If you are interested in creating and leading a ride, then RideWithGPS is an incalculably valuable tool and timesaver. But even if you’re just going to attend a club ride, you still need to know a little bit about RideWithGPS. The pandemic ended the handing out maps and cue sheets. Instead you are referred to our RWGPS site. There you can get a cue sheet, a map, or a GPS track if you use a GPS cyclometer for navigation. Without any of these you either have to follow another rider to stay on the route or you’ll have to depend on whatever personal knowledge you have of the ride leader’s route.
So there is a practical reason to use RideWithGPS: almost all club rides use maps, cue sheets, and GPS tracks in RideWithGPS. To access them you need at least a free account. If you do not have an account and you try to get the GPS track, RideWithGPS will prompt you to open an account. RideWithGPS also offers paid accounts that offer more features. The next step up is a Basic account ($5 per month) and this is the ‘sweet spot’ because then you’ll be able to get spoken navigation and offline maps, which are not available to free accounts.
When you join Different Spokes, you can then use our RWGPS club account. All you need is a free account. After you set up your free account, you can get that linked to our club account by contacting our RWGPS administrator, David Gaus (dagaus190@me.com). Once you’re registered in our club account, you will be able to take advantage of voice navigation and offline maps, which are features not included in a free account. A caveat is that voice navigation applies only to routes in our club library. Any routes you create and store in your free account cannot be used with voice navigation. However if you want navigation just for club rides, you won’t need more than that. Keep in mind that for non-club routes you will still have navigation but without spoken directions and you’ll have to look at your map screen to know where to go.
With a free account you will be able to explore the enormous RWGPS library for routes that interest you, load routes into your GPS navigation computer, record your ride, and plan your own routes. You also will have your own library of routes you’ve created or have copied from the RWGPS collection as well as tracks of rides you’ve recorded.
How Can I Check Out the Library? Libraries are curious things. It can be like the junk drawer in your basement cabinet—you know, that huge drawer where you ‘store’ stuff you either don’t have the time to figure out where it should properly be placed so you can find it later or you just don’t have the time to deal with it and then promptly forget you have to deal with it at all. Or a library can be that neat, organized bookshelf with everything in alphanumeric order with its own Dewey Decimal Classification code.
My personal RWGPS library is more like the former; I have created and copied rides over the years and now it’s enormous mess. The club library is more like the latter. It is, believe it or not, curated and that is a blessing and a bane. Instead of storing every conceivable ride, our library is a cut-down collection limited to rides the club has offered over the years or have planned but not yet offered.
We also keep many historically important routes such as the first AIDS Bike-A-Thon and the AIDS Lifecycle ride to LA. Having a vast storehouse of routes makes it harder to narrow down what you may be looking for; on the other hand, having a limited number means that there might be just one route for a ride instead of including other interesting variations. Over the years lunch stops and route changes mean that a club ride is not a static entity yet it may appear that way if you look at our library.
To make things simple we have a set of ride collections that house the most popular rides. These collections are mainly based on Bay Area counties. For example we have a collection of the most popular San Francisco rides, popular Napa rides, and popular Marin rides, etc. We also have special collections such as our Pride rides, short fun rides throughout the Bay Area, and our getaway weekend trips. Check it out!
RideWithGPS isn’t just a boring, pedestrian drawer full of local routes. It’s a gateway drug to getting your full-on bike exploration addiction. Fantasizing about cycling in the French Alps? Go into RWGPS and search for routes of any length and starting in any town you can find on a map. Looking for interesting gravel or mountain bike trips? You’ll find those in there too. Even if you aren’t looking for routes in the Malaysian highlands or in the Italian Dolomites—perhaps you’re looking for something closer to home—you’ll be able to draw on the riding experiences of thousands of other cyclists in your neck of the woods. Maybe you’re thinking of riding in the Mendocino area for a weekend. You can look up routes other cyclists have ridden and/or created in that area. You’ll get detailed information about routes allowing you to check out possibilities in advance.
Many cycling clubs use RWGPS to host their club libraries. You’ll probably encounter them if you prowl around an area. Once you find a route from, say, Different Spokes, you can search for other routes from that club or creator leading you to their collection. This will help you see what kinds of rides that club likes to do in their area.
Many cycletouring companies store their routes in RWGPS. This allows them to manage their own collections of routes and trips and distribute GPS routes to each tour member. However most companies keep their routes private. Club on the other hand keep their route libraries public since not every ride participant is a member. Exploring club routes will give you a great idea of the kinds of rides they like to do and what is popular in their area. Different Spokes Southern California, Windy City Cycling Club (Chicago), Outspokin (Denver) and Outspoken (Seattle and San Diego) all have RWGPS libraries.
