I Got Blisters on My Fingers

Little Nellie, has little wheels made with Alex rims. I don’t know who Alex is but he ain’t my friend. The rims appear to be a bit taller than most which makes putting tires on a total bitch. Schwalbe makes tires that fit tightly. They are especially difficult to put onto Alex rims.

I should point out that I do not like to use tire levers for putting tires on because I invariably end up puncturing the tube. I use my bare hands.

I bought two new tires last weekend and decided to put them both on today. It did not go well. There is a trick to putting tight fitting tires on. First you get one side of the tire on. Then you work as much of the other side of the tire on. With most tires, this is a piece of cake. With these tires it was pretty hard just to get this far. The last quarter of the tire did not want to go on. So being male and stubborn I tried and tried and tried to use brute force.

Apparently, I am a girly man.

I watched this video that shows the trick. You massage the tire. I think this relaxes the tire. It falls into a meditative state. Then you finesse it over the rest of the rim. It works for big wheel sizes. It worked (with a ton of effort) for Little Nellie’s rear tire. It simply wouldn’t work with the front tire.

After (I am not kidding) three hours of working on this, I finally gave up. I took the bike to my local bike store, Spokes Etc. Carlos took my bike and tried to push the tire onto the rim. For about 20 seconds. Then he pulled out a very flat plastic tire lever and popped it on the rim in ten seconds.

Are you efffing kidding me!

So why did I waste so much time struggling you ask? Simple. I have to be able to change the tire when I am out riding. There was just one thing to do.

I bought some flat plastic tire levers.

When I heal I will change the little tire on Big Nellie. I will use the flat plastic levers.