Tire pressure checked out fine before we started riding in the morning and again as we switched from dirt track to fast asphalt. It was about 100 miles down the highway that I got the wobbles and Katelyn called in my flat rear tire over our helmet intercom. Its always nerve wracking going from 70mph to a stop with 0 air pressure. In this case too much brake application or any brake application can make it really tough to keep the rubber side down. I learned the hard way 10 years ago when I spread plastic fairing parts all over the I25, South of Peublo, Colorado. With that in mind, I gently eased her down in speed and over to side of the road.

There wasn’t much left of the tire to diagnose the culprit. The tube was severed in half and the rim strip was in 5 pieces. I hadn’t seen that before! It was discomforting that I’d replaced my front tube the day before and now I was replacing the rear tube. Looking back, the only discrepancy I saw was the fact that both tubes were over a year old and that I had not replaced either, despite two tire changes. Clearly, past Chris, felt that future Chris would enjoy a sweltering roadside tube swap under the African midday sun.

Duct tape, good enough for the Manhatten bridge in 1902, now serves as my rim strip. It was initially just a quick fix idea, but now we’re thinking to just roll with it. No one around here has got a rim strip for a 17” BMW motorcycle tire anyway.

We arrived late to Springbok, grabbed a campsite outside town and settled in for a Thanksgiving dinner of noodles fortified with dried Kudu meat.