From from the madding crowd. Back in the day club rides tended to be ‘simple’ routes using main roads. Why? Because it was too hard to lead a group on a complicated route with many turns and unfamiliar byways without losing people. No one liked to read cue sheets and maps often were not detailed enough if you did end up off-route. With GPS devices that is no longer an issue and ride leaders can select roads with less traffic even if they involve lots of turns and “hidden” roads because participants are kept on route by their Garmins. This allows for far less hectic and dangerous conditions by keeping riders away from main roads where most of the car traffic travels. And guess what? RideWithGPS also handles off-road routes and tracks. So if you’re looking for interesting trails or fire roads, you’re covered as well.
Are we there yet? Have you ever been out on a ride where you were wondering when you were going to get to the lunch stop, or the toilet, or just get to the end? With a GPS track you’ll know exactly how far you have to go instead of wondering how much longer before you can scarf down a Magnum bar.
Speak to me. Staring at your Garmin is bad habit and don’t we have enough already? Not only can it be dangerous but when the scenery is beautiful do you really want to be figuring out where that turn-off is? Yes, your device will give you a generic audible alert when it thinks you need to look at the map for something important like a turn. But you can go next-level with the RideWithGPS app in your phone: spoken directions. If you don’t want to stare at your Garmin while cycling, you don’t have to with RWGPS. With the RWGPS phone app you can load in your route and have it speak all the cues and the turn-by-turn directions. You can black out your phone screen to save battery life while running the app and still get audible cues. Such a deal!
RideWithGPS is an Internet service where routes for cycling, hiking, and driving can be created, viewed, and stored. It has users around the world and you’ll be able to search for and look at routes just about anywhere you can ride a bike. Many cycling clubs use RWGPS because it is easy to use and it’s easy for club members to access from home, their phone, or anywhere via the Internet. RideWithGPS is one of a multitude of Internet based mapping systems for cyclists. Others include Komoot, MapMyRide, BikeMap, and even Strava. RideWithGPS allows anyone to create routes, keep a library of routes, record the tracks of rides, search for and look through the routes of a zillion other users, and of course it has all the relevant data to scare you from or entice you to check out a route: distance, elevation profile, a map, cues, and turn-by-turn navigation. In addition to hosting your route library, RideWithGPS also allows you to upload tracks of your rides for you to keep a record of your riding history.
Most of our club rides have an associated RideWithGPS route. If you use a cycling computer with GPS capability such as a Garmin Edge, Wahoo, or Hammerhead Karoo, you can download the GPS route and install it in your device. You can then enjoy turn-by-turn navigation without having to check a paper map or cue sheet. No longer fear getting lost (well, as long as you have battery life). Whether you’re on a club ride and end up by yourself or you’re just out cycling alone on an unfamiliar route, using GPS navigation with a RWGPS route allows you to ride and always make it back to your destination.
Interested in a club ride but don’t know anything about it? Just check out the RWGPS link in the listing to view the map, an elevation profile, number of climbs, hill gradients, and places you’re going to hit along the way including pit stops and food.
Even if you do not have and are not interested in using a cycling computer, you can still use RWGPS to get the map and cue sheet for a club ride or any ride in the vast RWGPS site. This gives you the freedom to download and print your own cue sheet and map of the route and not depend on the ride host to show you the route nor to hand out a route slip. And, if you’re a ride leader, you no longer have to provide any maps or cue sheet—just refer participants to the RideWithGPS route where they can get their own copies.
RWGPS also provides a free app for both Android and Apple phones. You can get a route directly through the app and then either refer to it in lieu of a paper cue sheet and map or, even better, use the app’s built-in navigation to guide you along the route. If you’re concerned about burning up your phone battery, don’t worry: the RWGPS app allows you to turn off your phone screen and it will give you turn-by-turn navigation by voice! I can’t think of a cyclist who does not have a mobile phone but there are still some who don’t use a GPS-enabled cyclocomputer. If you’re in that category, you won’t have to spend any additional money to take advantage of RWGPS–just use your phone.
RideWithGPS allows you to create your own routes and maintain your own ride library. But even if you’re not interested in creating routes, you can take advantage of the enormous RideWithGPS library to look for routes that might interest you. Visiting a new place? You can check out rides in the area with full details. RWGPS provides search tools for you to pin down interesting routes by location, distance, type, name, photos, etc. Some users even upload pictures they’ve taken along their routes so you can get an even better idea of what you’ll encounter. There are so many users on RWGPS that you can find new and interesting routes you’ve never set your bike on in your own backyard.
In the early days of Different Spokes in the 1980s we had an actual club library. This was pre-Interent. If you were interested in a ride, you could look at our collection of guide books, some specialty cycling maps, our diverse collection of AAA maps, and a wad of cue sheets and xeroxed maps with routes outlined with Magic Marker. Or you could talk to someone in the club about a ride because we had monthly in-person meetings! The boxes of books, binders, and paperwork—our “library”—were brought to each meeting. This wasn’t too hard because they were stored in the back of the Park Branch library on Page Street where we had our meetings for many years. We simply lugged them out just before the meetings started and spread them out on a table. Later the library was closed for a prolonged renovation and we had to move our meetings to a new home. We relocated to the Metropolitan Community Church in the Castro, and without a store room we had to lug them to and from the meeting room. How do I know this? Because the library was kept in my old garage! And guess who was in charge of the library?
