You’re seven miles up a narrow valley and nearing the welcome end to hours of steady climbing when you hear a sharp thwack, followed by a hiss — your front tire has just gone flat, you don’t have a spare and there’s no cell service; you do not want to be here.
Next to everything else that might go wrong with a bicycle on an extended ride, a flat is a relatively minor issue that can be easily repaired trailside, if the right tools are at hand. If they aren’t, a quick fix can turn into a long walk. Well-prepared riders will perform a tune-up regularly and clean their bikes after every ride. For the less-diligent, a well-stocked repair kit will suffice.
Professional mountain biker Rebecca Rusch has been on plenty of long rides and experienced enough mechanical failures to know what makes a fully-stocked repair kit. One of her recent journeys, a 1,200-mile journey through the jungles of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia along the Ho Chi Minh Trail required the utmost degree of preparedness — “We brought with us a lot of extra bearings, o-rings, stuff that you would never be able to find in Laos and Cambodia. Before I go out on these big adventures, I replace every bearing in my bike, my fork got a total rebuild — everything is in pristine condition,” says Rusch.
That preparedness went a long way; she and her riding partner, Huyen Nguyen, completed the 1,200 miles of rough road and only had one repair: a flat tire.
Even though she didn’t have to use it frequently, the repair kit was there. “I really honed in on the way I was carrying stuff and what I was bringing,” she says. “It forced me to dial in my kit. I’ve taken what I used there, and what I learned there, into my next adventures.”
Those adventures run the gamut from a self-supported 300-mile bikepacking race in Arizona to the hours’ long rides accessible from her doorstep in Ketchum, Idaho. The repair kit is a constant, and it doesn’t change much even when the distances differ: “It’s pretty much the same each time around,” says Rusch.
You can watch the documentary about Rusch’s Ho Chi Minh Trail ride, called Blood Road, for free at Red Bull TV.
Photo: Josh Glazebrook Redbull Content Pool
