and up Bruxner - that white handle bar tape is a bad idea! But that is not what this post is about!]

Cable ties! aka Zip ties'! Throw a pack into your bike tool kit! Now!

So the Schmidt family set out for the BUG ride, riding with Dale and Garry from HomeBase, and meeting up with the rest of the riders at the Bruxner Park saddle. We had our triplet with, as usual, Marc and our two younger girls riding that - and me, minus the eldest daughter (out because of netball commitments) on my single road bike.

With the BUG we headed out along Central Bucca road, and then left onto Bucca Road towards Nana Glen, with Dale leading, and Neil bringing up the rear. Despite the wind, the conditions were really quite pleasant, and the Bruxner Park to Bucca road was great as usual, and fairly protected from the southerly. The clouds disappeared - the traffic along Bucca Rd wasn't very heavy at all, and we were about 4-5 km out of Nana Glen and looking forward to lunch at the Kookaburra Kafe.

Marc suddenly realised he had a scraping noise coming from the front wheel of the triplet. He looked down to see the tyre bulging out over the rim! Eep! We stopped, released some air, repositioned it, and pumped it up again. 100m down the road it was doing it again. Not good.

We waved everyone on, but Garry and Neil stayed to help. Time to take the wheel off to investigate.. Not good. The bead on the wall of the tyre was actually shredded at one point and the wall of the tyre was overly flexible - as if it had stretched as well. Given that you usually need tyre levers to prise a bike tyre off the rim, it was pretty obvious that something was wrong! When the air was let out of the tube, the tyre was that loose it could slip right off the rim!

What a hassle. Options? Marc and girls sit on the side of the road while I rode (by myself) 25 km back to Coffs for the car. Walk to Nana Glen? (Quite a way on foot.) Or try to fix it enough to get us to Nana Glen (and lunch), and then do the car retrieval.

Marc is usually pretty good at coming up with temporary (at least) repairs in the field, but it was Garry who had the cable tie idea. "I've heard about using cable ties for this sort of thing..!!" he said enthusiastically. "Don't suppose you have any?"

Only a bag full of them! Thankfully despite the rush we were in that morning (and so forgetting to put in his penknife), Marc had thrown a bag of cable ties in the pannier bag.

At first they put the ties just around the damaged part, but a quick test showed that the tyre was then prone to busting out the other side of the wheel.

So. More cable ties. All around! At first we thought we had nothing to cut off the ends of the ties (forgotten penknife, forgotten first aid kit, Dale sent on ahead with the BUG first aid kit...) Suddenly Neil remembered he had one of those safety knife type cutters in his tool kit!

So this fix got the bike the last 5 km into Nana Glen, albeit slowly, with the front brake disconnected, and the tyres a bit squishy because we weren't game to pump them too much.

So the moral to the story? Carrying a spare tyre would be the ultimate (but the bulk! the weight!) At the very least, don't leave home without some cable ties, or a bush mechanic, or both!