Newbie question and patching

[OakLeaf]

since I often don't have anything to mark the hole with, I forget where it was

That's what the pail of water is for! It's so much easier to find the hole at home than it is out on the road. When you're on the road, you have to listen for the hiss, sometimes over traffic noise, and if the puncture is small you may really have a hard time hearing it. At home, you can dunk the partially inflated tube into a pail of water and watch the bubbles come out. That's really the only way to find a slow leak.

But there's another trick worth mentioning here. When you install a tube, line up the label of the tire with the valve stem of the tube. Then when you find the offending object in your tire, you'll have an idea of where to start looking for the hole in your tube.


I run 700x23s on my road bike too. Back in the day, I had 21s on my race bike. But that's actually the same size tube, usually.