Fresh Air

The hand breaks on my bike do not work and I decided that for $46 or whatever I paid for the bike that maybe, you didn’t get real hand breaks at that price point. Peddles, sure, handle bars? For sure, and if you’re cute enough or they really need to make the merchandise move, they’ll throw in a seat.. But not the hand breaks. If you could afford a bike with hand breaks you would not be bike shopping at Wal-Mart.

For $46 you wear shoes and you get in touch with your inner Fred Flintstone. I learned to not wear sandles - they don’t have the breaking capacity that my sneakers have and with sneakers I don’t worry as much about my toes. I never worried so much about my toes than when I was trying to make my bike stop while wearing sandles, I never thought about my toes and then I was thinking about them a lot and then I was thinking about them getting mangled. Some people see their lives passing in front of them as they try to make a speeding bike with no breaks come to a stop at the bottom of a hill, I thought about my toes. I got in the habit of wearing real shoes and I stopped worrying about my toes so much. I thought I had the hand break issue on the bike figured out.

Today, I thought that I should put air in my tires. I hadn’t added air since I brought the bike home, so I thought that maybe I should, I’m pretty sure this is something you are supposed to do on a fairly regular basis but its been a really long time since I last had a bike I interacted with on a daily bases, so there are a lot of things I forget I’m supposed to do for it; for instance, the last time I worried about putting air in my bike tires, you could get air for free from the gas station. Today they wouldn’t give you CPR for free at the gas station.

Anyway, a while I ago I put air into the tires and shockingly, the next time I tried my breaks they worked! If the breaks can’t come in contact with the tires because they are under inflated, the breaks can’t work! A light came on over my head, angels sang. I finally Got It : The Hand Breaks Work Best When The Bike Tires Are Properly Inflated!

And life was good. I squeezed the breaks and the bike came to a stop without my assistance. I began to dream of riding my bike in cuter shoes!. And it kept working! I would squeeze the breaks and the bike would stop. I once again had a bike with breaks. It was a heady experience. And then I squeezed the breaks and nothing happened, they stopped working. It’s not as big a deal when I’m riding on campus because where I ride on campus its mostly flat, there are minor variations but I can stop the bike while wearing sandles and not worry about mangling anything, and my route at home while there are more variations, and I can not wear sandles , I can still bring the bike to a safe stop as long as my (un-cute) shoes don’t wear out.

But I don’t love this. I have hand breaks and I would like to be able to use them. I paid $46 for the bike and at least some of that must have covered the mechanism for the breaks. Although, price point may be an issue here.

Today, I parked the bike in my driveway and pulled out my tire pump. It’s sleek, and red and sporty, it’s kind of everything my bike isn’t. It is also more complicated than I remember bike pumps being back in the Reagan Administration, the last time I regularly put air in bike tires. I remember bike pumps were cylindrical metal tubes with a foot thing and a gauge and a tube with a thing on the end that the air came out of and you attached this end to the bike tire. The pump I have looks pretty much like the old pump but the widget at the end is bigger and it can do more. I don’t need it to do “more”, I need it to mate with the thingy on the tire and then I need them to make sweet love to one another until the bike tire is properly inflated. The End.

I tried to put air in the tires. Pump, Pump. Pump. The bike pump became disengaged from the bike and it spewed brown water all over all of us.

The tire and I felt dirty and badly used. I shamed the bike pump and tried again, and this time all parties worked together. The tire seemed inflated, it wasn’t spongy or anything. It rode better and eventually I need to bring the bike to a halt. And... It was a good thing I was wearing shoes.