For those who wanted to lead a ride, this ‘primitive’ way of researching rides was actually pretty good. Print books almost always had accurate information if eventually outdated and you could talk to someone who had perhaps ridden the route if you hadn’t and could give you an idea of what you might encounter. But books are updated infrequently if at all and the information can go stale. Is that road still open? No way a book is going to help you with that.
Fast forward forty years and the club has a very different tool for ride research and creation: RideWithGPS. New guide books are a rarity and even AAA has closed its mapping division. It’s all Internet and GPS mapping now. So whether we like it or not, the new reality is Internet and computer based maps and guidance. New cars often come with GPS systems and even if they don’t, people are using their phones with Google or Apple Maps. So it is with cycling. In the Bay Area I haven’t seen a cyclist with a paper map in many years—just whip out your phone and look at a map application. I don’t miss the old days because now there is a thousand-fold increase in information about riding and routes on the Internet compared to print books. Whereas so much of route information had to be transmitted orally before—i.e. you had to meet someone who had already ridden a route—there is so much more information available digitally. And it’s often up-to-date and very detailed.
As a member of Different Spokes you have access to our club RWGPS library as well as many of the features of a premium account—it’s part of your membership fee!
Next up: What is RideWithGPS and how can it help me?
I don’t know if any of you have had to suffer through mounting an intractable tire on your bicycle wheel. I wrote about one person’s experience here. Well, here’s another one on thewashingmachine.post blog: “Suffice it to say, after two and a quarter hours of tyre wrestling, i still had a six centimetre section of tyre that point blank refused all persuasions to seat itself on the rim. despite possessing a Koolstop tyre jack, designed to ease the fitment process, i made no headway whatsoever, and gave up in order to make my tea.“
Pray that this never happens to you. In the writer’s case he was trying to mount a Challenge Chicane clincher tire, a tire intended for cyclocross. As you may know, cyclocross tire pressures are very low compared to road riding hovering in the mid-20s to even just below 20 psi. Those pressures are low enough that unless the tire is secured firmly to the rim, you could roll a tire enough sideways to burp the air in the case of tubeless or even roll the tire off in the case of an inadequately glued tubular. It goes without saying that you could roll a clincher tire off as well if you flatted your tire. The manufacturer is probably cognizant of these possibilities and has made its tires as tight as possible while still adhering to ETRTO guidelines. Furthermore in a cyclocross race you’re not going to be concerned about demounting or mounting your tires–you’re running to the pit to get your other bike.
Nonetheless the majority of these tires are not going to be used in race situations but in real life. Which is to say you are going to be replacing your own tires and probably while out riding when you flat. You’d better hope you’re using sealant rather than an inner tube and that your sealant works to plug up whatever puncture you incur.
I have a Koolstop tire jack and I’ve had to use it. But I have yet to encounter a tire that didn’t yield to its leverage. So the writer’s tire must have been incredibly tight, tighter than anything I’ve seen. If this had happened to me, I would have returned the tire and switched to another brand. But the writer loves those Challenge Chicane tires and so he persevered. (He did manage to get it on but by a completely different method you can read about in his post.)
All those caveats aside, one has to wonder what the Bike Industrial Complex is thinking. How are ordinary cyclists supposed to deal with ridiculously tight tires that one cannot repair while on the road and only can be remediated by using specialized tools in a workshop?
The other side of the equation is demounting a tight tire and I have encountered that experience as well. Roger has a gravel e-bike with reasonable Schwalbe tires. I have fixed flats for him twice and both times I was not able to get the tire bead out of the tire bead well either with my bare hands or with regular tire tools. (Note that a Koolstop tire jack is for mounting tires, not demounting them.) I had to resort to using a tool I counsel others never to use, a screwdriver. Using a screwdriver to unmount a tire is asking to damage your tire, your rim, your inner tube or all three at once as well as your belief in any higher power except the devil. I couldn’t budge the damn bead. I needed Roger’s help even to insert the screwdriver blade between the rim wall and the tire to begin the process. The second time I struggled alone for about 20 minutes and then realized it was déjà vu. With Roger’s help our four hands were finally able to pull the tire sideways enough to nestle a screwdriver in there to begin to pop the bead out of the bead well.
If this had happened out on the road–both times we discovered his flat tire before going out for a ride–it would have been game over and I would have had to go home to get the van for him.
