Turning Into a Bike Geek

[Artista]

Great tips, ny biker. I had heard about squeezing the tire to unseat it from the rim but I forgot to do it today. Oh well, it still came off relatively easily. I also knew about lining up the valve stem with the tire label but I thought that rule was more stylistic than functional. You're the only person to point out a good purpose for this.

One thing that I learned was to check the direction of the tread if you're going to take the tire completely off the rim. I had to study the tread on the rear tire, which is different from the front, to make an educated guess about which direction to put the tire back on. Hubby came home and confirmed that I had done it correctly. He was impressed that I had done the whole thing by myself.

I'm glad that my first experience was on the front tire. I'll feel much more confident someday when I decide to tackle the rear.

[Melalvai]

Home is a great place to change a tire and do any other bike repair & maintenance. Another good place to do it is at a bike shop. My bike shop has 2 bike stands each with a set of tools located just outside the repair area for anyone to use. So if you run into trouble there are experts right there to help you.

You might think that's not a very good business model--to provide tools for people to use for free instead of paying the mechanics to do simple jobs-- but I think it is a great business model. Empowering people to take care of the simple stuff makes them feel more confident, and they keep riding instead of giving up, and they buy more stuff from the bike shop and their bikes will need repairs that they can't or don't want to do themselves. Then the mechanics spend their time on real repairs instead of the simple stuff that people could do themselves, which probably makes them feel a lot better about themselves too.