When punctures happen to cyclists on a commute, they tend to happen quickly. You’ll know from the slight shudder as the steel rims first touch the road through the rubber of the tire. You’ll look down and there it will be, splayed and rolling across the hard grey tarmac. And, unless you have frightening levels of self control, you will swear.
A flat tire always throws a detour into your day you really don’t need. It’s also a moment of reckoning for both your ability to work with your hands and to plan in advance - after all, do you have all the tools you need with you? And there’s an element of self-control too, as you’re going to have to fix this thing by the side of the road while the rest of the world flies past you without a care in the world. Dementing, even on the best of days.
It had happened to me a few times and, like most experienced cyclists, I’d just pull over and buckle down, cursing, and get on with it. Yet there was one occasion that was a bit more challenging.
It was 6pm on a Friday, a sunny, bright Spring evening where the air was fresh from rain and the road was spotted with puddles. I was cycling home from work, eager to get back to a four-pack and a night down the pub. And I hit a puncture.
On my back was a green army ruck sack with primitive quick release hooks on its straps. Inside this was a laptop I had ‘borrowed’ from the testing bench at work, and which I’d cushioned with my office clothes in case of an accident. My bike tools were in a side pocket. I immediately started praying they were all there, because I knew this puncture had the potential to turn into a larger problem very quickly.
Changing a flat is a time-consuming business that is tedious even if you’re familiar with it - and full of anxiety if you aren’t. The steps involved are:
Find a spot on the pavement and retrieve your tools.
Turn the bike upside down, resting it on its seat and handlebars with the wheels in the air.
Take off the wheel from the frame by unhooking your brake callipers, unscrewing the bolts with a socket wrench or spanner and, if it is a back wheel, also unhooking the chain.
Jam your tire levers into the rim (you should have at least two), and use them to force the edge of the tire over the lip of the rim.
Run the tire lever along the wheel so that the whole tire is now over the lip.
Pull out the damaged inner tube.
Check the tire for nails or other debris that might have caused the puncture and might cause a repeat. Look for puncture marks on the outer tire, and, if you can, check the inside with your fingers if there are any rough or sharp objects.
Praying that you bought one of the right size, unpack the spare inner tube.
Place the valve through the special hole in the rim and gently start to feed the fresh rubber inner tube as far into the top arch inside the tire as possible.
Once that part is done use your hands to snap the tire back over the rim. You’ll end up with a section overlapping the tire that you won’t be able to put back on with your fingers. Manoeuvre this overlap to a place along the wheel where you know the tube is placed firmly in the top arch of the inner tire and is as far away from the edge as can be, as you don’t want to pinch the fresh inner tube against the rim and tear it when you use the tire levers. Pick up your tire levers again.
Hook the tire levers carefully on the rim underneath the overlap. And space each of them apart by about an inch. Then lever them up with careful force until the overlap snaps back inside the rim.
Fix the wheel back onto the frame, tighten the nuts so that they just bite, replace the chain on the cogs if it is a back wheel, and rehook the callipers of the brake system.
Spin the wheel and make sure the brakes are aligned properly and don’t drag on the side of the rim. When this is done, tighten the wheel nuts - hard.
Reinflate the tire with the mini pump you should be carrying in your kit.
Once you’d done all that, you can then pack your toolkit away, get back on your bike and ride away, praying the tire doesn’t deflate within 20 meters because you either failed to remove the foreign matter that caused the original puncture, you tore the replacement inner tube with the tire levers, or you fell foul to some other act of god that happened because it just isn’t your day.
And there can be many other reasons why it is just not your day. But I knew that day wasn’t going to be my day before I even started to make the change. And this was because of WHERE I was when the puncture happened..
I noticed my front wheel was running on rims just as I turned off the A3 onto the A23, the beginning of Brixton Road, in Kennington. Kennington is the home of the Oval cricket ground and the Belgrave Hospital for children and is lined with many pretty Georgian terraces. However, as was usual with London in the 1990s, looks could be deceptive – as the area was also the home of several high-rise council estates with fearsome reputations. I didn’t live there but I was always alert when passing through. This was the result of three incidents.
