It was last Thursday, folks. Two days ago I utterly failed to put a new bike tire on a bike wheel. I’m 42 years old; I estimate that I’ve been changing bike tires for over 30 years now, and two days ago I failed to get a bike tire onto a bike wheel. I took my wheels, tubes, and tires into my local bike shop to find out if I had somehow managed to buy the wrong size tires (twice), and they got the tire on in under 5 minutes. (Cost me $15.) I was pretty embarrassed.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a little bit…
A couple of years ago I took a wheel-building class at Community Cycles. My brother told me building wheels is fun, and not actually that hard (he’s right on both counts, although it takes some practice to get good, I think), and I have this old Trek road bike with a rear hub that’s too wide for the frame (long story). I thought I’d build myself a set of wheels for it and get it ridable again.
The long story about the Trek…
The Trek was my Dad’s old bike. He gave it to me when, while in college, my mountain bike got stolen. I’ve been riding it, in one form or another, ever since.
In the mid-2000’s my brother talked me into converting the Trek into a fixed-gear bike — a fixie — as was the style at the time. So we did that, and I rode it that way for years. It was a lot of fun.
Fast-forward a few more years, I’m living in New York City and not riding at all. Partially because the streets of New York scare me, but also because I didn’t want to show up sweaty everywhere. So I took the Trek into a bike shop that would do custom builds for (and, optionally, with) people and asked if they could help me convert the bike back into a multi-speed bike. I wanted to help with the process so I could learn some more, but I didn’t want to try it on my own because I didn’t know enough about bike parts to be sure I’d get compatible components.
They said sure, and we converted the bike to a 1×9 speed bike. Well, they didn’t bother to check the spacing on the frame (which was exactly the kind of thing I was paying them to know to check) and ordered a rear wheel with a hub that was too wide. This being a steel frame, we can just jam it in there and it’s mostly fine, but man was it hard to get that wheel in, which made changing flats a giant pain.
So since I got my Stumpjumper for commuting in 2018, the Trek has been hanging on the bike rack in the garage with the rear wheel off. Because riding a fixie is fun, and I wanted to build some wheels, I decided to put together a set with a fixed rear wheel that I can ride around town.
And now you’re all caught up.
After I finished the class, I ordered some parts and tools, took some measurements, bought some more parts, and began building myself some wheels. I finished the rear wheel, and got most of the way through the front wheel, but I got a little stuck trying to balance the tension across the spokes without messing up the dishing on the wheel. I didn’t manage to get that one done before life interrupted. Then time passed and it became harder to get back into the garage to finish the wheel because I forgot where I had left off and needed to refresh my memory on the wheel-building process.
Then more time passed. For about two years that front wheel sat in my truing stand eyeballing me whenever I went into the garage (which was often, because I was driving my kid back and forth to school many days). For two years, “Finish bike wheels” sat on my to-do list. I transferred it every couple of months from journal to journal. Finally, this summer, while my kid was in summer camp, I got the wheels finished. Laterally and radially true with less than ½ a millimeter of deviation (I think), dished, and the tension below 10% deviation across the spokes. Now all I had to do was put tape, tubes, and tires on them. Then I could put them on the bike, adjust the chain, clean the chain, and I could ride my Trek again.
So I went to my local bike store to buy some tires and tubes for it. Foolishly, I sized the tires based on the tires from the old wheels, which I think were a little too small for the new rims. No big, I just went back in, returned the small ones, and bought tires that, per the rim’s specs, would fit.
I spent 30 minutes trying to wrestle a tire onto one of those wheels. As I mentioned before, this was not my first rodeo, I have changed a fair few bike tires in my time, so this was really frustrating for me. The tires I bought were on the small side of what the rim would take, so I thought maybe if I went up in size a little, they’d be easier to get on (I can now build bike wheels, but tire sizes are still kind of a mystery to me — go figure).
Back I went to the bike shop; wheels, tires, and tubes in hand to ask someone in the shop to double-check that these tires would fit the rims, and if not, what size tires would fit. Have I mentioned that I was a bit embarrassed about this? I said as much to the folks in the shop.
The kid (he couldn’t have been more than 15) to whom I spoke took me back to the shop where I kinda got a blank look from the guy in the shop. He told me they could put the tires on for me and charge me for a tire change, but he wouldn’t let me watch him put the tires on. I said I didn’t really want them to do this for me, I wanted to know if these tires would fit the rims; if they could get the tires on, I needed to know how they did it so I could use whatever tricks they used in the future and change my own tires. He kind of relented and did one of the tires right then (although I did get asked to step out of the shop because I had on open-toed shoes). He got the tire on pretty quickly using some tool I’d never seen before.
At this point, he came over to get the second wheel from me, but I told him now that I was sure the tires fit the rims, I would go ahead and do the second one myself. I asked about the tool he’d grabbed off the wall to finish getting the tire on, having never seen one before, and he told me it was a bicycle tire jack (Amazon). These things are designed specifically to get tight road bike tires onto wheels. They couldn’t order one for me, but he said they were $9 on Amazon.
So home I went, resolved to put on the second tire and get the Trek ready to go. (And also to order one of those jacks.) Folks, I could not get the fucking tire on. It’s just too tight. So as I sit here writing this, that wheel is sitting in my garage with a tire half on while I await the arrival of the tire jack to see if that is truly the missing piece of the puzzle. (I hope these tires loosen up a bit, because if they don’t and I have to change a flat at the side of the road, I’ma be in trouble.)
I spent the rest of Thursday feeling grumpy because a) I should be able to change a goddamn bike tire, and b) if I’d just let the shop guy put the other tire on I could have put the finishing touches on the Trek (or discovered the next roadblock, probably involving the chain). I kept trying to convince myself to see that morning at the bike shop as a win because I learned about the tire jack, but man was that a hard sell.
Why am I telling you this? Because today I was helping a friend who was running into some frustrating problems with Eleventy. She made the analogy that she had gotten herself “a bike so fancy I can’t repair it myself.” I chuckled to myself. I had just had the same feeling about a literal bike trying to do the most basic bike maintenance on the planet — maintenance I’ve been doing on my bikes since I was probably 10 years old. And my bikes are not fancy. I like to ride steel frame bikes that are 30–40 years old. No wireless derailleurs for me. (Yes, I spelled that right on my first try.) No tubeless tires here.
Allow me to get to the point (finally). Even though I was feeling really discouraged on Thursday, it was actually a win. I encountered a problem I couldn’t solve on my own, I got some help, and now I (will soon) have a new tool (literally) in my arsenal (garage) for bike maintenance. I have expanded my knowledge and my abilities a bit. Maybe a friend will need some help getting tires on their bike, and I’ll be able to say, “ah hah! I have just the thing you need!” Maybe you have a road bike that you struggle to get tires on, and now you can go get yourself a tire jack to save your thumbs and make your life a little easier. Winning!
I am convinced that part of what makes experts experts is the accumulation of thousands upon thousands of experiences like this. Times where they bang their head against a problem until they figure it out, or someone helps them. At which point, that problem becomes old hat, and the next time they run into it, it’s not a big deal, they know what to do. Expertise is just accumulating a lot of old hats.