It’s been a sloppy start to May.  Almost every day has been cloudy with off-and-on drizzle.  Plus it’s been warm and muggy.  Not exactly ideal biking weather, but it hasn’t kept me out of the saddle yet.

Yesterday I was all set to ride my mountain bike to work, when I discovered the rear tire was flat as a pancake.  Lacking time to change it, I moved all my gear over to my road bike and took it instead.  This morning, I wanted to take the mountain bike, because it has fenders and the roads were wet, so I took a look at the tire.  This tire has a plastic liner in it that is designed to guard against flats.  This liner is a “Slime” brand.  “Mr. Tuffy” is another popular brand.  Well, it appears that the edge on the end of the liner was rubbing against the tube, and it was just sharp enough to eventually cause a puncture.  The liner had been in for around 2 months.  The tire itself was not punctured, and there was nothing else inside the tire that could have caused the flat.  So ironically enough, it appears that the liner, which is in there for the sole purpose of preventing flats, ended up causing a flat.

I took a pair of scissors and rounded off the end of the liner a bit, to get rid of the “point.”  Then I put a new tube in and put the tire back on.  We’ll see if that does the trick.  If it doesn’t, the next step will be to try taping down the end of the liner, and if that doesn’t take care of it, I’ll try a different brand of liner.

The fun never ends!