Back in The Saddle Again, Again

Well, I am back in the saddle again, again.

In a previous post, I told about how I am back on my Mountain Bike. I am now back on my road/commuter bike, also. This bike was down for a while due to rear wheel replacement surgery. Both of the wheels on that bike had come down with a bad case of worn-out braking surface - something I had never seen before in all of my years of bike doctoring. The braking surface on the rim of each wheel was thrashed, to the point where the brake shoes were picking up and retaining flakes of metal from the rims, in turn causing more thrashing of said rims. The front tire replacement went smoothly - I chose the (relatively) inexpensive Mavic Crossride, a standard 26" wheel. When I ordered a Crossride for the rear wheel, I found out that it is no longer available, except as a disk-specific wheel (I don't have disk brakes on either of my bikes). This being the case, I chose the Mavic Crossland - a slightly more expensive wheel, and definitely not a standard 26" wheel (unknown to me at the time). The Crossland arrived, and I tried to mount the rear tire and tube, but was not able to do so. A little reading of the manual revealed that I could not use just any 26" tire; I needed an ERTO-spec tire. I had never heard of ERTO before, so I did some research and discovered that ERTO is a European tire spec that uses milimeters instead of inches. The ERTO size for a 26" x 1.5" tire is 40-559 - 40 being the tire cross-section, and 559 being the wheel diameter (in mm). Thus, my standard, American 26" tire is slightly too small to fit over the rim of a 559mm wheel. After much searching online, I found a retailer selling an ERTO-spec tire in my size (26" x 1.5"/40-559). The tire came two days ago, and even though it is ERTO, it is a pain to mount and unmount. Long story short, the tire is mounted, the wheel is mounted, the brake shoes are new, and I'm back in the saddle again.

This was definitely a learning experience for me, and in the future I will probably not choose Mavic for my wheels.

Time to ride.
bIsh