// Cyclists are a Friendly Sort
Posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009
I still read a lot of the news from Wisconsin because, well, a lot of my friends and family are still there, and I want to know what’s going on. While checking out the news from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, I found this piece about just how nice we cyclists are. The piece is a story of a cyclist who had a flat tire and no extra tubes. Eventually another cyclist came along who had and was willing to share a tube. Of course, as the article points out, “that’s what cyclists do for each other.”
There’s a couple of things that really get me about this story. The first is that this friendliness among cyclists is not a new phenomenon. We’ve been sharing tubes, tools, and patch kits for years. If you see a cyclist stopped and looking at his or her bike, it’s part of some unwritten code that you ask if they’re ok. We’re also pretty good about giving directions to lost cyclists, or helping them change a tube if they don’t have tire levers or aren’t sure how to do it themselves–and we always have been.
The second thing that bothers me about the story is that the person with the flat had only brought a patch kit, and no extra tubes on his ride. Despite the friendliness of cyclists, you can’t always count on one to be riding past you when you flat. The responsible thing to do is to make your ride self-sustaining. Always bring a tube, some tire levers, a set of allen wrenches, some food or supplement, and a way to inflate a tube (CO2 or a hand pump). After all, if this cyclist’s “good Samaratin” hadn’t had a tube, how could he have offered to help?
Lesson: always carry the extra stuff you might need on your ride. And if you see someone without it, share–but encourage them to start carrying their own stuff.