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Floor Pumps My Foot

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You non-cyclists won't get this. Skip it. I just had to vent. The hilarious video by MC Spandex aka Robin Moore, "Performance" displays a very good use for flakey floor pumps.  I can't believe it. I get home last night late after trying to fix the flats on both my Crusoe and the showroom Pro Petite. What should have taken me just a few minutes (even if I was not using the Jim Langley leverless tire removal technique) took over an hour, and I still left with deflated tires. Why? Frigging floor pumps. And as if by divine cosmic resonance, the first YAK! item of the day is all about ... floor pumps! I don't know who is responsible for designing floorpumps, but if I get a hold of him (it's gotta be a him, women would not put up with a gadget that poops out just by looking at it) I shall insert the long tube somewhere narrow and I will not even remove the valve first. And I'll continue inserting it until the entire pump has disappeared into

Soft Splashdown: Hitting the States 2001

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The monster truck. One of the first things I encountered in America. Apart from cinnamon buns. "Don't leave your head back here. Just go up there and live your dreams." Douglas pushed me forward into the queue. "Go orn, git." A few years ago I would have taken these words, uttered by a lover, as proof that any seeds of a relationship we might have been sewing had now reached their use-by date. But as I stood beside my companion of the past five months, studying his averted eyes, matted hair and stroking his heavy, sun-beaten hands, I took his words as they came. He was, after all, a veteren of more than four years living in survival mode on a remote strip of beach on a Panamanian island, fighting off the indians, living his dream. He pushed me towards the shuffling migration line. I hung onto him like he was a dead man walking toward the electric chair, and all the while his eyes looking behind us self-consciously. "Y' just go do your thin