Changing Flats and Skinning Cats: More Than One Way?
I was, recently, helping someone on the road fix a flat. The person had forgotten their tire levers and that tire, let me tell you, was not coming off without them. So I dug mine out of the saddle bag and offered the pair up. I watched for a while as the rider attempted to pry the tire bead off the rim - he wasn't having much luck, in fact at one point the lever flipped out, shot up and hit him in the the face. A lot of people might have pretended not to have noticed anything, or politely said nothing, but I laughed. It was a heck of a funny thing. He knew it too and laughed right along.
I guess there is more than one way to fix a flat, but once we got that out of the way it was time to get serious. I said "this time, after you pry the one end under the bead, hook that other end on a spoke. After all, that's what that hook is for." Now, he has been around long enough to have changed a fair number of flats, but had never put two and 2 together; "so that's what that [the hook] is for." I provided more helpful commentary, as he followed my step by step advice, and got the tire off right quick.
Anyway, as he continued on I fell into a reverie of sorts, recalling a group ride that rode out to the coast through Topanga Canyon. At the time I was riding along with Super Dave when his rear wheel got a flat. Now Super Dave was a veteran flat tire fixer upper so I knew he'd make quick work of this one. Everything was going smooth, though I did notice he had taken the whole tire off the rim, and that shoulda been my first clue that something was amiss. My pulse quickened as I watched him shove a new tube into the tire which was still completely off the rim. I began to see where this was going, and a nervous sweat began to bead on my brow and my lower jaw slowly dropped as he proceeded to then put the whole thing back on the wheel.
Now as far as I had ever known there was only one way to properly fix a flat - pull one bead off the rim, yank out the old tube, put a new one (or a patched one) in, work the one bead back on, fill with air and roll away. What I was seeing was sort of sacrilegious and I said, "whoa, whoa. What is this? What are you doing? Who taught you how to change a flat?" He took my doubts with a grain of salt, kept right on doing it his way even after I warned him that "they" might revoke his Republican't license for doing something so liberally contrary, unorthodox and downright different. Gettin' those last two or three inches of tire on was a mighty struggle, but eventually he succeeded and we hit the road to finish a fast descent to the coast.
I didn't see the sense in it then, and if I saw it again today, to don't think i'd see the sense in it now, but I guess there's more than one way to skin a cat (where exactly does that saying come from anyway), or to change a flat.
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