Tales from today's commute....

[wafter]

Late this morning due to the last of yesterday's water main drama still being cleared up down the road, so I had to sit in traffic for 15-20 minutes.. got to watch a glorious sunrise with a Pink Floyd soundtrack however, so it wasn't all bad.

A lovely bright, clear morning with plenty of frost on the ground despite the forcast that it would be a tropical 1 degree..

A fantastic ride in although I encountered the school run traffic on the tow path, with a few inattentive parents / dog walkers spoiling the experience somewhat. Also had fun with some stupid woman in a car on Bridge Street who evidently identified as a cyclist - first parking squarely in the cycle bay at the traffic lights, then apparently pulling away when the cycle-only light turned green

As usual I feel a lot better for the ride; breakfast tasted fantastic so it might have embued me with somewhere near the regulation amount of seratonin for a change.

Fastest ride of the year so far despite an apparent headwind; heart rate still a bit concerningly high (relative to speed) but it's trending down since returning last week so hopefully that'll return to somewhere near normal soon. I wonder if it has anything to do with the cold / greater force required to push blood through cold, shrunken veins..

 

[neilrichardson55]

Yet another folly of my own making, it seems... I bought 5 Schwalbe AV4s from ebay a while ago and have had three fail due to apparently perishing around their outer circumference. Short of it is that this seems to be due to prolonged contact with (nearly..?) dried tyre sealant remaining inside the tyre from my aborted tubeless efforts.

Ironically this latest one appears to have failed as a result of abrasion from the plastic layer I'd put between the tyre and tube to try to ascertain whether the cause was the sealant or the tyre itself... although at least there appears to be no other damage so the sealant seems to be responsible.

I'm currently sat at the kitchen table trying to scrape remnants of sealant from the inside of the tyre with a scalpel...

Since you seem to be having no luck with the Halfords jobs, my own stupidity notwithstanding I've generally found the Schwalbe tubes to be decent and they can be had for a fiver a piece give or take if you shop around

Think the tubes are pot luck, ive just tried to of the Schwalbe one rear work fine and is holding front seems to be leaking from the valve grrrrrr might take the valve to bits and clean and seat it.