Originally Posted by
chief9245
I've heard that you can cut a slit and put a patch over it. I wouldn't trust it but I can see why if you don't have removable cores in the tube. On my tour I never worried about flats until NM. From Massachusetts heading west and north, I only got 3 flats up until NM. From there to Del Rio in Texas, I averaged 3 a day. Those goathead thorns made my life a hell for a couple of weeks. Slime helped but I learned too late to use it. It never affected the balance of the wheel or how it rode, but I don't think I'd use Slime again unless I was back in an area like that.
sounds like that must have been a royal pain in the arse, and frustrating.
A friend recently tore a valve on a tube and I changed it out for her. We were both surprised to see that the previous owners had put in a heavy duty extra thick tube, and holy bananas it was heavy, like twice as heavy or more than a regular tube, and it didnt even have slime in it.
I'm not looking forward to one day riding in thorn country.
I've had a remarkable run of not having flats while on tour, (touch wood big time here) including riding through a good chunk of Mexico and down through Central America riding sometimes over bad roads with glass etc. Tire choice for sure is a big factor, plus I've mentioned this before, but while I keep an eye out all the time to avoid riding over crap, if I know I've missed seeing stuff and ride right over it, I will stop and take 10 seconds to brush off my tires to dislodge any little bits of glass that start to get stuck in the tire, to avoid them getting worked further into the tire. Figure the odd time doing this is way faster than dealing with a flat.
Problem is those little wires from car tires, you just can't see them, but luckily havent had too many times with them, and have been pretty lucky with thorns too. I have made a point of not pushing my bike through brush too much, just trying to reduce the chance of thorns, but have picked thorns out of my tires before, but luckily caught them before they went in further.
Again, good tire choices have helped a lot, but I realize that frankly Ive been lucky too.