A Fight with Flats, Censored

My replacement tubes arrived yesterday for the 16X, three of them in total.  One of them was from Ewheels and the other two I ordered from Amazon.  I was very focused on getting the EUC back up and running.  I got a tip that soaking the stiff tire in hot water may help so I filled the utility sink with water and dumped the tire in for about 15 minutes.

Once I got started I figured I needed to work fast so the tire remained as pliable as possible.  Even though it was heated, I still struggled somewhat getting the tire back on with the new tube.  I utilized my big tire spoons pretty extensively to pry the tire over the wheel.  So after some struggle I was ready to put air in the tire.  My heart sank when my Ryobi inflator got up to 7.5 PSI but went no further, indicating the new tube is leaking, undoubtedly from getting nicked by one of the prying levers.  I was pissed but I knew I had another tube.

So I ripped the tire back off the rim and struggled a second time to get the tire back on.  This time I tried to use just hand and forearm power to reseat the tire most of the way.  I only used the tire spoons for about a 10 inch section of the rim at the end.  When I hooked up the inflator this time I was confident it would shoot right up to operating pressure quickly.  It didn’t.  Once again, despite my extreme caution I had put another small hole in the new tube.  You can imagine my joy.

Well I was frustrated beyond belief.  I had one tube remaining, but despite the setbacks my determination to get this done had only hardened, because of the failures.  I needed to win.  So I pulled out my third tube.  I decided the only way I could insure I wouldn’t puncture another tube with a tire lever was to not use a tire lever at all. Instead I put the wheel down on the floor and used my bodyweight and torque generated from my hands and forearms to force the tire onto the rim without tools.  The effort was substantial, my arms were covered in sweat by the end of it.

So the moment of truth arrived, it was do or die as I had no spare tubes remaining.  I hooked up the air compressor and felt a feeling of accomplishment as the pressure shot up to 25 PSI and stayed there, finally.  It was quite the fight.  I reassembled the rest of the wheel and took it out to the driveway for a very quick test, which felt fine.  In total I spent around two and a half hours of blood (literally), sweat and tears reaching the finish line.  I now look forward to getting some time to get out on the wheel for some real testing.

So for some unknown reason starting this week, Facebook has flagged my blog as violating community standards.  When I try to post links to my daily entries, just as I have for more than a decade, it refuses to do so, saying the content violates their Community Standards. WTF??  What is more frustrating is you have absolutely no course to remedy the problem.  You have the option to let them know why you think it isn’t a violation but you get zero information regarding why the content is flagged or what you can do to fix it.

It likely is due to FB putting in new automated processes to flag content like Russian election imposters but obviously it also takes down legitimate content.  It’s not the end of the world if I can’t link my blog to FB but it still is annoying and another reason to dislike the invasive service, as if there aren’t enough already.