The climb up East Old La Honda was typical; West Old La Honda still required extra care descending, but it was in the best shape it had been in many weeks. Descending West 84 was quite fun, but I did stop to take pictures of a large collapsed section of pavement west of La Honda. This put us a few minutes behind the rest of the ride.
The landscape along 84 was as green as I have ever seen it and the numerous poppies were intensely orange. By the time we got to Stage Road, we had made up a lot of time, but hadn't caught up. I hadn't been on Stage Road since before the storms. It is in pretty good shape, but there were occasional patches of gravel or dried mud. Halfway down the first descent on Stage, the rear tire blew out.
It turned out the tire was worn to the cords over much of the tire and the cords were worn quite a bit in a couple of places. Stella patched the tube while I put in a new tube and a dollar bill boot. We only got a short way down the road before the next flat. This time a Power Bar wrapper was pressed into service as a boot.
This time we got up the hill and down the other side. As we got to the base of the hill and began to look forward to the quick spin into town, we hit a very shallow pot hole and got the third flat in a row. We had both had it with flats and walked to town.
The rest of the group had finished lunch and was getting ready to look for us when we made it to the bakery. I wanted to eat before dealing with the tire. A large group decided that repairing someone elses unusable tire was less boring than sitting around and attacked the problem with gusto. Stella went off in search of duct tape. There wasn't any in Pescadero, but the deli did have a roll of Duck tape, which she bought.
Meanwhile, John Emmel produced a huge boot cut from an old clincher that he had been given by Ken Holloway in a previous ride. The boot was placed at the most worn spot and the entire tire was lined with Duck tape. After the tire was pumped up, it bulged horribly in places. It was decided to restrain the bulging with Duck tape. Robin Morris from NASA, John Langbein of USGS, and Mr. Bill Bushnell each selected a section and wrapped multiple layers of tape around the rim and tire.
This rendered the rear cantilever brake useless, so it was left open. Since the tandem has a drum drag brake, this wasn't a problem. A debate ensued as to whether it was a good idea to climb Alpine and go down Page Mill on this setup. It was finally decided to go north on 1 to Half Moon Bay and see if the bike store had a tire.
We stopped after a mile to see how the wheel was doing. No deterioration was apparent. We stopped at Highway 84 and everything still looked the same, so we decided to take 84 and try to make it back. Another check at La Honda revealed nothing. The rest of the climb was uneventful, as was about a third of the descent. Then came flat number four.
We found that the boot had shifted and we had gone over 30km on Duck tape. Out came the patch kit and leftover tape and the repair reperformed. This held for the rest of the ride.
Would real duct tape have fared better? I'm in no hurry to find out by experience. I'll certainly be checking tire wear a lot more often.
Update: It turns out that Duck Tape brand tape is real duct tape.
This page was last updated on 1998 May 24
