Blackburn Bicycle Pumps for Dummies

Bicycle frame pump

One of the more irritating traits of the old eHow stable of contributors was the assumption that if people were experienced in one aspect of a topic, that made them experts in everything. Not just the the plumber who considered herself an expert electrician, but the "outdoorsman" who figured he knew everything about outdoor activities. In this case, it's one Eric Cedric, writing for SportsRec.com, on the topic "How to Use a Blackburn Bicycle Pump."

Cedric's bio claims years as a backcountry expedition leader, but we hope he knew more about the wilderness than the limited knowledge of bicycle pumps he shows in this article. He starts out making sense; but who, regardless of whether he's ridden a bicycle in the past three decades, doesn't know that,

"Flat tires are a fact of life in bicycling. Spend enough time on the saddle and turning the cranks, and soon enough an inner tube goes flat"?

Duh. That's not helpful. What would be helpful would be explaining how to use a bicycle pump. Cedric's problem is that he didn't know how – being a greedy freelancer that, of course, didn't stop him from mangling the instructions.
One of Eric's problems is that there are lots of different Blackburn bicycle pumps, so which one was the OQ asking about: the frame pump? mini? floor pump? We read through his post, and couldn't figure out which one he was pretending to discuss, so we looked at his one reference. Guess what: it was only for a list of Blackburn pumps.

The reasons we couldn't figure it out were fairly simple. For one, he spent all much of his pagespace blabbering about choosing a valve type; for another, some of his steps are... impossible. Here's what we mean:

• "Push the Blackburn pump head lever up so it is perpendicular to the pump barrel." – If he's talking about a frame pump, that's wrong. If he's talking about any other type, it makes no sense (maybe he means "chuck" instead of "barrel"?)
• "Turn the selector dial on the pump to either the Schrader or Presta valve setting." – No Blackburn pump has a "selector dial."
• "Flip the pump lever back down to lock the pump onto the valve." – Nope, the chuck locks in place with the lever up, not down.
• "Pull the pump handle out from the barrel, then pull and push the handle to pump the inner tube full of air. ." – With a frame pump, you need to shorten the pump barrel and lock it in place before pulling out on the handle. Plus, there's the whole "turn the handle sideways to make a T" on road and frame pumps, and "fold out the foot" on road pumps; both of which are essential to using the pump.

You'd never get your tire pumped up following the instructions our Dumbass of the Day published. Gee, thanks a lot, eHow!

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