Sisters (apparently) aren’t doing it for themselves

That is, repairing their own punctures. Or so this blog post from Total Women’s Cycling seems to suggest.

Now, I’m not usually one to throw myself wildly into a topic where I could be accused of sexism, condescension and general douchebaggery, but it’s made me itch in a kind of odd way. What kind of cycling world are women coming into where they can be a mountain biker for ten years and still not know, other than in a purely theoretical sense, how to fix a flat tyre when out on the trail?

Look, I don’t necessarily see this as a failure of individual riders, and I don’t see it as necessarily a strictly female issue – there are plenty of guys that go out on the trails without knowing how to fix a tyre – but it does intrigue me that such a basic piece of cycling knowledge can be left by the wayside for that amount of time unrectified. Questions abound. I mean, did the male riders the blogger relied on for puncture repairs never feel the need to pass on the knowledge? Did the blogger never feel the need to ask? Does the blogger not have google, or a local bike shop with five minutes to spare? Does the cycling community have to fail female riders this badly?

If nothing else, it’s a matter of safety. The writer talks of waiting at the side of the trail for another rider to come along and help. Well, what if you’re the last rider of the day down the trail? What if you’re on a rarely-ridden section of back country and no-one else is coming? It happens. I’ve ridden for hours without seeing anyone else wander by – and sometimes I think that’s part of the sport’s charm

For a road rider, this may not be a big problem. You can flag down a driver, walk to the next town, call a friend to come and pick you up. But Mountain Biking implies a more secluded, off-the-beaten-track aspect – depending on where you are, you could be 50km or more from the nearest tarred road, with no cellphone reception and no obvious route to the nearest source of assistance. 50km is not, I’d say, a trivial distance to walk, while dragging a bike, in rough country. In some parts of the world, such as the Australian outback, people die trying to walk to help.

Anyway, the article I linked to above came to mind last weekend when at Awaba Mountain Bike Park doing race prep for the upcoming Shimano MTB Grand Prix series. I opted to ride light and left the pump, tyre levers and tube back at the car park, riding with only a couple of gels and a bidon. Wouldn’t you know it, half way through my second lap, I popped a flat.

Now, I’ve known how to fix punctures since I was knee-high. The inner tubes of my childhood bikes were probably more patch than tube. I’ve used my mum’s best spoons as tyre levers, improvised patches from recycled tubes, bodged torn sidewalls back to a ‘rideable’ state with tree bark and have generally been self-sufficient. But this time I was stuck with only the walking option. I can count on one hand the number of times that’s happened, but this was the first time a simple puncture had forced me to walk*.

Now, at Awaba the car park is never more than a couple of kms from the trail, but in a twisty network of singletrack, it’s not always clear how to get there directly. So I trudged maybe three kilometres, walking my bike as I went. I made the best of it and took the opportunity to do some basic track maintenance as I walked – removing a couple of low branches and resetting a couple of loose rocks here and there – and eventually got back to the car, hotter, more tired and far more thirsty than I’d expected to be. Then I swapped in a new tube, got my pressures right, repaired the old tube (in case I also popped the new one) and set out for a few more laps. I didn’t see another rider, despite it being a dry weekend at a busy mountain bike park just north of Australia’s most populous city.

And as I rode on, I thought of the blog post I’d read. What if I had been 50km from the road? Well, for one thing, I’d have been carrying a repair kit. But what if I didn’t actually know how to fix the problem?

That’s the situation you’re potentially in if you don’t have the basic skills to fix your bike on the trail.

So, everyone – ladies and blokes – if you don’t know how to change an inner tube, go and learn how NOW. Here’s an article from About.com that explains it. Try it out at home first, because out on a trail, in the rain, with darkness falling is NOT the time to practice the theory. If you have a local bike shop, ask them if they do a bike maintenance evening. Lots do. If you have biking mates, ask them to show you how (and punch them if they laugh at you. Punch them even if they smile in a funny way). Hell, I’ll teach you if you’re somewhere nearby.

Don’t be embarrassed to ask, because that embarrassment could result in you spending, at best, an unpleasant few hours pushing your bike home.

Check whether you have tubeless or tubed setups and know your options. It may be enough to remove a valve, squirt in some sealant and re-inflate – but if you don’t know how to do that, you’re walking. You may need to pop in a new tube, or patch the leaking one. You might even need to improvise a little, and you can’t do that if you don’t know what you’re doing.

If you know how to do this, and you have to help someone who doesn’t, please take a few extra moments and offer to teach them, instead of patting them on their pretty little head and saying “leave it all to me, chickadee”. You’ll be less of a douchebag if you do, and the cycling community will be better off by one informed, self-sufficient rider who can hopefully pass on the skill to someone else in need.

Above all though, don’t think it’s enough to take your bike into the LBS when you have a mechanical. Be self-sufficient and ready to cope, and you’ll be free to enjoy your riding all the more.

* if you’re wondering, the other times consist of: Snapped frame at Loftus Oval, 2km walk to railway station. Pretzeled front wheel at Clyne Valley – 5km walk home. Destroyed freehub resulting in no drive, also at Clyne Valley – 2km push and coast home. And I can think of no others, though I can think of some close shaves.