popping new tyres on the road bike

I finally got around to changing the tyres on my road bike.

I've been taking the mountain bike out recently, which has quite new tyres, but I was just getting slightly doubtful about the ones on the road bike.

Now I've done the deed and looked at the old tyres more carefully, I can see that the small holes I had spotted and was worrying about were actually tread wear indicators. Two small semi-holes in the otherwise slick surface to show how much wear was left.

There was still plenty of tread left actually. So I've folded the old tyres into the boxes supplied with the new tyres.

Unlike car tyres, I've absolutely no idea how long the tyres are supposed to last - is it measured in years or miles, for example? I know I've done about 1,200 miles on the road tyres already this year and they were also used for the whole of 2011. So perhaps a change was sensible.

I managed a couple of minor mishaps when changing the tyres. The first was simply that I'd re-lubricated the bike a few days ago, so it was still extra oily, and transformed my hands to shiny black in a few moments.

And then I absent-mindedly pumped the replacement front tyre with its new inner tube whilst forgetting it takes a lot less air than a mountain bike tyre.

Pop.

One of my nice new inner tubes didn't survive very long and it's entirely my own fault.

Still. I now have a fully re-shod bike ready for the sunny months.