All of us have certain weaknesses. Some have challenges with automobile repair, some have difficulty dealing with government red tape, some can’t do math well. One of my major challenges in life is freaking stupid-ass blue donkey bicycle air pumps!!! I have experienced major battles with bike pumps in my history. By battles, I mean grabbing the bike pump and slamming it against the center of a highway several times, then getting in my truck and backing over it five times, then getting out and pissing on it, before I set it on fire.
The problem is that they don’t make plain ordinary simple bike air pumps like they did in the 60’s and 70’s. My problem is I want a bike pump that will do only one thing, just one stinking thing – push air in a bike tire!!!!! And of course, every tire pump today is advertised as a one and all magic amazing air pump that will supposedly push air into your tire, your wheelbarrow tire, your car tire, your blow up sex doll, swimming pool, your local politicians empty head and about seventy-three other things! This means you need to read the forty seven page instruction booklet written in poor English by Chinese authors who have never seen a bike pump in their entire existence!
You can’t just attach it to your bike tire and start pushing air into it Noooooo you have to first determine what type of valve your tire has and set your fancy do_shit air pump in the appropriate mode. You have to choose from Schrader valves, Presta valves, woods valve and some sort of Dunlop valves.
Once you manage to figure out what your tire valve is, then you have to get the air pump and set it in the appropriate valve mode. You may have to adjust the size, push levers over, twist a setting, assign a gender and probably use a Ouija board and a biorhythm app on your phone. Your chances of getting this correct is equal to winning the lottery three times in a row on the same day while standing naked on a sidewalk in Massachusetts. In Winter.
That seems difficult enough, right? But wait! There is MORE! In this complicated time there are literally more air pumps for sale than crooks in government. At least 70% are pieces of crap contraptions that were manufactured in the jungles of some foreign Asia province neither you nor I could pronounce without expelling a bucket of saliva and at least one back tooth. These are not even manufactured but are random pieces of weak plastic and thin metal like materials jammed together with garlic butter. They may or may not actually be air pumps, No one knows what the hell they are, but they can be bought for $9.99 and have over a hundred fake positive reviews from “people” who have no idea what they are reviewing anyway.
So, 70% are actually mystery products, so that leaves you with 30% to choose from. Some of these are actually made to work similar to air pumps, but are so complicated you need to dig up Einstein to just figure out how to get it out of their plastic sealed wrapping.
The few products that are actually designed and made well, are again, so complicated as they try to serve multiple purposes you need an engineering degree just to have half a rat’s ass chance of getting it to work.
I just want a bicycle air pump that pushes air into my bicycle tire. That’s all. Such a thing is not available today. On a positive note, while I got zero exercise on my bike today, I did burn 2,733 calories by slamming the keys on my keyboards with both fists, cursing at the very top of my lungs while shaking my head back and forth so violently that I blew four freckles off my forehead.
That’s me, always looking for the silver lining.
Dart