Originally Posted by
rydabent
Not really a big deal. Both my bike and trike have 20/26 wheels. I carry several stick in boots, and have yet to use one, and have never walked home. I carry patchs, and two boxes of appropriate size tubes in my trunk pack.
BTW if your bike has 20 inch wheels in front and 26 inch wheels in back, you are faster since you are alway riding down hill!!!
I rode a 26/20 V-Rex for over 10 years. Included 2 Paris-Brest-Paris finishes, numerous 24 hour races, numerous Super Randonneur series. Point being, many miles far from home, alone, and totally self reliant. Since both my wheel sizes were outside the norm, I couldn't rely on other people or the limited support available to help me out with spares. Even bike shops are iffy, when you need a 26x1.25 or 20x1.25 tube or worse tire. So I carried lots of tubes, and 2 tires, for a ton of miles. In all those years, I used all my 26" tubes once, and suffered one unrecoverable tire failure. Never DNFd.
Now on the longest events I carry 4 tubes and 1 tire. It's better. On my upright, I'm giving tubeless a go, but that's another story.
My experience isn't typical, I realize; most people don't ride stupidly long distances in remote places.