45. SEE WHAT I'M DEALING WITH HERE...

See what I'm dealing with here? That's the thorn I found sticking through the tyre of my daughter's bike last week. She'd actually ridden around on it for a good couple of days while her tyre slowly deflated because it had so cleanly punctured it that it was sitting through the tyre and into her inner tube neatly enough that the leak was nearly sealed around it.

Not so neatly that it didn't deflate at the time most inconvenient to us of course. 

And it's not a puny tyre. No kevlar or genetically engineered spiders faeces or anything like some of the kit you can get these days but still - very annoying.  

I haven't had a puncture like this since I swapped out my normal inner tubes for thorn resistant ones last year some time, but it does make me reconsider the whole idea of going tubeless on the new bike.

Tubeless tyres are one of the many MANY innovations that seem to have poured into cycling in the 15 or so years since I last purchased a bicycle. It's one of those things that gets referred to in the cycling press in such a way as to make me feel like a total caveman for not having done it years ago (like dual suspension and owning a frame that has been tested thoroughly by NASA on the International Space Station). 

What you do (after making sure your rims and tyres are fully compatible of course) is pour some liquid sealant into your tubes, inflate the tyres rapidly enough so that they seat themselves properly in the rims (requiring of course some kind of motorised pump and special valves) and then slosh the sealant around inside the now inflated tyre until it's filled up all the gaps. 

Assuming all this has gone well, the still liquid sealant then fills any small punctures that arise during use of the bike, theoretically removing the threat of punctures from your world forever. 

Brilliant.

I hate this stuff. 

Why?

Because despite the fact that it sounds like a great idea that has been proven to work pretty well by the aforementioned mountain biking astronauts, I will almost certainly NOT be doing this to my bike and the main reason is embarrassingly obvious...

I am, in fact, a caveman.