Blow Out…

The crack of a gunshot rings out. Heads instinctively turn to locate the sound…
No, not an episode of Hawaii 5-0, the new one which is way more violent than the classic version, though at Aloha Tower it could have been. It was just me having a blowout.
I was riding my Quickbeam home after coffee downtown this morning when I suffered a rear sidewall failure. It wasn’t a big deal as I wasn’t in traffic and there were no control issues anyway. Still it wasn’t a puncture with slow leak, it was a decided bang.
I pulled over and heard a tourist say, “Look, your tire.” Yep, they called it.
The tire is question was a Panaracer Pasella with at least a couple of thousand miles on it – I got my money’s worth for sure. It had started life on my QB as a front tire where, given my weight distribution, it didn’t suffer much wear. When the original rear tire finally wore out, I moved it to the rear and put a brand new tire up front. Then I rode the hell out of the bike for hundreds more miles with training for RAGBRAI 2011.
Well today it gave up….

And, as you can see, the tube was toast…

Luckily I had a tire boot with me to keep the new tube in the tire while I rode home. Okay, it’s not really luck. I carry that sort of thing around specifically for this purpose…

So that was that. I inflated the tire and headed home…oops…almost forgot…
Many mahalos to the tour bus driver who, while waiting around for his charges to reboard his bus gave me a quick hand and held my bike steady while I put the wheel back in place.
When I got home I tossed the old tire, though with the boot in place I could probably have gotten a few more miles – but I’d never have felt comfortable riding any distance I wasn’t willing to walk. So…now I’ve got to get some more tires…and it’s not the worlds easiest decision.
I’ve loved the Pasellas but on my Friday I’ve been riding Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires and they seem (knock on wood) almost indestructible.
Do I go light and comfy or indestructible and comfy. Cost is, of couse, an issue. I can get more Pasellas at $14 a pop. Cheap. Sigh. We’ll see.
Aloha!