You might be thinking, “What’s a bead well??” This is a more recent “innovation”. It didn’t exist back in the day with traditional road rims. Those rims were pretty narrow, 14 to 17 mm inner width, which seems crazy narrow these days. Those rims didn’t need bead wells. I presume the addition of bead wells was due to tubeless tires and rims getting wider for gravel. The bead well is an indentation on both sides of the usual rim well so that the tire beads can drop into them and be held more securely; they will not pop out easily. And that’s why it’s hard to demount them, so it’s a mixed blessing. If you look at the diagram below, the rim on the left is a traditional rim: it’s got hooks, and nothing but a rounded inner surface. The middle and right images are rims with bead hooks as well as a rim well. Both the rim well and the bead wells assist with tubeless tires, the former for demounting the tires and the latter for locking the bead in place and keeping it from blowing off the rim.
From Enve
I’m all for safe wheels but this is taking things to an extreme and making flats user unfriendly. Of course you all know that you never have to deal with a flat when you use tire sealant, right? You can stop giggling now. You can chalk this up to the “pro-ification” of cycling, i.e. we should be emulating what professional bike racers use for equipment (or are told they must use). If you don’t have a pit crew, a personal mechanic, or a support car following you, well, good luck!
I had to get a very old bike out, one that I hadn’t ridden in decades and was moribund, in order to set up some cleats. For over 25 years I’ve been exclusively using some variation of SPD cleats. Before that I was using Look Delta cleats on all my road bikes. They worked very well for me for many years. Between mountain biking, doing a lot more bicycle touring, and commuting by bike I ended up on SPDs because they’re much easier to walk on. Walking on Look cleats on smooth floors is an invitation to slip and fall. The negative heel is an annoyance also. But I have always liked the vise-like grip I had with Look black cleats so I thought I’d try them out again.
Except that the ancient Adidas Eddy Merckx shoes—they are 40 years old!—that had the Look cleats were worn and stretched out from tens of thousands of miles and I could barely fit in them now. I also can’t fit an orthotic in these old shoes. I was going to set up a new pair of shoes with Look Delta cleats. The last time I had Look cleats fitted was when the old City Cycle on Union Street was still run by Clay Mankin. He and his staff did an excellent job using a Fit Kit RAD (Rotational Adjustment Device) to get the cleats angled perfectly. I never had an issue of knee pain (except when I did something stupid). But Clay is dead and City Cycle as a uber-professional shop is long gone.
I came across a tool called Cleat Key, which clamps to a shoe with a Look cleat and then you can measure the angle you are toed-out or toed-in. I was able to use this to measure the angle of the cleats on the old shoes and to some degree replicate it on the new shoes.
I say “to some degree” because it turns out there is some artistry involved. I got the cleats mounted with the angle of the cleats the same as the angles on the old shoes. Then I did a test ride. It didn’t feel quite right—the left shoe felt like it was toed-out too much. But it wasn’t. I readjusted the cleat and tried again. Better but still not quite right. With the old shoes I didn’t feel like my foot wanted to move in or out—the cleat angle was just right.
Then I tried backing the angle down by half, which is a lot. It felt better. Hmm, that was not what I expected!
In looking at the two sets of shoes I noticed something for the first time: those old Adidas have a very aggressive heel lift whereas the new shoes have a flatter profile. This also fit with something I felt on this old bike: I was straining to reach the pedals on the downstroke with the new shoes. With the old shoes, pedaling didn’t feel odd and I wasn’t straining at the bottom of the pedal stroke. That was probably because the high heel lift gave me slightly more leg extension.
So my speculation is that the angle of toe-in/toe-out is also affected by the shape of the sole, specifically the amount of heel lift. Hence fitting new cleats involves some artistry. It’s not just a straightforward measure-and-replicate procedure.
I have a different tool for measuring cleats for my SPD shoes, made by Ergon. It’s essentially the same idea: measure the location of the cleat and the angle of your current shoes, then replicate it with the new shoes (or if you’re replacing just the cleats, on your old shoes). This has worked very well for me over the years and I never had to tweak the angle adjustment on a different pair of shoes. This is probably because SPD-compatible shoes are almost all MTB shoes and the soles are much flatter. Comparing the old Adidas shoes to some newer road shoes, the degree of heel lift on the Adidas is far more pronounced. Perhaps this has changed over the years in general. In addition most versions of SPD have some float so getting the toe-in/toe-out a little off is usually okay.
The lesson for me is that there is more subtlety involved in why things “work” or “don’t work” on a bicycle. Despite what you may have read or heard about fit and equipment, there are likely many more variables involved, some of which may yet be uncovered. This experience also reinforces a nascent belief that ultimately one should pay attention to how things feel rather than just the objective numbers.
That was all a long digression even if related, which it is. The old bike that had the Look pedals is one that I rode in all conditions. I commuted on it, rode centuries, did errands, you name it. Since it’s an old ten-speed bike it had 20 mm tires—yes, 20 mm, a size you can’t even buy anymore. Tires that narrow were common back in the ‘80s and 90s. They felt fast as long as you pumped them up to pressures that today seem ridiculous. In my case it was 95 front/105 rear PSI. At that pressure they felt rock hard when you pressed on the tread. I hadn’t ridden on this bike in I don’t know how many decades; the tires and tubes probably go back to the mid-1990s. But I pumped them up and they held pressure, so I took it out for a spin in the neighborhood to check out the cleat alignment on my new shoes.