The first was the violent mugging of a friend who’d lived there for a short while: he’d stepped off a bus only to wake up covered in blood and surrounded by paramedics some 30 minutes later. Someone had hit him with a bottle from behind and taken his wallet and his Walkman.
The second was the notorious 1997 ‘boy in a wheelie bin’ revenge killing of Jorge Castillo, 18, a Colombian refugee who lived in Clapham, who had unwisely ripped a gold chain from a known criminal, was subsequently lured to a car, strangled with a bootlace and dumped in a rubbish bin in Kennington.
And the third was witnessing a man being punched out at a bus stop as I cycled past one evening. I’d somehow sub-sonically sensed the impact of the blow and glanced over just in time to see the man fall, as straight as a piece of lumber, to the pavement, where he bounced slightly and then lay prone in the rain as I sped past.
It was an area I was wary of. And now I had to change a tire in the middle of it.
I got off my bike, lifted it onto the pavement and scanned the area. The bus stop where the man had been punched out was on the other side of the road to my right. Ahead and to the left was a large Victorian municipal-looking orange building with a large double black door set back behind a curved architrave. If it was a council building I thought they might let me change the tire inside, but the double doors were locked. Still, it was set back from the pavement, there were a couple of steps I could sit on and I could do my change with my back to the door. It would have to do.
I took off my rucksack, stashed it by the door behind me, flipped my bike onto its handlebars and then took off my helmet and dug out my tools. If I kept focussed there was no reason I couldn’t be up and away in under ten minutes.
I had the wheel off the bike and was jamming the tire levers in to flip the tire over the rim when I first heard them. There was a delighted cackle then
‘Chaaaa man! You got a PUNCTURE man! SUFFAAAA! You got a puncture! Chaaaa!’
I looked up and there were four small hoodies approaching me, each about 10 – 11 years old, black, all cackling with glee at having found a new plaything in the early evening. The obvious Spokesperson of the group, his face beaming with malevolent delight, had his hand raised and was shaking it so that his little finger slapped against his ring finger in the universal sign of mocking someone’s misfortune.
Great.
These Tiny Gangsters were going to be all over me if I didn’t play this right. I may have been a fit, grown man but I was not from around there. And if I wasn’t part of this particular postcode fiefdom, any attempt to flex and intimidate them was a non-starter – and an invitation for them to stand for the manor. And if older members of their Team were about I’d be getting taxed of my bicycle and belongings, or worse. Trying to be friendly was also out of the question, as it would just make it easier for them to raise the stakes by insulting me. I resolved to mutely acknowledge their presence and then ignore them as much as I could and just concentrate on making the tire change so that I could get out of there as quickly as possible.
I flipped the tire over the rim with the lever and freed the rest with one steady sweep of the lever, before uncapping the valve and pulling it out of the hole in the rim. The TG posse sauntered over. Spokes and his mates stood in front of me while a pudgier one flanked me just behind my line of vision on my left-hand side, body braced and arms folded hip hop style as if he was on stage with Run DMC.
‘Man you got a red helmet, man! You look like a proper dickhead with that. Red helmet man!’ More cackling, and shaking of hoods and flapping of fingers.
I stripped the punctured inner tube out of the wheel, and gave the tire a fast scan, quickly finding a nugget of shattered safety glass embedded in the rubber. Well, that made it mercifully simple. I used the hard plastic of the lever to flick it out of the tire.
My Tiny Gs were chattering raucously amongst themselves. I was glad I’d had the foresight to keep all my stuff either behind me or within arm’s reach. I knew they couldn’t take anything without coming within range, and as yet I’d given them nothing to gauge me by and was an unknown entity. I unpacked the fresh inner tube from my kit, unravelled it, poked the valve through the hole in the rim and began methodically kneading it into the tire cavity.
