Ironman 70.3

I was invited to fly over to the big island to provide mechanical support for the half ironman a month or so ago. Although it got a bit stressful, it was a great experience. I worked on over 40 bikes in 4 days. Most were either builds or boxing for shipment. They had us wrenching in a pretty classy joint:


This was the men's room at the sponsor hotel, where we were wrenching. The linen hand towels were a pretty classy touch. A few of those didn't end up quite as white as they started.

Here's where they put me up. My own personal master bedroom/master bathroom, complete with jacuzzi:

There were some doozies of repairs:

This fellow came to us about an hour before his bike had to be checked into the transition area. He had a broken derailleur, broken hanger, and his rear brake wasn't working.

This is what I found when I pulled the lever off to change the housing. Two sections of housing put together. No ferrules, no nothing. They weren't even butted up against each other. Yep, here's your problem.

The next day in the support van we came across a flat, the rider had told us he'd already patched and just needed to fill up. I grabbed a floor pump, pumped him up and sent him on his way. We caught up with him a few miles down the road, the same tire flat. We swapped his wheel out and sent him on his way. At this point we were running out of spare wheels, so I was trying to get rider wheels together to hand out as spares. As I was inspecting the tire I found this:

Unfortunately the photo didn't focus correctly, but that's a glueless tube patch on the outside of a tire. Well, I think I've found your problem.

All in all it was a great time, and I met some really good people. I hope to be invited back for the Ironman World Championship later this fall.