The bike felt great! This was a light bike by 1980s standards. But today it wouldn’t even qualify. It’s so old it doesn’t have a freehub—it has a heavy, steel, 7-speed freewheel. So when you pick up the rear wheel it feels like a boat anchor. But the wheels have light rims and those incredibly narrow—and hence light—tires and tubes. So the bike just zings even uphill. Surprisingly those narrow tires did not feel horrible. I was expecting that at those astronomical pressures it would feel like I was riding on steel rather than rubber. Instead it felt comfortable. Admittedly a big part of that comfort is attributable to the design of the frame and fork. After over a decade of riding big rubber—30 mm wide or more—I thought riding 20mm tires would be hellish. It wasn’t. Which makes sense because my recollection of riding them was that it was pretty “normal”.
This isn’t to say that riding 20 mm tires is no different than riding 28 mm tires. It’s definitely noticeable. But it can be a difference in degree, not in kind, and if you’re on reasonable asphalt narrow tires can feel very, very fast particularly when you have light rims. They just spin up quickly and feel nimble and spritely. And as mentioned, the rest of the bicycle affects how those narrow tires actually feel.
Contrary to our previous belief that narrow tires are faster than wider tires, we have evidence that the opposite is at least sometimes true, i.e. wider tires such as 28, 32, 35, and even 40 mm tires can be just as fast or faster than a 20 or 23 mm tire. So right now there is a trend to switch to wide rubber. This has been such a sea change that 20 mm tires are no longer available from any of the major bicycle tire manufacturers.
Until about 2005 I wasn’t willing to ride anything wider than 23 mm; 25 mm width tires seemed enormous and overkill. Plus, they were heavier. Now I’m mostly riding on 30 mm, often on 35 or 42 mm tires. The trade off for their plush comfort is that those tires are heavier and they require more effort to accelerate on the flats or uphill.
Almost all discussions about tire widths focus on speed. If you’re racing, then that’s a legitimate concern. But as recreational riders the remit we give our tires is more complex. Given the choice all other things being equal, cyclists will go for lighter. But we also don’t like to be beaten to death over bumps and pavement irregularities, which are increasingly common in decaying Bay Area roads. How fast or slow a tire feels and how comfortable or uncomfortable they seem are, for recreational riders, subjective evaluations. Something that feels fast may be objectively slower. What is comfortable for one cyclist may not be for another. I happen to live in a community with one of the highest pavement quality indices in the Bay Area, i.e. I get to ride on really good asphalt most of the time. Going out for a ride on 20 mm tires is a very pleasant experience—zippy, fast, and moderately comfortable. Conversely when I ride in Sonoma county, which has some of the worst PQI numbers, e.g. Sebastopol is 50 (the PQI scale is 0 to 100 with 100 being the best), I’m on at least 30 mm tires. Since I don’t care to swap tires or even wheels when I go for rides—that’s way too much work!—I stick with the 30 mm tires all the time.
Like with the shoes and cleats, tires are to a great degree a question of feel and what we prefer rather than an objectively determined decision. It’s worth trying different width tires (and pressures) and seeing what you like the best for different conditions. So experimentation is worth it since it’s ultimately a personal decision. And pay attention to your bike setup if you change shoes or cleats!
Today I read this review of the new Pirelli tire at cyclingweekly.com. Road tires keep getting fatter and fatter. This one is 40 mm wide, which makes me wonder when we’ll get to the “too wide” red line for road bikes since 28 mm tires seemed positively bloated just three years ago and we’re already settling on 30 mm as the new normal with 32 mm tires starting to edge in. Nancy already rides 32 mm and I envy her. Of course the problem for many of us is that when you have short reach rim brakes, which was the norm until gravel bikes hit the scene, you’re pretty much done at 28 mm. Anything wider and you’re looking at getting a bike with disc brakes or possibly a bike that can take medium reach brakes such as a Rivendell.
But this isn’t a post about tire widths. It’s about tire fitment. The writer of the review said the following: “…the P-Zeros are one of the hardest tyres I have ever had to fit. I had at least half a dozen attempts and a good couple of hours of wrestling. Two of the chunkiest tyre levers I own finally got them over the line, and sheer brute force. This incredible tight fit meant that there were little to no arguments when it came to inflation, as they popped up almost instantly with a track pump and sealed straight away – a silver lining, despite my red, raw hands.”
Two hours to fit a tire on a rim–is this a joke? Now imagine yourself on the road and having to fit a flat with this tire and having to get the tire off and back on the rim.
In fairness to Pirelli this tire occupies a murky grey area between road and all-road/gravel. So the likelihood that it’s intended to be used tubeless is fairly high. It also has flat protection belts. So getting a flat is probably less likely than with a light, thin road tire. If you set them up tubeless, then hopefully you won’t have to demount the tires and the sealant will do its job or you’re carrying a Dynaplug. Yet I have used Continental Gatorskins and even Specialized Armadillos, which are highly flat resistant, and flatted them.
