Changing tires on Little Nellie is usually brutally hard. The sides of the rim are tall and the rubber on the tire sidewalls is stiff, often resulting in nasty blisters on my thumbs from mounting the tire. Fortunately, Little Nellie hasn’t had a flat in several years. Today I learned why. Until I did a make over on this bike, I had barely ridden it in three years. No ride, no flats. Genius.
This year, after the make over, I have ridden it over 1,800 miles. Today, I went outside to go for a ride and the back tire was all squishy (sorry about the technical terminology). The back tire had a rusty roofing nail in it. The tire was a Schwalbe Marathon, a tire that has a later of green flat-deterrent material in the tread. The nail managed to miss the green stuff by a couple of millimeters.
There was just one thing to do. I flipped the bike over and began surgery. To my surprise, the tire came off with a minimum of hassle. I taped a dollar bill over the hole on the inside of the tire. This tire boot keeps the hole from pinching the new tube and causing a mystery flat after a couple hundred miles. Been there, done that.
I put a new tube in the tire and, as god is my witness, the tire went back on the rim with a minimum of fuss. No blisters. My hands barely got dirty.
The inflated tire held air for a thirty-mile jaunt but the dollar bill caused an annoying bump in the rear tire. Seeing as how the tire was over five years old, I ordered a new tire (and tube) to give me something to do over the weekend.
Before fussing with the tire, I removed my side mirror. Riding without a mirror gives me the creeps. Cars sneak up on me like hungry predatory beasts looking for a fleshy snack. Every time I put Little Nellie in the trunk of my car, the trunk lid would hit the handlebars. To provide clearance, I would rotate the side mirror. After doing this a dozen or so times, the mirror’s mounting hardware started to tear the tape on the handlebar. I removed the mirror and covered the gashed bar tape with duct tape. Next I borrowed a bar-end mirror from Big Nellie, my Tour Easy recumbent. This mirror mounts to the open end of the handlebar, avoiding the bar tape altogether. I can always loosen it with a small allen key when putting the bike in the trunk of the car.
After some fiddling, I oriented the mirror just so. It looks a little odd but at least now I can ride without fear of being attacked by a big metal thing. Not to leave Big Nellie defenseless, I ordered a new replacement mirror.
In the further interest of stimulating the bicycling economy, I recently ordered a new Light and Motion headlight to replace the old light I had that recently died. The new light arrived today. It is twice as bright as the old one so I’ll be sure to singe some retinas on the way to Friday Coffee Club this winter. Bwa ha ha.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 
Wowza!! Lots of love and work going on. You’re a modern day bike technician!
Lol. Hardly. I do the bare minimum.
More than most.
Pro tip: if you want to get good at changing flats, it cheap tires
Light and Motion brand is my go to. Show us photos of little nellie when you’re done.
Just added a picture to the post. You can see the duct tape on the lower part of the h-bar.
A better tire boot is an inner tube patch. Just like patching a tube but on the inside of the tire. (Go easy with the sandpaper so you don’t abrade a bunch of threads.) No annoying bump, and it stays in place. I don’t know why it took me so long to think of it but it works great.