I tend to carry what I consider to be appropriate for the ride.

For shorter rides by myself I'll bring just the minimum which is an
Altoids tin full of allen keys and other small tools. Just the minimum
to tighten things that may come loose during the ride. My little kit
also contains a spoke key and a schrader valve tool to tighten a leaky
tire valve.

For longer rides, or rides that take me farther from civilization, I'll
carry more. For the longer rides I'll take the pump and patch kit, tire
levers, and a nut driver to tighten the bolts under the seat. And a 14
mm wrench if I'm on a unicycle with square taper cranks.

For epic rides where I'll be out for many hours and for group rides,
I'll take even more. On these rides I may bring along a spare tube
along with tools that will fit other unicycles and little extras like
spare crank nuts and a 14 mm wrench to tighten a loose crank.
Strangely, my little tool kit gets more use on a group ride than when I
ride by myself. It seems a lot of people on group rides don't bring
tools with them or don't have all the tools that they need.

I have had to walk back to the car a couple of times. Once was on a
muni ride back when I was riding a Pashely with the standard square
taper cranks. A crank came loose and I couldn't get it to stay tight
even though I had a 14 mm socket wrench with me. Fortunately I was
within a mile from the car so it wasn't too bad. Another time was when
I broke my Profile crank during a muni ride. No trail side repair for
that. Another time was when a sealed bearing in a pedal fell apart and
the pedal fell off the spindle. Fortunately those failures also
happened close to the car.

Twice I've rolled my Coker to a bike shop to get a crank tightened (I
didn't have my crank tools with me). That was all before I knew how to
properly tighten the cranks. Now I know how to properly tighten the
cranks on and I haven't had a loose crank problem since. A torque
wrench is the key to getting the cranks properly tight.

I've only had one flat on a unicycle ride, and that was a flat air seat
on an epic ride. I had a patch kit and pump on that ride so it was an
easy fix.

Other failures during a ride have been broken spokes, but those have
never caused any problems and I've been able to finish the ride.

And there were two times that I broke a Miyata seat during a ride. That
was before I switched to the carbon fiber seat base. In fact, it was
before the carbon fiber seat bases were even available.

The most annoying failure I've had was a pedal bearing that failed in
the parking area right after I pulled the muni out of the car. I got
all suited up, hopped on the muni, did a small little hop in the parking
lot, and the pedal bearing went crunch. The ride was over before it
even began.


--
john_childs - Guinness Mojo

john_childs (at) hotmail (dot) com
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