Flat out

On the side of the road, hands are greasy.

So it's been a while since I have posted, a few things have happened.  I moved house and I got my first flat on my Raleigh, which caused me to be an hour late for work.  Right in the middle of rush hour in central London.  Stupidly, I didn't have all the right tools to get the rear wheel off, all I needed was a phillips screwdriver to get the reaction arm off as well as an adjustable wrench.  Thankfully, it was in central London where bike shops were plentiful so I managed to find the right tools.  I was up and going after about 45min, if I had the right tools I would have been done in about 15.  Still the double leg kickstand came in useful which meant I could remove the back wheel without inverting the bike.

The culprit...

I had actually run through a huge patch of shattered safety glass from a bus shelter a few days before, and the culprit turned out to be a decent chunk of glass which had lodged itself into the tyre and worked its way through to the tube.  I had moved house a few days before with about 20kg on the back...  Next time I'll be a bit more careful and try to pick out bits of glass before this happens.  Still though, this was the first puncture in 2700km which is actually quite good.  I've updated my post on tyres to reflect this.

A few weeks before I had it fully loaded to go fix my friends bike

Ready to move house

My moving house run, I rode my fully loaded Superbe with one hand and my other pulling along my randonneur.  Good thing I only had to go 5 minutes down the road, it went without a hitch.  I'm generally really happy with how the Superbe handles heavy loads, the panniers keep the weight nice and low, the basket is for lighter items and the back rack can carry bulky heavy items.  The double leg kickstand keeps the loaded bike upright nicely and the new wheels have held up nicely with only a slight truing needed in the 2700km I've ridden on them.

Now for some strange things I've seen and snapped around London town:

Silly narrow handlebars, at least he had brakes.

An ad advising cyclists not to "undertake" or pass buses on the inside.
Bad pun I know, they should have added a grim reaper.

A cargo trike spotted...

And some cool bike parking I saw in Soho

I was wondering who this woman was talking to
and then realised her hands free was her phone
stuck inside her helmet straps.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Update:
I suffered a second near identical puncture a few weeks later