Category: Bike Accessories

My faith in the good folks at Blackburn has been restored. I wrote June 13 about how the hose on my Blackburn TPS-2 floor pump had blown out while helping another rider.

Initially I said that I expected an email reply in minutes to my message to Blackburn because the company had been so responsive in the past. When several days had gone by with no reply from Blackburn, I ended up calling the company, which acknowledged that they were behind in their email.

When Agent Courtney heard which model I had, she said that replacement parts were no longer available and that they would send me a comparable pump in “seven to 10 days.”

To my pleasant surprise, a big box showed up today – four days later – with a brand new Blackburn AirTower 2 in it. That’s good customer service: under promise and over deliver.

The Blackburn Air Tower 2 has some nice features

Here’s the official feature description from the Blackburn website:

Redesigned from the ground up for 2008 for improved performance and reliability. A stout steel barrel and welded steel base provides unsurpassed stiffness and stability, and the ergonomic T-handle now features storage drawers on the ends. The presta/Schrader head is now more durable and rebuildable.

Available in Blood Red and Silver
Max Pressure: 140 psi / 9.75 bar
Barrel Material: Steel
Weight: 3.8 lbs / 1.7 kg

Head has been redesigned

The old TPS-2 head was T-shaped, with a Presta fitting on one side and a Schrader on the other. You turned a selector knob to determine which way the air would flow. I wore out one head and Blackburn provided me a rebuild kit.

The new model has a single head with two holes in it. The smaller is for Presta valves. You lock it in by pulling up on a handle, which seems counter-intuitive. It seems more natural to press the handle down, in the direction of the valve, when you are trying to attach it.

In real life, it’s not bad. I tried it on both types of valves and it worked the first time on both. Snapping the handle down when you’re done causes the valve to blow off with little loss of air.

Some Amazon reviewers complained that it didn’t work properly with Presta valves, but I didn’t have a problem. Either the head problem has been fixed or it was pilot error. I’ll let you know if something changes.

I wish the gauge was on the top

I wish the pressure gauge was at the top of the pump instead of the bottom, but the numbers are bright and there’s a handy-dandy indicator you can set to help you find the right pressure while you’re pumping.

I can’t compare the two pumps directly since the hose doesn’t work on my old one, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the TPS-2 as I remember it seemed to fill the tire slightly faster. Maybe this one is designed to pump less air, but at a higher pressure.

The website description says the maximum pressure is 140 psi, but the gauge goes to 160 psi and the instruction sheet attached to the pump says 160 psi / 11 bar.

Extra inflators a nice touch

If you have kids, you know how many things there are to blow up: balls, rafts, pool toys, etc.

The Air tower 2’s handle comes with two slide-out inserts. One of them is empty for whatever you want to put in it; the other contains a raft inflator and a ball needle inflator. To sweeten the deal, they clip into the holder so they won’t get lost (as easily).

In May, I wrote reviews of four MP3 speakers I had tried on my bike

• My favorite, the Active Tunes i-RIDE PRO
• The Active Tunes i-RIDE Classic and the Byco WRX1
• Also-rans the SanDisk Sansa Shaker and the Boostaroo.
• I also threw in some playlists that I listen to on the road.

What do they sound like?

Reader Mark Hoagy was interested in buying something, but he was curious about how loud the speakers were and how they sounded.

I explained to Mark that I wasn’t sure how to quantify “loud” nor “good,” since I’m going deaf and I’ve spent most of my life listening to police radios, not high fidelity sound.

He suggested doing a video

When I told him I didn’t want to run afoul of the Music Police by using copyrighted music, he offered to send me a sample of home-brew music.

Mark is a very persistent guy. (Sounds a lot like my Bro Mark, now that I think of it.)

A vacation and home repairs got in the way, but I finally got around to producing the Great MP3 Speaker Shootout.

First, I had to collect the i-RIDE Classic from Son Matt and the SanDisk Sansa Shaker from Grandson Malcolm. They wanted them right back, so I had to shoot the test on the dining room table under less than optimum lighting conditions.

The Great MP3 Speaker Shootout

Take this comparison with a whole shaker of salt.

• It wasn’t under anything resembling controlled circumstances.
• I suspect the video camera has some kind of auto volume control that tries to make everything sound the same.

Here’s what my ears tell me

• Best and loudest sound: i-Ride Pro

  

• Second place sound and volume: i-Ride Classic
• Third favorite: Byco WRX1 (not available as far as I know)
• Distant fourth: SanDisk Sansa Shaker, just cause it’s cute.
• Not even dug out of the junk box: Boostaroo.

How do teenage girls do it?

I took a ride along the Palm Beach Lake Trail Saturday and got the bright idea of trying to hold the video camera pointing back at me while the iPod was hooked up to the i-RIDE PRO. That would give an idea of what the speaker sounded like on the road and how I have it mounted to my CamelBak M.U.L.E. (Note: the i-RIDE PRO is the device at the top of the CamelBak strap, right under my ear. The object below it is my Verizon cell phone.)

Every teenage girl has managed to master taking a picture of herself and her 42 closest friends while holding her cellphone camera at arms length.

