2012 Black Cat Awards

[sdnelson19]

and another one.. on my usual morning ride, did the u-turn to head home, heard the fatal hiss and within 3 seconds it was flat.. spare tube and cannister later and back on the road again.. is it time i ditch the corsa evo's? I never had this much 'bad luck' with the michelin pro3's or pro4's.. insert sad face here

3 + 1 = 4 (so far) (or 4x as many for all of last year)

[twizzle]

Whoo-hoo, I'm down near the BOTTOM of the list. Apart from mikesbytes and Kev... where have all these unlucky new people come from??!?

Actually, I have one up my sleeve, my spare race wheel keeps on going down, I used it for Alex's training camp back in January and it's developed a slow leak (probably a fairy-pube), but I haven't fixed it yet. When I have some time and I need to use it...


9 - NhiTrac
6 - mikesbytes
5 - silentbutdeadly
5 - Kev365428, Yagan, jcjordan
4 - Redbull, sdnelson19
3 - __PG__, number21, Jake, teak81, Crowella
2 - brades68, jgon286,ZepinAtor, madrapper, The_Eggman, igstar, Twizzle, Mustang, briztoon
1 - gretaboy, madrapper, Warnesy, coffeeandwine, DavidTomic, csy75, sjw0410, familyguy, WombatK, sturmey archer, toolonglegs, jasonc, Strawburger, Aushiker

0 - Baalzamon, Max, CommuRider, hannos, martinjs, grantw, Ozkaban, lump_a_charcoal, Cruiserman

[Mulger bill]

Sigh... Time for me to open my account.

Pinch flat on the rear Gator of me commuter this morning. Thankfully only a few hundred metres away from work. I saw the rock the previous vehicle down the access road flicked across in time to get the front wheel outta it's path

No wonder I don't like Skybus.

Thats one for 1.

[Mugglechops]

Got my first today. Had to be rescued because I left my puncture gear in my other bag

[teak81]

Well on the way home from a training ride today, 200 meters from home, spongy rear tire. Walked the last bit home. Changed tube and found a small shard of metal worked through the tire into the tube. +1 TOTAL (4)

[sdnelson19]

2 in 2 days? after only 1 for all of last year? What the hell.... getting very suspicious of these evo corsa cx's.. or maybe its the road-side grading and resurfacing i have to put with here at the moment..?

4 + 1 = 5 (so far)

[twizzle]

+1, 3. My front rim had two spokes come loose, so I had to pull apart my spare wheel and find the leak. Turned out to be a patch - such a neat job, I hadn't even realized I'd put a patched tube in there. Just a very, very slow leak.

I then had a go at refitting the tyre (Panaracer) back on the rim but tubeless this time as an experiment... lasted 45 seconds before blowing off big-time and covering everything in latex, so it's now got the Hutchinson intensive fitted instead. Fun experiment... but very messy cleaning the latex off the front of the house. Scared the crackers out of the kids, dogs, neighbors dogs, neighbors...

[Mustang]

Not a flat, but a glass ruined tire, second this year....does this count?

[Ozkaban]

Came real close to +1, but the Maxxis Refuse saved me. Stopped at my car and put the bike on the rack and noticed something lumpy and shiny on the tyre - it was a decent shard of glass embedded in it. Pulled it out and all good That cut would certainly have gone straight through my old conti ultra races. Hate the way the maxxis grip, but loooove the way they stop punctures...

[brades68]

2 + 2 = 4

One pinch flat on saturday ride (pothole - come to Rockhampton!), another one just the other day during bunch ride - cause unknown. maybe it got tired (pun intended)

Cheers
Mick

[twizzle]

Not a flat, but a glass ruined tire, second this year....does this count?

Nope. Has to be a deflation incident.


It wasn't supposed to rain today, but as I left my desk it started to rain and as I left the bike cage I could hear the roar of water from the pipes from the roof. I sat and watched it pour down from the gate under the building, and after 15 minutes I got tired of waiting and headed out. Within seconds I was saturated, five minutes later I'm stopped at a set of lights, lightning and thunder, huge rain drops and the road is awash.

I head off, hit around 40+ kph on the downhill pretty quickly... but the bike feels wrong. I'm getting ahead of the rain at this point, a couple of K's down the road it's mainly dry... and I pull over. Latex dribbling from the tyre, latex all over the back of the bike, about 40psi left in the tyre. I pull out the CO2, the edge of the storm cell is heading over, I try and add some gas to the rear - but it just comes out the hole, so I get back on the bike and try and get away from the weather. Major fail - torrential rain, hail stones, streams of water across the roads, lightning all around. I finally made it home after a 40 minute trip that normally takes 20. I did stop once more to add some more CO2, and by the time I was home it had pretty much plugged itself.

Turned out to be two holes & I'd lost all the latex - 45 minutes to patch the tyre and get it back together, and another CO2 wasted getting it to seal up.

Fairy, you are an evil biarch. +1, 4.

[The_Eggman]

Starting to really find my feet here.

