Inflating a Bicycle Tire the Dummy Way

Needle valve for inflating a basketball

Every once in a while, we hear peals of laughter emanating from the research pods at the Antisocial Network headquarters. Whenever it happens, it's a safe bet that pretty soon an emailed link from one of the research staffers will hit everyone's account. That's exactly what happened yesterday, when one of the team turned up a Trails.com article by William Jackson that purported to explain "How to Put Air in Bicycle Tires."¹ It didn't take much reading to figure out why all the ROFL...

Billy Jack started off OK, perhaps because it doesn't take much experience (or sense) to opine that,

"A flat tire can be a major annoyance."

No duh, Bill. We'll even admit that you're right in claiming that you an inflate a bike tier in under three minutes. Hell, our chief bike mechanic can swap out a tube in less than five, it sure shouldn't take three to inflate one. But none of that is what our staffer found so funny about Jackson's post. It was his step number three that led to the guffaws:

"Insert the bicycle pump needle into the tire's air valve. In the center of the valve is a small hole--this is where the needle goes. Make sure the needle is inserted all the way. If the needle includes a screw-on piece, as many do, be sure to firmly screw the piece on to the air valve, thereby holding the needle in place in a far more hands-free manner."

Yes, this ignorant putz actually did try to tell people that a inflating a bicycle tire requires the use of a needle, much like inflating a basketball or football. Really: he's serious! And once you've reached the proper inflation, Bill said you should,

"Unscrew the needle's screw-on piece, pull out the needle, then replace the tire's air valve cap."

We aren't even sure what the heck that "screw-on piece" would be, much less how you'd unscrew it, but we won't let that get in our way. Jackson didn't even mention that there are (at least) two different valve types on bicycle tires (Schrader and Presta), even more evidence that he had no idea what he was talking about. Nope, he's most definitely deserving of today's Dumbass of the Day award!

¹ The post has been deleted, but you can still see it using archive.org's Wayback machine. Its URL was   trails.com/how_5782_put-air-bicycle-tires.html

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