I haven't seen my pal Carrie since we did a ride together back in, yikes, autumn 2019... Doesn't time fly when you are nearly housebound by a pandemic!
She texted me last night to ask if I finally felt sufficiently vaccinated and socially distanced to see her again? She was coming through Todmorden to meet someone to buy their climbing shoes*** I agreed that we would have coffee and goodies in my back yard. The forecast was for long sunny spells, and we would be relatively sheltered from the chilly wind.
I got a call from her this morning to say that she was about 5 kms up the Burnley Road and heading here, so to get the kettle on. Shortly after that, I got another call - PUNCTURE! And, er, would I fancy a short bike ride to help her fix it?
Apparently, it took her 45 minutes to fix her last one. Alternatively, it would be about a 45 minute walk to bring the bike here for me to help. ('Help' = I do it!)
It made sense for me to hop on my bike and go up there. It took me about 15 minutes to arrive, by which time she had discovered that the shop she had punctured in front of did nice pasties!
View attachment 587346
Looks like a job for...
Bicycle Repairman! 
I asked what the problem was with puncture repairs. She is really tiny so it turns out that she is a bit lacking in finger strength and she also has a touch of arthritis which makes applying force difficult. She demonstrated that she could barely undo her quick release, whereas I could do it easily with one finger. I could also get the tyre off and back on again with bare hands, whereas she said that she would struggle even using tyre levers.
I got on with the job and thought that I would be searching the tyre for embedded glass/nail/whatever but soon spotted the cause - a 'snakebite puncture'. I told her that was what it was but she had never heard of them. I explained about the tyre bottoming out on a bump and the wheel rim nipping the tube on both sides, producing characteristic parallel slits as if a snake had bitten the tube.
I checked the pressure of the other tyre and it was very low. She is small, so she doesn't need as much pressure as a big heavy person like me, but a guesstimated 60 PSI in a 23C tyre was too low even for her. I asked why she had it at such a low pressure and she said that was as high as she could get it. I smiled and suggested that she should buy a track pump. She smiled back and said that was using a track pump!!!
I swapped in one of
my spare tubes so she could keep
her spare for her post-coffee ride home. I have since repaired her tube and will keep it as one of my spares. I put enough air into the tube to nip down the valley to my place, then whipped out my track pump to top the pressures up while the kettle was boiling.
Well, it turned out that she only had just under 50 PSI in the back tyre; I had put about 70 PSI into the front. I was going to pump them up for her but asked her to demonstrate the track pump problem, which she did, quite convincingly. She is so light that she couldn't press the pump handle down hard enough to get much more air in. The only way she could do it was to jump in the air and support her full weight on the pump handle as she came back down! It was quite comical, but it made me realise that I had never thought of the practical problems of being small when some strength is required. I got 80 PSI into the tyres one-handed, and topped the pressures up to 95 rear/85 front two-handed.
We had a nice chat in the sunshine and she whipped out an Easter egg that she had been saving, so we had half of that each.
I accompanied her as far as Hebden Bridge afterwards, then turned back up the valley. It had been so nice out in the sun that I decided to have another pot of coffee and do my crosswords outside to catch some more rays.
A fun day, and I made myself useful for a change!
*** She is going to take up climbing at an age when most people are giving more thought to retirement!