The other stupid development forcing the use of extremely tight tires is hookless rims. These reduce the margin of error for fitment even more so that tire manufacturers have to protect their ass by producing tire beads so tight so that the average consumer not blow them off a hookless rim.
The development of such ridiculously tight fitting tires is not a good thing. You should be able to do a roadside repair with any tire and the Pirelli and its ilk are a step backward. If you’re racing, fine. But that’s a special use case. For everyday riders being able to handle a tire repair on the road is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. I don’t have a team car behind me to swap out my bike when I get a flat. Tires like the Pirelli make roadside repair next to impossible and that is patently stupid.
Portable battery powered bike pumps are now officially a “thing”. Previously a novelty they are now center stage as the next bike toy to market to the masses, at least the masses who stay up with trendy things. It seems anything electric will sell these days. Shifters? No mechanical cables for me—I have wireless! Rear view mirror? No thanks, I’ve got Varia radar! Minipump? Nope, now I’ve got a battery powered inflator!
I admit I originally approached the arrival of battery pumps with disinterest and rolling eyes thinking, “No one needs this stuff!” Yet curiosity got the better of me when I found out you can get one with a digital pressure gauge and a battery powerful enough to inflate four road tires from zero to 90.
I was never a fan of CO2 cartridges because it’s one-and-done in the negative sense: after you’ve blasted your cartridge you have nothing left to do a roadside repair except rely on the benevolence of your ride mates. If you’re alone, then you’ll have to call for a ride or if you’re lucky, do a short walk to the nearest bike shop. When I carry a CO2 inflator, which isn’t often, I always have at least two cartridges and I also carry a pump. I am less interested in saving weight as much as I was in saving my arm from pumping 250 exhausting strokes on a minipump. Although incurring two flats on a ride is a low probability event, it does happen. Or at least it’s happened to me. More than once, which may say something about how poorly I ride or that it just sucks to be me.
The best solution I’ve found is a “minipump” that you can pump like a floor pump such as the Topeak Morphe. There’s even a model with a gauge. But it’s about twice the size and weight of a typical minipump. It makes short and easy work of inflating and it’s always there for your multiple flats. But it is heavier than a minipump and it’s ungainly and immediately puts you in the Fred zone. As someone who loves his helmet mirror, helmet visor, and bell that’s the last thing I should be concerned about. That Topeak has saved my ass many times.
Let’s see–press a button or do 200 arm pumps?
But what if you could have it all, or almost all? Battery inflators are getting there. They’re not any heavier than a decent minipump. The fredly Topeak Morphe G that I love is 220 grams; the battery powered inflator is 161. The Lezyne Gauge Drive HV, which is a decent minipump is 140 grams; the Silca Tattico, which is either at or near the top of the heap of minipumps, is 165 grams. So there. The inflator I bought can inflate four tires and the bigger model even more. And all you have to do is push a button and sit back.
On an impulse buy—it was on sale—I snagged a Cycplus inflator, the middle sized model AS2 Pro. (The small size has no gauge and I think does only two tires.) I haven’t had to use it roadside yet but I’ve been playing around with it and I’m impressed. It doesn’t take long to charge up, well less than an hour. It’s a simple press-on Presta/Schrader head or you can use a separate hose that allows you hold the little beast away from the spokes. You set the pressure you want and then hit the start button. What ensues is a startling racket as the little motor is loud. This is not a pump you’re going to want to use indoors unless you want to wake the dead. Your family members and your dog or cat will hate it. It pumps up your tire faster than a minipump. Your arms get a vacation and no reminder that going to the gym might be a good idea. You will also notice that the little pump gets pretty hot from the adiabatic effect; hence the rubber cover to shield your dainty fingers.
I’ve used it on tires with butyl and TPU inner tubes and it’s fine. I haven’t tried it on tubeless tires yet but I imagine it will work as well. The inflation rate is steady—about 2 psi per second—so most likely you will not be able to use a battery pump to set your tubeless tires unless you have a really stellar fit between your rim and tire. I’d be a little concerned about getting tire sealant into the pump because it’s not a cheap device. They run about $100. Nonetheless a hundred dollars is a hundred dollars when you get a decent minipump for about $50 or less.
If you’re not running tubeless, then by the time you eventually get that hella tight tire off the rim, insert a replacement tube and then wrestle the tire bead back onto the rim, your thumbs and arms are probably done for the day. Or maybe you just have weak, scrawny arms that are better for lifting a cocktail than applying force to a minipump 200+ times. You are not going to regret having a battery powered inflator.
Of course it’s another battery powered device, which means that if you forget to charge it or the electronics go south, you’ve got just a brick. At least it isn’t a heavy brick. (That’s why I carry a pump too: always have a plan B.)
