Truly mundane, but am I the only person who can’t seem to find a gas station air hose that actually works? Around here, they all seem to be coin operated and while they will take your money and make an impressive noise, none of them seem to actually fill my tires.
that’s because they’re small compressors which are probably pieces of junk. The best bet is to find gas stations which still have a garage attached; they already need compressed air for the mechanics’ tools so typically they just run a hose outside for customers. The place I worked for back in high school still does this.
I’m so old, I remember when air was free.
I remember free air too, with the little bell.
Now, it’s always some combo vacume cleaner/air hose and you just know it’s not going to work. In fact, the other night it actually let more aire out of my tires while I was trying to top it off. It’s such a small thing, but I can’t seem to find a working air hose.
I’m so old I remember when we filled our tires with rocks.
Actually a lot of the filler attachments on those pumps are broken. They aren’t heavy duty to start with, they get thrown on the ground, rained on, and driven over, and nobody replaces them. The small pumps are sufficient to top off the pressure, but can be insufficient to reseat a completely deflated tire.
Whippersnapper! Our tires were solid; & we were lucky to have that.
I remember when our tires were rocks!
(Seriously, my first skateboard had ceramic wheels.)
Yeah, mine too. I made it from a roller skate. My feet would go numb from the vibration running down a long hill. I couldn’t believe how the skateboard trend took off until I found out about the urethane wheels.
We had these trees in San Diego that had little seed-things that were shaped like chocolate chips. (I wish I knew what they were.) These things would literally bring a clay-wheeled skateboard to a grinding halt. I’ll never forget the sound – or the two fat lips I suffered. They’d stop urethane wheels too, but it wasn’t as bad as with the clay wheels.
I have a clay-wheel Hobie skateboard similar to this one. Destroyed knees, fat, and the lack of sidewalks here prevent me from using it.
Cool. I want to try long boarding despite a colleagues recent fractured clavicle, but I have the knee problem too. I might do it anyway, I’ve been acting too sane lately.
Wow. One of my snow tires has a slow leak and I was just complaining about this exact thing a week or two ago. Trying to get a seal from the air hose to the valve is damned near impossible.
I have since found one place with free air. The pump is a newfangled thing on which you set the pressure prior to pumping. Unfortunately, because it’s pumping and sensing it cycles between the two modes and takes forever to fill 10 pounds of pressure. But hey, it works.
I also have one of those little pumps that plug into the cigarette lighter (now called power socket, or something). You might want to get one.
I have a Hobie long board too, but I haven’t ridden it in over a decade.
Yes, penguins are more likely to follow you. Seals can be recalcitrant.
Those are handy for motorcyclists (who may have to repair/reinflate their tire by the side of the road), but they’re a pain in the ass to use, since you have to clip/unclip the hose from the tire valve whenever you want to check the pressure (which you’ll want to do at least a few times to avoid overinflation).
If space/budget permits, best bet is an air compressor with a tank. You can even get a portable one, like this one. Plug it in somewhere, run it until the tank is full, then go to wherever your car is and fill the tires. The air chuck is just push-on/pop-off, making it easy to frequenty check tire pressure while inflating. No more screwing around with gas station air hoses that cost you money and may or may not work.
Mine has an in-line pressure gauge.
ETA: I think it goes up to 11 too.
Just put some air in one tire last night. The air hose at the place I usually go was broken, but the Chevron station near me had air - and free air too.
Miracles do happen.
Free air! Bucha Amurika-hatin’ socialists!
I broke down and bought a cheap 3-gallon air compressor, hose, fitting kit, and tire pressure filler with gauge at Harbor Freight. It works well enough for my two cars plus the extra set of snow tires. I also fill up my kids cars every once in a while when they stop by.
Also don’t forget to fill up the spare tire about every 6 months. Nothing like finding out that you actually have 2 flat tires when trying to change one!
Gotta watch out for some of those. I used one once that was set to a very high pressure for something they had been doing. My tire was seriously over inflated after 5 seconds, and I spent a while bleeding it.
shop air is usually (usually) 100-120 psi.
If they were almost the size of a Hershey’s Kiss they were/are eucalyptus seed pods. Ubiquitous in SoCal. Some breeds were smaller, but most were bigger than standard chocolate chips.
And yeah, they were a PITA for roller skating, skate boarding, small remote control cars, etc.