Pop Thorn

posted by Jaitu at 18:39

Whilst glancing out of the window at the pouring rain today I noticed that my dripping bike had lost some definition around the front tyre. My keen mind and deductive reasoning led me to conclude that I had a puncture.
I made a deal with myself that if it was dry when I left I would fix it properly - by which I mean replace the inner tube and not faff with a puncture repair kit. If it was still raining I would just pump a load of air back in and see how far I could get.
In the end it wasn't raining but it was almost an hour later than I had expected to leave so the "just pump a load of air back in" plan seemed preferable. I gave the tyre a quick once over to see if there was any obvious damage and was disappointed to find a woody stub sitting flush with one of the tread blocks. Further fiddling left it clear that no amount of pumping was likely to improve the situation.
I took the wheel off and extracted the offending item from the rubber. It was a little more substantial than I had anticipated. I took a poor quality image, in the fading light, of the thorn I took out next to the valve stem of the deflated tube as as a record.

The amazing this is that I know exactly where I would have picked this up and it is around two miles from work. Somehow I had managed to ride that far in the morning with no indication of the puncture.