Bike maintenance

Today I got a puncture in my back tyre. Or rather, if I was going to be pedantic, I got a puncture the last time I rode the bike. However I only discovered it this morning. I am ashamed to admit I don't have the faintest idea how to mend a puncture.

It is, I think, imperative that I get some bike maintenance expertise under my belt before the Big Trip. It is not an entirely remote possibility that we could have a row and I find myself on the road alone. To get a puncture in the middle of nowhere would be a pain if I could not fix it.

Life Cycle is a charity which runs Bike Maintenance Workshops which are very good, I hear. However a day workshop costs sixty quid, which in my present condition of impecunity is an amount I would find it difficult to justify spending. It is also short notice to get on a course before we go, as they tend to fill up quite quickly.

I could ask Mick to show me but I fear this may well be a re-run of my experience as a seventeen-year-old, when my dad decided that he would, in an heroic effort to save me some money in driving lessons, Teach Me To Drive. He would patiently show me how to do something - change gear, mirror-signal-manouvre or whatever. I would nod impatiently - yes, yes, I can do it, don't go on, don't patronise me, in a typically seventeen-year-old-know-it-all manner and then promptly go on to completely mess it up. When he tried to point out where I had gone wrong I would resort to shouting and finally storm off, yelling "who wants to drive ANYWAY!" leaving him to take the car home, sighing all the while.

No, I won't ask Mick. Maybe I can get a friend to show me. And maybe I should invest in some puncture resistant tyres...