Flat or punctured tire while out on a bike ride (or just commuting by bicycle) doesn't have to ruin your day! Before you head out on your new (or even old) bike, you can pad your peace of mind a bit by making sure you know what to carry and how to affect this most common 'mechanical' fix while out on the road or trail.
Replacing or patching flat tire.
First off, what type of tires are you using? Currently there are three types of tires available... Four, if you count the solid airless tire like Tannus. As solid tires aren't going to go flat and require road/trail-side repair, I am only including clincher, tubular, and tubeless tires in this post. Here is a good video discussing their differences.
Note that tubeless tires do occasionally go flat (perhaps it wasn't correctly seated or sealed when installed, or it got slashed rather than punctured... and the breach is too big for the sealant to handle). When tubeless tire goes poof on the road, they tend to get very messy (as in the sealant getting splashed out of the still rotating tire before you come to a stop, and there's a gooey mess everywhere) and takes longer to fix than clincher tires would.
And, yes, fixing a proper tubeless flat on the side of the road/trail would still require that you carry a spare inner tube and/or a patch kit. Don't leave home without it!
I am also excluding the tubular tires from this post as they are generally too big a pain as to be impractical to do on the road/trail-side. Most non-racing pros aren't using them anyhow (neither do we have a support car following us around to help with the stuff).
So, once you've figured out what type of tire you have (and whether you can fix it on the road/trail-side or not), you need to carry the correct flat repair tools and the correct size spare tubes (and a patch kit that hopefully is not older than a year, or the glue may have dried off, rendering it useless). Click here to go to the 'how to look up what size spare tube you need for your bike' post.
- How to take the rear wheel off the bike
Here is a good video on how to take the wheel off most types of bicycles (including how to release various types of brakes to make room for the tire to come out).
Note: You don't want to touch the disc brake rotor with your bare hand like he does in the video. That would tend to deposit skin oil to the rotor surface, causing the annoying brake squeals. If that happens, clean the rotor with rubbing alcohol (like the alcohol pads from the first aid kit) to de-squeal, and you should be good to go.
Also, another good thing to carry in your saddle bag if your bike is equipped with the disc brakes is a pair of disc brake caliper spacer pads. Once the wheel is removed from the bike, you'd put these pads in between the brake calipers to prevent them from slamming shut should the brake lever gets accidentally pressed. Why? Because such things do happen, and when they do, there is just about no chance that you could pry them open enough by the roadside to allow the rotor to pass thru so you could put the wheel back on.
And that... would be bad.
How to repair flat tire while on a ride.
Here are a couple of good videos on how to replace inner tube.
I think she does an amazing job. Would just note that it is also good to eyeball the rim tape (what the inner tube sits on on the wheel) to make sure no spoke-end is poking around or thru the rim tape to puncture the tube.
Here is a more detailed (and long) video on how to change the inner tube. Very fine tips and details. Unlike him, though I - like the lady in the first clip - prefer to work the tire beads in starting at and then away from the valve stem rather than the other way around (finishing at the valve).
I use Continental Gatorskin or Hardshell on my one go-anywhere-bike when riding on the roads, which is where I ride most of the time these days (I switch to cyclocross tires when hitting the trails on the same bike). And both the Gatorskin and the Hardshell are notoriously tight-fitting tires, especially when they're of the wired-bead variety rather than the more flexible folding variety. So, the last bit of beading the tire onto the rim is usually a work out. I don't ever use tire lever to push the last bit of bead in, but use the palm of my hands to massage it in. And, I don't like the idea of introducing a lot of force and/or movement to the tire/tube right near where the valve stem is. So... I start at the valve stem, and finish across the wheel from it.
How to patch a tube.
So, what happens if you caught a flat and don't have any spare tube available? Hopefully, you at least have a patch kit in the saddle bag that isn't so old as to have come unglued!
But, what if you don't have even a patch kit available and not on bus line... or within area serviced by taxi or ride-sharing vehicle?
I almost had to resort to one of these fixes once after catching 5 separate flats on a single ride out in a very remote part of the county... up in the mountains. They were all goat's head thorn punctures ganging up on my aged Gatorskins that had been subjected to too many trails riding ('cause I get trails-lust every now and then when hanging with the cars become a bit tiresome). I had gone nearly two years without any flat, and then, boom! Five flats out in the middle of nowhere, and actually depleting my overkill supply of 4 spare tubes, a patch kit (alas, was two years old and all the glue had dried up), and 5 CO2 cannisters. C'est la vie.
Tubeless flat repair.
Just because you use a tubeless set up doesn't mean that you should go riding around without carrying a spare inner tube that fits your tires! If you manage to slash that tire enough to require putting in a boot, you're going to need to put in an inner tube to ride home on.
Another good demo video... for good measure.
Last, but not least... flat repair for eBikes.
Obviously, this operation would be quite more complicated if your ebike isn't equipped with a stand, as ebikes are much heavier than regular pedal bikes. Most of these ebikes fat tires come with Schrader valve, so, you can probably roll into the nearest gas station and use the car air pump there to re-inflate. The car pump will likely max out around 35-40psi, though.
