Errands, and a not-flat
I took the born-again Trek out shopping today (Brooklyn Pharmacy, then Kobos) and managed to get a puncture in my rear tire while I was doing it. But the Trek is running tubeless Confreries these days, and they’re stuffed full of Stans sealant, so I became aware of the puncture not when the tire sagged to the point where it was grinding the rim against the pavement, but when I became aware of an intermittent “whisk-whisk” noise as I rolled along.
I thought it was a leaf, or worse yet, a staple that was working its way into the tire, so I stopped to investigate and saw that latex was running out from inside the fender (where it was sprayed out of the gash in the tire), but since the tire was still mostly inflated I continued on to Kobos and locked up the bicycle with the gash at the very bottom of the wheel (so it would either continue to leak sealant or it would actually seal.)
I went into Kobos for half an hour (to get a couple of pounds of tea and a soy cafe-au-lait) and when I came out I was happy to see that the tire wasn’t laying flat in a puddle of sealant. When I started to ride back towards home, it made the “whisk-whisk” for a couple of minutes and then fell silent when the sealant finally congealed into the hole.
So I rode over half a mile of gravel on the way home, but still made it there without the tire losing all of its air and falling off the rim.
The gash is fairly bad; it’s not large, but it has cut some of the fabric inside the tire, so I should probably consider getting another Confrerie to replace this one (I wish the Ritchey 650×28b Tom Slicks weren’t quite so expensive, because they claim to be tubeless ready and 28mm is a nice width for a tire. But after trying the Grand Bois Cypres – a loan from a friend – and being not particularly happy with them I’d hate to throw down $65/tire for something that might turn out to be junk (an artifact of my experience with the Rivendell/Panaracer Nifty Slothy)) but that’s going to have to wait until this tire messily deflates when I’m out on the line.