Two more. On at the entrance to Centenial, another halfway back to the CBD. Not sure whether the second one was a consequence of not clearing the tyre well on the 1st (I was out of tubes so it was kind of irrelevant at the time, though I did pull out a good size chunk of glass and a paperclip )

Upgraded to Gatorskins from my el cheapo rubber today. Hoping to make less appearances

[sli123]

First flat for me since November 29th. A smidge over 5,000km since then.
Total = 1

[johnny99]

1st,2nd and 3rd and 4th for the year all in one ride. 1st was a small thorn about 2kms in to the ride. The 2nd a pinch flat a few kms later. Another couple of kms and a small piece of wire. Then at the 12km mark felt it going flat again. This time the patch hadn't stuck and I had run out of patches so gave up and called the wife. Have been riding the same route for a few weeks with no issues. Today I tried a different route and look what happens. Back the old route tommorow.

[number21]

Another 2 for me.

Had one about a week ago, went to pump my tyres and as I connected the pump it started hissing. Cheap O tube come back to haunt me, valve started coming away from the rubber and was letting air out when the stem moved. Weird.

Second was yesterday. The start of my interval training, did one block and decided to ride easy for a couple of minutes before the next set, then hiss-hiss-hiss with each rotation. Back tyre had a massive gash (600kms old!) and something got through... Another 20 minute warm up before I could restart the intervals.

My total now---- 5

[Ozkaban]

Misread the rules before but this ones counts
0+1=1

Maxxis refuse might save a lot of cuts, but if you don't keep the pressure up they do nothing for pinch flats. Nice snake bite on the inside of the tube on the way to parra park for some laps. Actually kinda pleasant changing the tube as I was not in a rush and the sun was shining and I was in a nice park. Had to cut the number of laps down that I could do due to the delay, but just went harder to make up for it

Cheers,
Dave

[teak81]

Out on a training ride, about half way. I decided to take a shared pedestrian path as i had hit a wall an i was a bit stuffed. Started feeling funny, looked down and rear tire was going flat. Kept riding for another 100 meters but it was no good. Found a block of concrete to sit on whilst i changed the tube. The culprit was a small shard of metal that pierced the tube. On a good note, i also found a further 3 shards of glass that hadn't gone through the tire yet. Put as much air in as i could with the emergency pump. Then went to the lbs and borrowed the floor pump, and then rode home. Plus 1, TOTAL=5

[Ozkaban]

... Scared the crackers out of the kids, dogs, neighbors dogs, neighbors...

I did something similar with a CO2 cylinder last night at home. I used one to completely fill the rear tyre, so it's at ~120psi. Didn't even think that this obviously means that the CO2 cylinder is still at 120psi too (has anyone ever calculated the psi in a full cartridge???). Anyway, I was given a new saddle bag as a birthday pressie and was moving bits across when I came across the cartridge with the nozzle still attached (had forgotten to disassemble it). Pulled the nozzle off it in the lounge room with family all around and didn't they hit the deck in a hurry Wife came running in from the other room wondering who blew the house up

Note to self. Fully discharging a CO2 cylinder into a tyre does *NOT* mean it is fully discharged Not something I intend on repeating...

[sli123]

First flat for me since November 29th. A smidge over 5,000km since then.
Total = 1

Make that 2
Previous was a front flat due to a thorn causing a slow leak. Today was a rear flat that I couldn't find a reason for.
Total = 2

[gretaboy]

put me down for another one...nice little curved bit of metal

Total = 2

[igstar]

3 more tube changes for me on one ride - I was descending Mt Baw Baw (my first time there) and was sitting on the brakes pretty heavily when I noticed the front tyre softening. The rim was HOT - I burned myself when trying to take the wheel off. Found an old patch had disintegrated from the heat. Put in another tube and 1km further down-hill same thing again - a patch on the tube had melted off. A mate pulled over and have me one of his tubes and as I was pumping it the valve broke...
Finally managed to get hold of an unpatched tube with a broken valve and made my way back safely.

Total of 5 for the year now.

[lethoso]

copped a flat on the ride in to work yesterday, plastic rim tape has split, and the tube had a hole rubbed in it. Was able to just swap the tube and carry on, but will have to redo the tape sooner rather than later.

So that makes 2 (the one earlier which was kinda stopped by sealant still needed changing in the end).

I did much better last year (none)

[Big_Red]

Gah! Got my first flat for the year and i don't even have that many km under the belt yet.

I was playing dodge the pothole with about 3km left in the commute to work on the mtb when i heard the rear tyre go psssssshhht, so i hopped off the bike to check the tyre and sure enough there's a shard of glass (brown amber of course!) barely poking through the tyre. The glass was only about 4mm? so i must have ridden over a larger piece of glass and it has broken off and just penetrated the tube. Never even saw the glass on the road beforehand though.

[westab]

Bother it the first flat for the year - I can't remember the last time I got a flat (am happy about that).

Yes it was a large peice of amber (beer bottle) glass. It must have been sitting in the sand of a driveway dish on the shared path on Sunnyholt road. It made a 4mm cut in the tyre and 3mm in the tube - I didn't even see it.

[jcjordan]

I really should not ride in the race with my race tires on, thats another one for me.

Total 6