Do I trust this device? Yeah, sort of. For short rides near home I’m good. But for longer rides especially if I’m away from home I’m still carrying a pump because, y’know, boy scout and be prepared. Maybe at some future point I’ll be so utterly confident that I’ll forego the pump. But it’s awesome not to have to pump at all for just 161 grams of extra weight!
There is little doubt in my mind that battery pumps are going to make CO2 obsolete for all but racing, when time is of the essence. And since you can’t carry CO2 cartridges on a plane, for travel the battery pump is the way to go. It has a USB-C port so just charge it up with your iPhone charger. (Sadly no magnetic induction charging. Yet.)
You may have noticed that everybody and their brother is coming out with battery inflators. You might notice that they almost all have the same form factor and seem to have more than a passing resemblance to each other. My guess is that they are likely all coming from the same factory in China with some minor design and branding differences. They probably all work more or less the same.
Get one. You won’t regret it.
Maybe the next time we give prizes at a membership meeting a lucky soul will walk away with a new pump…
I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in And stops my mind from wandering Where it will go —Lennon/McCartney
The series of articles about considerations in fixing flat tires spans twelve posts that are spread over five months and you might not be able to find a post easily. Here is a list of the posts and a brief summary of the topic it covers.
Part 3: Removing Your Wheel — Quick releases, thru axles — How to safely remove a wheel that has a thru axle — How to safely remove a wheel that has a quick release — Inspecting the outside of the tire
Part 4: Removing The Tire — Presta or Schrader valve — How to use tire levers to remove a tire safely — Inspecting the inner tube for the site of the leak
Part 5: Spare Change — How to properly install an inner tube in a regular or tubeless tire — How to remount the tire safely
Part 6: Inspect Your Repair — How to inspect your repaired wheel to make sure it’s safe after you’ve installed a new inner tube
Part 7: Pump It Up — Methods of reinflating your tire: types of inflators
Part 8: Reinstalling Your Wheel — How to safely reinstall a wheel that has a quick release — How to safely reinstall a wheel that has a thru axle
Part 9: There’s No Place Like Home — Repairing your flat inner tube after you’re home — Is it worth saving the tube or better to toss it? — Types of patches — Patching butyl, latex, or TPU inner tubes
I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in And stops my mind from wandering Where it will go —Lennon/McCartney
This is the final installment on fixing a flat tire. Lastly I’m covering some really low probability problems that can cause flats. In the future I suspect I’ll be revisiting the general topic because cycling technology is continuing to evolve in dealing with flat tires. Some new tech worth investigating include battery powered portable pumps, TPU inner tube sealant (yes!), and wireless tire pressure sensors. There is also some very old tech worth revisiting: tire savers.
The tire is part of the wheel and aspects of the wheel affect the longevity and behavior of your tires and tubes. That includes exacerbating the chance that you will get a flat tire.
The vast majority of bicycle wheels have rims made of metal, either aluminum or steel. Carbon rims are relatively new and being so expensive are a lot less common. How does this affect flats? Wheel—specifically, rim—failures are extremely uncommon but they do happen. If you’ve ever cracked or dented a rim by dropping your wheel into a big pothole, you know what I mean. I personally don’t have any wheels with carbon rims nor have I used any (yet). So I can’t speak about them from personal experience. However it doesn’t take much online research to pull up instances of carbon rims failing after hitting something hard like a rock or pothole. Carbon rims can fail catastrophically and unlike a metal rim they are not going to ‘bend’—they are going to crack or shatter. Obviously this doesn’t bode well for avoiding a flat tire as the rim is the physical structure that contains the tire, the tube, and all that air. A container failure means you are at least going to get a flat and probably a lot worse too such as a crash.
Metal rims fail too. However their mode of failure tends to be bending or denting rather than cracking or shattering. So there is less chance of the ‘container’ exploding apart. It is possible to dent a rim such as by hitting a curb and if the dent sufficiently large enough, it may no longer be able to withstand the pressure inside the tire and you’ll get a flat tire. Odds are such a significant impact is going to result in a snake bite puncture anyway.
A ‘tacoed’ wheel
Another mode of rim failure is ‘tacoing’ your wheel. Tacoing your wheel is when it collapses to one side so that the rim has a taco shape. I have tacoed a rear wheel but it was a mountain bike wheel. I didn’t incur a flat perhaps partly because it had much less air pressure than a road tire. In my case the wavy taco shape apparently was smooth enough not to cause the tire bead to unseat. If you get a flat from tacoing your wheel, you still have to deal with straightening your wheel so you can ride it home. (This is possible but it takes some technique, applying side pressure to the right spots on the rim to snap it back into alignment.)