And, a more professional demo on ebike flat repair.
Whatever bike you choose to ride, be sure to research what type of tools and spare parts you need to have on hand to be able to fix a flat on the road/trail-side! We've come a long way since the 2010s when bike parts were more uniform. Nowadays there are many different wheel sizes and tire sizes rolling on the road, and you can't count on being able to bum a tube off someone else when your tire goes poof. Prepare for the worst and enjoy your ride!
Did I just see someone bicycling on the freeway shoulder? Is that even allowed??
Well, if you were driving on specific stretches of some freeways, you probably did!
Generally, bicycles and pedestrians are not allowed on the freeway, except for specific one-exit stretches where there is no reasonable surface street connecting point A to point B that a road bike can safely use.
These bike-legal stretches of the freeways are always only one-exit in length, and bikes are required to exit onto any rest area and to re-enter the freeway on the far side, so as to not cross any freeway access ramp.
How do you know which stretches of freeway are bike-legal?
If you are already driving on the freeway, you likely won't notice the bike-legal bits until it's almost over (there would be a little white sign on the right side of the freeway telling bicycles to exit, like the one in the last photo on this post). If you are entering the freeway at the start of a bike-legal stretch, the little white sign an the entrance of the on-ramp will not have 'bicycles' on its prohibited list.
Above is the usual sign you see entering a freeway on-ramp.
This is the sign you see entering a bike-legal stretch of a freeway. Note the absence of 'bicycles' on the prohibited list.
Just to clarify, class I and class II E-bikes are also allowed where regular pedal bikes are.
In San Diego County, the designated bikeable stretches of the freeways are:
1. I-5 shoulder between Las Pulgas Rd (Camp Pendleton) and Oceanside Harbor Dr (and sometimes, between Basilone Dr and Las Pulgas Rd).
This is due to USMC Camp Pendleton being an active military base. There is a designated bike route thru Camp P, but it requires a base access pass that is only available to US Citizens and Residents (how to apply for a Camp Pendleton base bike pass). And, even with the base pass, base access may also be suspended with little or no notice due to military activities. The I-5 shoulder between Las Pulgas Rd and Harbor Dr in Oceanside is therefore always bike-legal (except during construction/maintenance work on the freeway, in which case Caltrans will usually provide a shuttle service).
2. I-15 shoulder between Via Rancho/Bear Valley Pkwy in Escondido and W Bernardo/Pomerado Rd in Rancho Bernardo (across San Dieguito River). There is a pedestrian/bicycle bridge running parallel to the west of I-15 accessible from Sunset Dr in Escondido and W Bernardo Dr in Rancho Bernardo, but it lies in the San Dieguito River Preserve, the north side of the bridge is a dirt trail and is closed at night between sunset and sunrise.
3. I-8 shoulder between E Willow Rd in Alpine/Viejas and Hwy 79/Japatul Valley Rd in Descanso. The only other ways to travel between Alpine and Descanso are the dirt Viejas Grade Rd and Tavern - Japatul Rd - Japatul Valley Rd. Both of which add significantly more climbing and/or distance.
Please note that Caltrans is working on I-8 from the Vista Point rest area just east of E Willow Rd exit and on east for 10 miles starting in August 2022. This reduces eastbound lane to one travel lane, and no bicycles are allowed (a shuttle service for bikes needing to travel between E Willow and Hwy 79/Japatul Valley Rd, but you have to call, with likely significant wait time). More info at Caltrans. This only affects eastbound travel.
4. I-805 between Main St/Auto Park Dr and Palm Ave (Otay Valley).
5. I-125 (South Bay Expressway) between Birch Rd (Otay Ranch) and Otay Mesa Rd (Otay Mesa).
The I-5 shoulder between Sorrento Valley Rd and Genessee Rd used to be bike-legal until a few years ago when the separated bikeway (a segment of the North Coast Corridor Bikeway) opened. Now bicycles are no longer allowed on that stretch of the freeway.
In Imperial County to our east:
I-8 between In-Ko-Pah Rd. (Imperial County Line) and Junction with SR-98.
I-8 between Imperial Hwy and Dunaway Rd.
I-8 between Gordon’s Well Rd. and Ogilby Rd.
I-8 between Sidewinder Rd. and SR-188/Araz Rd.
Heading west on I-8 from Japatul Rd to E Willow Rd.
Bikes must exit the freeway at any rest area (and re-enter on the far side), and off-ramp. No crossing of freeway access ramp allowed.
Most cyclists are really not keen on riding on these freeway shoulders at all. Sure, the shoulders are usually roomy and relatively clean, but the discomfort of having cars zoom by at 60+ mph just a few feet away quite offsets for it. A few of these freeway shoulders are also not good for riding during wind events (the bridge over the Sweetwater River on I-8 and the long bridge over the Otay River Valley on I-805 and Hwy 125 come to mind).
If you see someone riding a bicycle on these stretches of freeway, they're doing it mostly out of necessity. Please be kind. They'll be taking the next exit off the freeway anyhow.
