Last weekend, I flatted on my Saturday morning ride. I was only two miles from home, and was too worn out to change the flat then and there, so I called my wife and had her perform sag duties.

That evening, in the cool of my kitchen, I pulled out the tube and replaced it. The replacement tube had two patches, but they looked pretty sturdy. I generally will patch my flatted tubes and reuse them, so doing this again wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for me.

Sunday morning, I went out to the garage 20 minutes before the club ride was due to begin, and to my horror, found that the tire had gone flat overnight. Yikes! I pulled the wheel from the bike and hauled my tire levers and floor pump into the kitchen again. Then, I grabbed a new tube that was still in its box, fresh from the bike shop.

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I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a bike, and I didn’t want to spend the $150-$200 per year that signing up for Bears Bikes would have cost me. if I wanted to spend that much, I would buy a new bike that I could keep beyond my college... A few days ago, I had to have a new inner tube installed on my front tire as the original one had broken, and I was on a flat—and while I can’t be positive, it seems to me that the tires deflate at an unreasonably fast rate. After having a few bikes stolen due to locking negligence, I gave up on them, but when I moved off campus and fell prey to the delusion that housing on the Loop is farther from campus than is the 40, I resolved to buy one. After three weeks, one of my pedals broke off, and the other one is well on its way. I went to one and, five minutes and $110 dollars later, left with what I thought was a cost-effective way of moving me from A to B. I was sadly mistaken. Fortunately, or so I thought at the time, certain large retailers in the St. Louis area offer bikes at far lower prices. The 15-minute walk from the far end of the South 40 to the library turns into a five-minute trip, and a student can carry far more than he would otherwise be able to with the aid of handlebars.

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