A flat tire in the Chihuahuan Desert

Imagine you’re on tour; It’s a long day - 80 miles through the desert and you’re somewhere in the middle on a road that may not have seen a car in days, maybe weeks. Suddenly you hear a loud pop from behind you. Yes, your riding partner has had a blowout and yes, he is out of spare tubes.

After digging through his repair kit, he manages to find a patch. He fixes his tube, mounts the wheel, inflates the tire, and then... breaks his Presta valve in half while removing the pump. The situation looks pretty bleak. You have spare tubes, but their wide Shraeder valves will not fit through the hole in his rim, which is only wide enough for a Presta.



You contemplate the idea, but then decide against riding off without him. So there you are in the middle of a desert, you have a broken valve stem, no spare tubes and an overdeveloped conscience. What do you do?

This is the story of such a problem, narrowly averted through an unconventional fix.

After quite a long time and quite a bit of brainstorming my friend (let’s call him Joe) and I had a solution. We’ll cut a slit in the sidewall of his tire, sew up the ends of the cut so that it will not tear under pressure, insert the Shraeder valve and inflate the tire. Then we’ll wrap the whole thing in duct tape.

There were two reasons for the duct tape; One: we had to keep the valve stem from hitting the frame as the wheel rotated, and Two: duct tape must be a part of every good field repair.

"It’ll take a miracle for this to work" I said as we realized how desperate the plan was. "I can’t believe I just cut a hole in my tire!" said Joe as he shook his head. But now we had passed the point of no return. We had to make it work.

As I unpacked my emergency sewing kit and began the repair, I thought for the first time that those long hours in my mandatory Home Economics classes may not have been a complete waste, and how proud my teacher, Mrs. Ford, would be if she had been there to see me.



After several minutes and a number of finger-pricks the repair was complete. Joe pushed the Shraeder valve through the hole and we both held our breath as we inflated our odd-looking creation. We decided that 40psi would be enough, so we stopped there and he repacked his bike.

We held our breath again as he mounted his bike and neither of us spoke for the first several miles, not knowing if the stitches would hold.



As the miles passed, we began to have more and more confidence in the tire, but we were also amazed that our fix had actually worked. We were even more surprised that it held all the way to camp, and for an additional 46 miles the following day.

It was quite an adventure and gave us a good story to tell, but please - next time you are on a tour, make sure you have spare tubes!