A flat tyre. It always seems to happen when you are at the furthest point from home and exhausted. Visiting my last pagoda for the day, after 4 hours of riding through deep sand, I was definitely feeling it. The sun beat down on my body and sweat moved in a permanent stream down my forehead. Leading up to the temple, my cycling faltered. This was more than just fatigue and jelly leg syndrome, I had received a delightfully flat rear tyre.
Immediately all the locals around the pagoda noticed the flat and began pushing to provide us with a repair service. Exhausted, I didn’t even want to consider a repair and resolved to attempt to call Thante Hotel to come and pick up the bike and myself. I pushed my way out of the throng of people offering their repair services and slowly headed down the road to a police stand.
As I rounded the corner towards the police box, a young boy sitting outside the stand quickly leapt to his feet and took the bike from me. With no choice, I submitted to the action and followed him as he led the bike over to an elderly man surrounded by an assortment of tyre parts on the ground around him. Each pile carefully sorted, forming a small outdoor mechanic/repair workshop.
Within minutes the elderly man had located two holes (one new and one old leaking repair). A few minutes later both holes had been successfully patched up and the unwilling repairs turned into quite an exciting adventure as I watched, mesmerised, his hands working quickly over the tyre. It was admirable to see how the Myanmar people are not wasteful and are able to mend anything happily and skilfully, rather than replace it.
One of the officers from the stand joined the growing group of spectators and participants helping to mend my tyre. He spoke decent English and began to explain what repairs were taking place. Inserting the tube back into the rim, the elderly man’s skill faltered. It seems the valve was not the original and he could not get it successfully through the hole. Without any consultation, he quickly began to replace the valve in the tube.
This soon led to 4 valve changes in my tyre and an hour later the elderly man gave up and placed the first valve back into the tube. Watching him work was exciting at first, but as time dragged on and my energy lagged it was soon getting old. Over an hour and 2000 kyat later, I was off on the long ride back to Nyaung U with a spring in my tyres which easily breezed over the earth now fully inflated.