Sunday, August 13, 2017

The Air is Better Now

Yesterday the wind direction changed and the smoke moved out.  Happy we are about that.  It rained a little last night, so the air is now nice.  Except of course, for the RV park.  Our neighbor on the driver’s side of the bus has a smoker.  I’ve never seen a smoker that puts out quite that much smoke.  Since there is virtually no wind today, it’s settling in the space defined by our two RVs and the guy behind us.  Even with all windows and doors closed, we can smell it.  We are not happy campers about this.

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Jim got his bike out of the truck in Carnation Valley yesterday only to find he had a flat.  It was the rear tire.  Of course!  It’s always the rear tire.  Anyway, this is the new pump.  Jim’s frame pump died some time ago, and given the new frame geometries, his pump can not be replaced.  I’m probably the last person on the planet to have a pump peg for my pump, which is still working. 

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It’s a Lezyne pump.  Apparently they’re now quite the thing in pump technology.  I had never heard of them until a friend of ours mentioned their wonderfulness.  There is a tube inside that connects the pump to the valve on the tube.  It’s much easier than attaching the pump directly to the valve.  It will work for presta and Schrader valves.  It attaches to the water bottle cage with a mounting bracket.  It’s pretty cool.

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While we were in Portland, we were shopping at WinCo.  They’re an employee owned grocery store.  They don’t take credit cards and they don’t bag your groceries.  They sell MREs (military Meals Ready to Eat).  I have no idea why, but they have giant bins of them.  Jim just had to buy one to try it.  You may not be able to read the print, but there are 780 mgs of sodium in that thing.

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If they hadn’t over salted it, it would not be bad.  As it is, it made our mouths burn.  It’s only 230 calories, so you’d have to eat more than one of them on a back packing trip.  That would be mass salt!

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Other than this paltry offering, I have not much to say.  I mainly wanted to get the Nazis post off the top of the list.  Those people offend me greatly.

2 comments:

  1. Those mini pumps are ideal as they can easily slip into the jersey pocket. The reviews on the Lezyne are good. I use a Race rocket which is smaller but works fine.

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  2. That pump looks cool. Barry still has a frame pump that works, but when we need to replace it, it's nice to know there's better technology now. We are now running super thick tires and tubes, which make us slower, but flats should be very, very rare. We bought them thinking we'd be going west into goathead country this year, and as you know, that didn't happen, but we left them on anyway.

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