Renaming New York City: The Big Debris Field

A festival of flat tires

Photo by Parsoa Khorsand on Unsplash

When it snows in a rural (or even suburban area), the white blanket that covers the land is appealing to both the eye and outdoor enthusiasts. People can ski, snowboard, sled, have snowball fights, or simply just look at one of Mother Nature’s wonders. But if you live in a city — and you deliver food on a bicycle? Not so wonderful.

New York City had a 12" snowstorm a few weeks ago. Not a huge amount of snow, I think we can all agree. But the storm was unique in that it was followed by a near-record cold snap during which the temperature never rose above freezing and the piles of plowed snow didn’t melt.

With the sanitation department busy plowing streets and/or struggling to travel on narrowed side streets, bags and bags of garbage piled up on mounds and mounds of gray (or even black) snow. Getting from the street to the sidewalk for pedestrians (let alone a guy with a bike trying to find somewhere to lock up) was a challenge.

Finally, after three weeks of the snow clogging up city life, the temperature broke and rose to the low 40’s two days in a a row during the afternoon. Which finally initiated a melt but presented (and presents) a problem for delivery people.

New York city streets (and especially the dedicated bike lanes) have become one huge debris field what with the street sweepers out of action all this time.

For me, a Moses type plague began Friday at noon when I emerged from a delivery to find my front tire squishy. I do carry a pump for such occasions, but this was beyond pumping up the tire. It went completely flat within seconds and could not be pumped.

Ok! Shit happens. It’s certainly not my first flat tire in 9700 deliveries on bumpy glass-strewn streets. So I rolled home and did what a moderately mechanical dude would do. I patched the flat, pumped it up and was ready for more action.

Without going into the details of every subsequent flat, I’ll simply say that in the next two days, I got eight more flat tires. Six were on the first day, and happened anywhere from home (which I discovered when I went out to work) — to on the road during deliveries — or just after I’d accepted one and had to unassign it.

Clearly, all these flats weren’t coincidental. Something beyond the debris field was biting me in the butt — especially given that all eight flats happened on the front tire.

photo by author (My tube caught the measles.)

Repeated flats generally happen for a few reasons. The first is that there’s something (glass or a nail) that didn’t just puncture the tire but remained where it was lodged, jutting through to the inside. Obviously, that would cause the tire to go flat again.

For the life of me, I couldn’t find that to be the cause. I even switched out my front tire for a spare I had on hand in case there was something microscopic I couldn’t see causing the problem. But that didn’t work! With either tire, I kept getting flats.

Alternately, if there’s a spoke sticking through the inside of the wheel, it could repeatedly puncture a tire tube causing a flat. But that didn’t seem to be the issue as almost all of the punctures (except one) were on the part of the tube facing the road — and not the wheel. Scratch that.

Third, my patches could be the problem. But that wasn’t it, either. Every time I got a flat, I found new puncture holes. None of my patch jobs had failed.

Old and worn tires tend to get more flats than new ones for one obvious reason: more tire between the road and tube. My two front tires were pretty worn — though neither was showing any plies yet. Neither was all that bad.

Reasoning like the intelligent man I delude myself to be, the only thing left to do was get a new (or used) and better tire. Amazon would take at least a day. And I’d had enough of flats.

So I eased over to my neighborhood ghetto bike fix-it shop where the middle-aged white owner employs only pot-smoking homies who are veterans of delivering food and fixing their rides.

Visiting there is almost like shaping up to get a cab at a taxi garage. Every guy hanging out either delivers food or once did. So it’s a kind-of clubhouse. You get the picture.

I get a kick out of the owner. Here’s an example of why I like him: One day a while back, I needed a new wheel. While talking to the man as he dug around for a used part, I asked, “So is the business a going concern or a labor of love?” His answer: “More like a field experiment.” He’s a funny guy — and he know show to fix bikes.

Anyway, I found William (the owner) when I arrived. He knows I’m a dasher on a budget who wrote him a glowing review on Yelp in exchange for a good deal. So he knows I ain’t buyin’ no new tire — and he knows that I know he’s got a basement full of discarded crap that will fit the bill for guys like me.

Having heard my problem, he commented, “Par for the course,” and five minutes later emerged from the vault carrying exactly what I figured I needed — a budget used tire from an abandoned bike.

It was certainly no beauty queen (or king). And it wasn’t from a premium bike (it was a Kenda). But it was a beaded tire with some tread.

“Twenty bucks,” offered William. Nice try, bud. “I’ll give you fifteen cash no receipt.” And the tire was mine.

I did eleven deliveries over a period of four hours last night and woke up to a tire on viagra (I just checked). Still hard as a rock. The problem has been solved.

While changing out my old tire for the “new” one, I endeavored to check the wheel rim where I did find a few rough spots I filed down just to cover every base. And it seems I’ve finally conquered the problem and feel confident traveling more than 50 feet from my front door.

My hands are still a little sore from changing all those flats but I’ll survive. And my back (which I strained at one point carrying the bike in the street) is almost better.

Unless something changes, I’m going to Colorado on a Discovery channel gig for three days on Saturday but have amassed enough deliveries to keep my platinum end-of-week bonus with DoorDash.

But I’ll tell y’all, it hasn’t been easy. I lost a lot of time with all those flats. Thankfully, I think the scourge is over. And I do not travel in the bike lanes. I’m not the only one. I notice that several of my colleagues are out in traffic as well. Apparently flat tires have become epidemic with my fellow professional riders.