the other day, i was out with another person.
her tires have schrader valves.
i decided they looked low, so we stopped to add air.
i tried to use my tiny 'sks raceday' frame pump.
it has reversible connections, so i thought, no problem.
but i had never tried it on schrader valves.
doesn;t work.
it doesn;t have a lock to the valve stem.
so what happens is, you have to hold it on all the time.
even if you have enough hands, it can;t be done.
trouble is, if the tire is low, the valve stem just pushes back into the tire.
yet there is enough air in the tire that you can;t just push it out from the other side, through the
tire, either.
[these are, i think, 700c-35 tires..]
all it did when we pushed it down was go in farther, and let the rest of the air out.
what i finally had to do was rig a bunch of repair wire, looping it around the valve stem at the
base a couple times, then tying it tight and kind of winching it down in the spokes by turning a
screwdriver around.
anyway, the motto is, try it at home before going on the road.
this whole thing took about 30 minutes to figure out and execute.
if i had known that, i would have just let her go on with slighly low pressure.
wle.