Stressed and Stranded

It’s Thursday evening, I am like a little bullet on the motorway as I fly home from work. It’s still early in the day really, not even 6pm yet, and that’s early for me seeing as I used to work until 8pm. I’m really enjoying the noise of the wind against my helmet and I’m loving how easily my bike is swinging in and out of traffic. It’s only as I’m coming up to my exit that I realize I’m passing cars a lot faster than I usually do at this point in my journey. I glance down at the clock and see the small glowing needle pointing to 160, and just like that I let the throttle back and the bike slows back to the limit; 120. Not before checking it was safe to do so of course.

I sidle my bike up between the traffic and get to the front of the line as the lights turn red and I’m happy to sit for a minute or two as the other lanes get their turn; I’m nearly home anyway and there is plenty of light still left in the day. That’s when I notice that something feels off about my bike but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I shrug off the feeling as the lights turn green, and I pull off and lean straight away to get around the curve straight after the light, only to my dismay, I find I have to lean her a lot harder than usual to make my turn… and I nearly knock my head off the car next to me as I do it. I swallow my fear as I turn her up right and come to a very gentle stop at the lights. A apart of me already knows what’s wrong, and I can’t decide if I’d prefer it to be what I already know, or it to be something else.

Holding my breath and my clutch in, I glance down at my front tyre and sure enough, she ain’t just going down, she is flat flat. Like bread in the oven that you have checked too many times flat. As the lights go green I very calmly pull forward as slowly as I can and pull right up onto the hard shoulder straight off the roundabout. The cars around me had seen my check my wheel and were at least kind enough to let me go ahead of them so that I could get out of their way. I hopped off her straight away and put her onto the kickstand and stood back to asses the damage. Yep. She was well and truly fucked. I’d been driving a bike for ten months, but only on her for maybe three at a push. I can change a flat tyre in under 10 minutes, on my own, in the pissing rain all while still singing to myself cheerfully enough. I know exactly where to get a replacement tyre in a jiffy, and I have a fairly decent idea about who would do a puncture repair for me too… but I only have one person to call about my bike really. You really need to know a bike mechanic when you don’t know the basics yourself.

I wasn’t off the bike ten seconds when two cyclists approached me and said that they would pull her right off the road for me and move her onto the footpath so I wouldn’t risk getting clipped by a car by accident. I was so grateful to them, as I can just about move her when she has full air in her tyres, never mind on a flat. They made sure that I wasn’t far from home (ten minutes max) and that I had someone who could come get me before they left. Even then I could see them hanging around a little to make sure that I was ok, and that warmed my heart so much. One of them had mentioned that he rode bikes himself, but that he didn’t actually know much about them, but that all bikers should help each other out; and I couldn’t agree more.

Just as I was on the phone to my other half, the realization of what had happened and what could have happened started to set in and I could feel myself start to panic. After just a second of inspection I could see a small hole in the tyre; a puncture hole. I couldn’t swear that was definitely it as I couldn’t move the bike to check the rest of the tyre, but it was a good guess. There had been nothing at the exit of the motorway which means I picked it up while I was going between 120 and 160. A motorbike wobbles when it’s front tyre goes, and it’s unsteady, and it’s super difficult to lean. I started to panic just thinking about what would have happened to me if that puncture had happened even just a few seconds sooner; I would have been on the side of the road alright… but the rest of me would have been elsewhere.

I now also had to face into the fact that my only mode of transport into my brand new job in town was out of commission. Where I’m from, bike tyres are hard to come by when you plan it, never mind in an emergency. I was suddenly without a way into work. Just as my heart rate was escalating and my voice was starting to shrill, another bike pulls up; a cruiser! Cool as a cucumber, the guy on the bike is pulled up and off his in a few seconds asking if I’m ok. I stutter out that I have a flat, and that I think it’s a puncture. He smiles kindly to me and says not to worry, I can fix that. I nearly cry with relief, someone who knows what they’re doing has arrived! I’m saved! He asks me to put her up on her middle stand so he can get a look at the tyre properly, and while I am so grateful that he thinks I can do that and that I have the power for it, I shyly admit that I can’t, and again in one swift motion he does it for me. We tilt the bike back and he confirms what I had thought; a small puncture that appears to be a hole that maybe a bit of glass bit into it and tore a chunk out of the rubber. He whips a foot pump out of one of his side paniers and pumps the tyre up in no time at all. We chat while he does it and discover that we live maybe 40 seconds away from one another. Once he has the tyre pumper up he offers to drive behind me the rest of the way home so that he knows I am home safe, he gives me his number and we set off.

My heart was in my mouth the whole time, terrified that the tyre would blow out and send me spinning across the road despite how careful I was being. Also stressing about the fact that if the tyre went down or we couldn’t repair it, I wouldn’t be able to get into work. In these situations I always stress about what MIGHT happen, instead of thinking about the fact that I was so stupidly lucky to have the one guy that actually carries a foot pump around pull up and help me out, no questions asked.

I got home completely safe and took a look at the tyre, a little air had escaped but not as much as I had been afraid would. I rang the guy up again and asked if it would be cheeky of me to collect the puncture repair kit from him that he had mentioned so that I could put my mind completely at ease for the next day. He was happy to hear that I had gotten home safe and said that it was fine for me to drive the bike over to his so that he could do the mend for me. Less than 10 minutes later my tyre was filled in and I couldn’t stop thanking the guy, I know as far as he was concerned all he had done was fix a puncture, but really what he had done was saved me a panic attack and fretting over getting to work for the next few days, as well as trying to spend a stupid amount on tyres for extortionate prices. He’d also shown me how to repair a puncture so I could do it the next time it happened to me on the side of a road; or even better he said, so that I could also help a fellow biker if I ever saw them stuck in the same way that I was.

It’s the little things like this that warms my heart and makes me grin stupidly large. It was the simple act of kindness that he showed me the following day checking in to make sure that the tyre had held the air and that I had made it into work ok too.

I have already ordered a puncture repair kit on Amazon. It arrived in the post today and it went straight into my bikes saddle bags. I’m keeping an eye out for a foot pump too, and it will join my jumper cables in the bags, just in case I come across a fellow biker in trouble and I can pass on the good deed and save someones day too.