‘Hey Helmet man. I bet your helmet is red because you is a proper wankaaa man’
He turned and let his insult echo approvingly through his friends, who guffawed and flapped again, liberally dispensing the sufferation to dickhead-whitey-with-a-puncture.
I was levering the tire back into the rim when Spokes decided to up the stakes and make a lunge for my red bicycle helmet. But I was ready and quick and snatched it out of his way.
‘Fuck off’
I hissed at him, with a sudden, sharp burst of malevolence.
For the tiniest split second he looked shocked and recoiled. And then he swelled up and began the grandstand:
‘You better watch yourself! Don’t fuck with us! We may look like kids to you but we know some BAAAD people. Some REAL BAAAD people. You fuck with me I will SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE. I will SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE’
No laughter now. RUM DMC was holding his Six Point Stance in my peripheral, and Spokes had his chin jutting out and was bigging out his posture, while the other two were pulling similar hip-hop poses behind him. I maintained my silence and watched them as nonchalantly as I could while my hands squeezed the tire back inside the rim.
My tools were safe in my lap and my bag was behind me. If they went for my bike they would be in range for a clump, which would at least be something they would understand, but I wasn’t kidding myself. There were enough of them to swarm me and take my shit if they were determined enough, and I was wary of who might be watching if I retaliated. I stood up, tracking them carefully in my peripheral vision and holding the wheel, and then began to slot it into the front forks.
And then, just as I was contemplating how this was going to escalate, and what my options would be, it was over.
‘Come on man lets go’
One of the two behind Spokes hah had enough, and he and the other began moving off down the street. Run DMC stepped back and turned towards them and I looked up at Spokes, glaring at me with his chin jutting out. He raised his hand, made it into the shape of a pistol, and mimed shooting me in the face before stepping away, still glaring, before moving off down the street after his friends. I hastily inflated the tire with the mini-pump, reset the brakes, fastened both my nuts and was on my way in less than three minutes.
Of course, there are worse situations in which to catch a flat and have to change a tire. On open ground during a hailstorm, for instance, or outside a football stadium when the game had just finished and the crowd was streaming out.
But I think of this incident now because of the many ways it ages me: those kids would be in their 40s now and I’m at a complete loss when I imagine what they’d be doing. Yes, they may have got swept up into gang life with all its predations and hip-hop braggadocio, and God knows there were pointless and horrific teenage killings in London during that decade, and the one after. But these kids were just bored, not malevolent, and I’d like to think a few of them were smart enough to body swerve the prevalent social prejudices and seize opportunities to make a decent living. There’s a good chance they may well be living lives better than mine.
The ‘Woke’ brigade will rightly claim we are defined by our more bestial prejudices, and that reaching maturity as a human means laying these aside, one by one. But there are occasions when our prejudices protect us as well. Gangs of youths can be problematic whatever their colour and I expected that particular kind of shit from that area. I’m still glad I kept a tight circle and played the right game to make that tire change the way I did. And the whole event turned out to be a nuisance, not a drama.
So why write it up?
After all, just as I knew changing that tire in Kennington, at that time, was going to be problematic, posting anything on the internet today is also potentially hazardous. The internet is simply one big postcode, and every bored loudmouth can anonymously let rip about whatever kink is bugging them. In this case it might be someone claiming Kennington was completely safe in the late 90s and I’m being a prissy white pussy, or someone else claiming that mentioning the youths were black makes me a racist, and that all I needed was to be friendly to them from the outset and everything would have been fine. And then we’d have the wannabe gangsters bragging that, if they were there, they would have instantly commanded enough respect from the kids to control the situation from the outset.
But whoever the brand of hater, and whatever macho or righteous hobby horse they are riding into the distance, there are two things I know.
I doubt they’d have been able to change a puncture on a bicycle under that particular set of conditions.
And I know that anyone who’s ever had to change a flat tire by the side of the road will relate.
hate cycling in london
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