On Trojans

As I alluded to yesterday, I broke down and bought a Lezyne Micro Floor pump that mounts beside the water bottle cage on the downtube. I am still schleping around the Carbon Dioxide cartridges and pump while I decide how to do things in the long term.

Anyway a quick product review, from an end consumer who paid for the thing out of his own pocket. When I brought the pump home the first thing I did was try it on a deflated tyre, it takes a fair bit of hand action and it is a pain to bend over far enough to work the thing, but, it is a lot easier to use then the hand pumps and getting that high pressure that roadies like, 120psi, does seem possible. Although the pressure gauge seems a little flaky.

First I started inflating the tyre and the gauge stayed at zero for about ten or fifteen pumps, then suddenly the gauge shot up to 20 psi and quickly, four or five pumps hit 40 psi, the pumping steadily brought the gauge to 70 psi where it again stayed no matter how much pumping I did. Now this particular tube did have a leak, but it was a slow leaker and while the gauge said 70psi I did a pinch test and it felt more like 120, maybe even 140 psi.

So, in short, besides a flaky gauge this is an effective roadside recovery tool, except, the pump is all machined aluminum which is a good thing when it's a floor pump or when you want durability, but when you've got the pump mounted along side your $1000 to $3000 carbon fibre bicycle frame, just millimeters from your feet that are turning in the cranks 80 to 120 revolutions per minute you probably don't want machined aluminum banging up against that carbon beauty. Ultimately I took a leaky tube, which I have several, used a sharp pair of scissors and wrapped both ends as well as a wide point near the base of the pump with sections of tube and then kept the tube in place with elastic bands. My fix does not look pretty but at least my frame will not get hurt. That said, if someone from Lezyne ever does read this, a couple requests:

1. Please make proper rubber frame protectors that would mount on both ends of the pump and probably strap to each other so they don't fall off (maybe strap to the frame too so there is extra protection against the pump falling off?)
2. Fix that damned pressure gauge, it was brutal.

That said, the pump itself is pretty good, I don't think anyone would want to lug something like the Lezyne around in a race, but on a training ride, especially when you get far from home, it is a good thing to have around.

Now as for the subject of this post, yesterday I found three Trojan horses on my PC at work, they completely buggered up network file access. I don't visit those, cough, inappropriate, web sites, so I have to wonder how they got here. Must be Microsoft.com, sorry does that count as inappropriate? I'm beginning to think so!