Spoke puncture
Another way a wheel can cause a flat is if the end of the spoke inside the rim punctures the inner tube. This seems to be much less common a problem nowadays. My suspicion is that automated wheel building has become more sophisticated and precise so that the proper spoke tension is applied. Spokes generally are cut to more or less the correct length so that they don’t protude or protrude very little above the nipple inside the rim. If the spoke is too long, then it may protrude enough that it can punch through the rim strip and puncture the inner tube. There is no guarantee that cheap wheels have properly sized spokes or that they were built correctly. Wheels may have insufficient spoke tension or the spokes become detensioned through use. Also rear wheels are dished in order to center the wheel in the dropouts and make space for the cassette on the right side and the spokes on the drive side (=cassette side) either have to be shorter or under greater tension to accomplish that. Some wheels may use the same length spoke on both sides. That requires the right side spokes to have more tension more to pull the rim to the right and this will draw more spoke into the nipple potentially allowing the spoke end to protrude above the nipple. If you need to have your spokes adjusted because of a broken spoke or a rim wobble/hop, you will want to make sure that the spoke ends do not protrude too much above the nipple. Keep in mind that this depends on the rim design as well: an aero rim has a deeper rim cavity and even a lot of spoke protruding above the nipple isn’t going to cause a puncture. However a box section rim might may not have much height between the top of the nipple and the rim floor and a protruding spoke end might cause a problem. Riding a wheel with insufficient spoke tension often causes the wheel to wobble and warp. If you don’t catch this early, the metal rim can take a set so that when you try to bring the wheel into round you have to apply even more tension to some spokes and lower tension to others. This can draw too much spoke into the nipple. One more caveat: if your wheels have single wall rims—not very common anymore—rather than the typical double-wall, you definitely do not want ANY of the spoke protruding above the nipple!
Of course if you have wheels that don’t have spoke holes, this is not going to be a problem.
Any damage to a rim that causes it to go out of round, i.e. it wobbles from side to side or hops slightly up and down, is going to result in uneven spoke tension when you attempt to repair it and bring it into round because some spokes are going to have to tensioned higher to pull that part of the rim into round and other spokes have to be looser. So the spokes with higher tension are going to be pulled into the spoke nipple further and may protrude above the spoke hole and puncture a tube. If you have such a flat and pay attention, you’ll notice that the inner tube has a hole on the underside rather than the tread side. That’s the clue to look for a spoke that’s too high or a partially exposed spoke hole.
The solution is to replace it/them with a shorter spoke(s) and that’s a repair that you should leave for a professional, as sizing a spoke let alone even having a variety of spoke lengths is not for the amateur. However if you do go this route you should know that your wheel is compromised nonetheless because the spoke tension is still going to be uneven. If in order to have a round wheel you have some spokes that are very loose, you are simply delaying having to replace the rim because those spokes are not doing much to support the rim and the other spokes under higher tension are more stressed and thus more likely to fail. You are better off replacing the rim and having the wheel rebuilt even though it’s more costly than replacing a few spokes.
Incurring a broken spoke and not repairing it quickly can also cause uneven spoke tension. Riding an unround wheel seems to ‘set’ the rim into that shape, i.e. the rim is now bent. This results in needing more/less spoke tension in order to make the rim round. If you incur a flat from a spoke that was tightened so much that it protruded above the nipple and into the tube, you are probably better off getting a new rim rather than you or your mechanic trying to ‘make it work’ because that rim is now compromising your spokes.
Rim tape not fully covering spoke hole = flat tire
Rim strips are another potential cause of flats. Rims that have spoke holes must have something to cover those holes otherwise the air pressure inside the inner tube will force it through the spoke holes and cause a flat. Rim strips come in different widths in order to fit the inner diameter of the rim. Wheels intended for 23 or 25 mm tires generally have a narrower internal width than newer rims intended for gravel or dirt. These rims take a narrower rim strip. If your rim strip is too narrow it won’t cover the spoke holes completely. Even if the rim strip just barely covers the edge of the spoke holes you will want something slightly wider because rim strips move around despite the adhesive backing (if any). The air pressure at the spoke holes can cause the rim strip to move; removing tires and using tire levers can cause the rim strip to move as well. Plastic rim strips age and can crack or break; cloth rim strips also age and can stretch. The sharp edge of a spoke hole can cut an inner tube. If you’ve gotten a flat and notice that the puncture is on the underside of the inner tube, it’s likely a spoke hole that caused it and you will want to inspect your rim strip and either move it or replace it or else you’ll just get another flat.
Although you want a rim strip that is wide enough to cover the spoke holes completely, you don’t want a rim strip that is too wide because this can make it difficult to mount and remove a tire or prevent the tire bead from seating against the rim correctly.
If you are running tubeless tires and your rims have spoke holes, then they are covered with tubeless rim tape. Although you don’t have inner tubes, this tape also functions to keep the air in the rim cavity. So if the tape moves and exposes a spoke hole, air is going to go into the rim cavity and you’ll get a flat. Sealant in your tubeless tire will also flow into the rim cavity. This potentially is a problem if your sealant contains ammonia and you have aluminum rims or spoke nipples because ammonia reacts with aluminum and weakens the metal.
The Chain Letter 