Wish Granted
You may recall from the last line of this post, that I was eager to learn something new.
Well, my wish was granted in the form of a bad landing, a tubeless tire burp, and a tree in my way. It seemed that tire just did not want to stay on the rim, and that skin just did not want to stay on my arm.
I really can not report what it was that I learned...somewhere in the deep end of my brain (probably fairly shallow there too) lies the answer. Next time perhaps that tid-bit of knowledge will kick in and result in that oak tree staying out of my way.
The photo shows what happens to a tubeless tire when enough lateral forces are applied. The bead temporarily unseats and white Stan's goo escapes in effort to re-seal it (the remaining air pressure in the tires actually causes it to slap back into place once the force is removed). What causes that lateral force to be removed? Well, when the rider flies OTB and seeks out a tree to slow him down the bike looses inertia and things take care of themselves. Also in the image you see a left elbow after it skids off a tree and then finds Terra Firma to transfer more kinetic energy.
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Lessons learned and yet not
You cased the landing hard enough to unseat the bead and vomit Stan's all over the place and you still had enough air pressure to pop the bead back into place? Dude there's a learning right there. As hard as it is to break the bead loose with no pressure...
And you pushed the bead far enough sideways to vomit Stan's? While the tire was under pressure, you say? Using only your body plus bike weight as hammer and the ground as an anvil? And you didn't taco the wheel? You missed a lesson there. You still don't know how much, what it will take, to taco a Stan's rim.
Back to the drawing board.
Oh, and hope your wing heals up quickly and leaves a nice scar for your trouble.
yeah well...
Another lesson I left on the table is the force required to shove that tree out of my way.
You know, it is weird how hard it is to push the beads out of place when the air is out of the tire, yet I can cause these things to burp every time on certain stunts.
To be sure, it is a lesson that I will probably never learn regarding the lateral force required to distort a Stan's Flow rim.
The only lesson that I can say I learned today (that I am cognizant of) is that I was NOT "on". The rims may say "flow" but I had none. I had the grace of a blindfolded turkey flying through dense brush today.
But I am sure that somehow my skill set is incrementally larger as a result of this crash. I like to believe that you always learn something...even though you can not really put your finger on what it is. I am sure I will respond differently in the future (to a similar bad landing) and perhaps avoid a crash all together.
This wing is going to be fine, it is tender, but there will not be much of a scar. Just a temporary badge of suck....every such badge removes a little more skin and out bleeds a little suck....You just don't want to remove too much suck at any one time.
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