After trying to ride a bike and duplicate that feat with my video camera, I am convinced that the current generation of teenage girl has some genetic mutation that gives them arms that are six feet long and fold in at least three places that mine won’t.

OK, Mark, does that help out?

Photographers live in the NOW. If you don’t have just the right camera loaded with just the right kind of film with just the right lens on it, then you are likely to come up with memories, not pictures.

A photographer named Jim Domke was given the assignment to come up with a camera bag that would suit his fellow photographers at the Philadelphia Inquirer in the middle 70s. He had a prototype ready for the 76 Republican Convention.

Domke bag became the defacto standard

The Domke F-2 Camera Bag became an instant hit with not only his staff, but photographers all over the country. We needed something that would hold multiple lenses that could be grabbed in an instant; plenty of pockets for film, filters and junk. It needed a wide strap that would hold onto your shoulder without digging in or sliding off. It needed to be water resistant and it had to be able to stand up to the abuse of travel and spot news.

When I traveled, I might check my clean underwear, but my Domke bag went carry-on. After all, if my equipment didn’t get there, it didn’t matter if I did.

Three generations of bags

The foreground, frayed bag was my first, bought shortly after it went on the market in 1976; the top bag is probably 20 years old and the middle bag, owned by Son Matt, is about five years old.

There are a few subtle differences among them. The new version, for example, comes with a padded insert that Matt didn’t like. Somehow or another, I ended up with it, and he has the canvas one that was in the original bag.

I didn’t like working from a bag

The Domke bag was the best of the bunch, but I didn’t really like using a bag.

• It put a lot of weight on one arm.
• It interfered with the camera strap if you were working with cameras on both shoulders and around your neck.
• It made it hard to work your way through a crowd.

I bought fishing vests

They had lots of pockets, they were fairly inexpensive and they distributed the load more evenly than a camera bag.
I owned several of them over the years.

The darned thing must have shrunk

When Wife Lila and I headed out to New Mexico, I dug out my old fishing / shooting vest from the back of the closet. It probably hadn’t been used in about 20 years.

I don’t know exactly how it could have happened, but the thing managed to get smaller while hanging up. It certainly didn’t fit that tight when I was on the street.

It was time to check out the Domke Vest

The Domke PhoTOGS Vest was everything the cheap fishing vest was and more. It claims to be khaki, but I think it’s more of a greenish gray. Not a bad color, just not khaki as I know it.

The fishing vest had lots of pockets, but they tended to be a bit shallow. After they got some wear on them, the pockets started to get a little thin and I worried about a lens popping through the material at the worst possible time.

The Domke vest is made out of fairly heavy cotton. I think it’ll take a lot of abuse before I’d get concerned about fraying.

Heavy, but cool

The heavier material is offset by cotton mesh on the front and back to let out heat. I don’t think I’m going to need the hand warmer pockets anytime soon, but it’s nice to know they are there.

It fits a little longer than a fishing vest, but I think it looks better.

A large fit Son Matt and me. (If it’s a little too big, it has waist adjustment tabs to pull it in a bit.)

Pockets on the inside, too

Not only does it have pockets on the front and back, it has large, usable pockets on the inside, too.

OK, it doesn’t have a soft pad to stick my fishing flies in, but it DOES have little loops for wire holders near the top. It has a raised collar to keep the camera strap from rubbing your neck, and the tops of the shoulders have rough stitching that will keep the strap from sliding off.

Because photographers carry more weight than fishermen, the overall cut of the garment is designed to distribute it over a wider area. It even has a clear plastic window held on with Velcro that can hold press ID. (If you don’t need to display an ID, then it comes right off.)

The only thing that’s lacking is a hook on the back to hang it up.

It’s obvious that the person, who came up with the specs, had spent a lot of time on the street shooting pictures.

The Domke Vest lives up to the Domke name

I paid $64.95 for my Domke PhoTOGS Vest on Amazon (plus shipping), but I don’t regret the amount. It’s a piece of equipment that will outlast me. (If I can keep the shrinking closet from attacking it or one of my sons from “borrowing” it.

I was driving up A1A near Boynton Beach, FL, behind a SAG wagon covering the Boca Raton Bike Club’s Frank Stark Ride when I saw the last rider in a group hold up his hand.

The SAG driver must have missed seeing him, so I did a U-turn, pulled up alongside the rider and asked if he needed help.

Need help?

He said he needed air for a low tire. He had flatted and changed the tube, but his CO2 cartridge left it more more flat than filled.

I whipped out my ever-faithful Blackburn TPS-2 Bicycle Floor Pump and watched him pump away.

Just before pulled back on the road, he noticed the sidewall bulging out. The tire bead hadn’t seated properly.

Pssssssss. Deflate the tube and try again.

This time it looked good. He pumped. And he pumped. And he pumped.

“Wow, this is a lot of work,” he said as he put all his weight on the handle to get it to 119 psi. At 120 psi, there was a loud bang.

It wasn’t the tube. The hose on the pump had blown.

The rider was mortified. Knowing that Blackburn had been good about honoring their lifetime warranty when I had problems with the pump head, I told him not to worry about it.

He hopped on his bike and headed back to the start

If Blackburn balks at replacing the hose, I’ll do a followup posting. Otherwise, assume that they are a good company to deal with.