Sat­ur­day while in between mon­key­ing with the Miata I also fixed the flat on the tan­dem. Pulled the tube out and pumped it full of air. It came right back out. In a rush. Sounded like from the valve stem. I put it under water in the bath­room sink and air bub­bles came cas­cad­ing out from around the base of the stem. It was not patchable.

Nei­ther I nor the local bike store had the proper sized (26 x 1.25) tube with a presta valve on hand. She said she would order a cou­ple and I fig­ured I would use the tube I had that was close (26 x 1) to get by until they came in.

When we got up this morn­ing to go for a bike ride, sure enough the tire was flat again. Not a big deal, we were going to ride our sin­gle bikes any­way, but I’ll take it apart tomor­row to see if I can see some­thing. Maybe there is a sharp edge on the rim where the valve stem passes through.

We really wanted to ride the tan­dem to work today, so Tues­day we drove over to Augusta to see if we could find a tube at one of the down­town bike stores.The first stop was Andy Jordan’s and when the fel­low asked what I needed, I told him, “A 26 x 1.25 tube…” he starts towards the shelf with all their tubes on it “…with a Presta valve.” He comes to a halt and says, “We don’t have any. We could order you one?” We tell him thanks anyway.

Stop two, a mile away, we enter Out­spokin’ which I had called ear­lier and they had said they had what I was look­ing for. I fig­ured we would be in and out. We were greeted and asked what we wanted. I told him and off he went. We wan­dered the store a bit while we waited. We drifted deeper in the place the longer our buddy was gone. We cir­cled back to the desk about the time the employee came out from the back empty handed. He called over to the owner, who joined him look­ing on their self full of tubes. He finally said the clos­est thing he had was a 26 x 1.75. I told him I didn’t think I could get some­thing that big in the tire even in its unin­flated state. I bought the thing for two rea­sons: one, he said he’d give me my money back if it didn’t fit and two, it was our only hope of rid­ing the bike to work on Thursday.

When we got home I pulled the wheel and took out the flat spare. Turns out there was a sharp edge where the stem passed thru the rim, so I tried fil­ing it down a bit. To fur­ther pro­tect the stem I added an extra layer of rim tape. After about five min­utes of stretch­ing and tuck­ing I man­aged to get that x-large tube inside the tire as best I could. Pumped it up to 100psi and waited for the bang of a pinched tube or the hiss of a small leak at the junc­ture of stem and tube. Nothing.

We opted to go for a quick ride around the block as a final test. And much to my sur­prise it held up. Wednes­day morn­ing on the way by to the car I squeezed the tire, expect­ing a flat, but it was still inflated. Nice.

Wednes­day night it was flat again.…