Death of a Schwalbe Marathon Plus

The Schwalbe Marathon Plus tire is well known for being darn near bullet proof. Even though I live in the land of broken glass and thorns and get tons of road bike flats with "normal" tires, my Schwalbe Marathons have been flat free. Until now. Apparently there are limits after all.

I, thankfully, didn't have far to go on my commute to get home when my tire stopped holding air, but I wasn't happy about losing a pricy tire at all. Then I started wondering what the heck this pointy thing in the tire was.  It wasn't a nail, or much like anything I'd seen before. 

After being mugged while commuting by bike just a few weeks before, my paranoia level is pretty high. I started wondering if this was some sort of projectile, perhaps from a nail-gun like device, and wondering if someone had shot it at me. No one I asked knew what it was, which further fed my fears.

I eventually posted on AskMetafilter, asking what it was. The helpful folks there had the answer. It wasn't a projectile, it was a center punch tool, but missing the handle. Somehow I'd managed to flip it up riding over it just exactly wrong so it would puncture my tire. I'm rather relieved I wasn't a target. I have a new Marathon installed already (Thanks Amazon overnight shipping) and got to enjoy installing it. Read about how much fun that is.

Of course, the all-knowing Facebook thinks, based on my research, that I now want to buy a center punch. They've started putting ads for them on my feed. Yikes.