This one is basically a mini floor pump.
There are hand pumps that can reach 120 psi without too much trouble but it takes a lot of strokes.
Yeah, great for the road but I still suggest getting a $15 floor unit that gets up the PSI real fast. Not like they are expensive or take up a huge amount of room. In my experience it is better to have one at ‘home base’.
Anecdote here. I was roughly in the same boat a couple years ago - computer programmer looking to shed a few pounds. I disliked running and was bored with walking, so my wife and I visited the LBS and came away with this:
The FX line is a hybrid line that starts at the 7.1fx for $440 and goes up, up, and away from there. You should be able to find one to suit your needs and budget. As a noob, I didn’t want to spend too much on my first bike.
Today, I’ve got about 350 miles on it and my usual ride so far this year is 12 miles in 50 minutes on a relatively flat, paved trail. I get passed by riders on road bikes but…I don’t think I’ll ever care enough to wear spandex 
The bike is heavy, yet sturdy and comfortable, and all the parts seem to be wearing very well.
Make sure you budget for a good bike rack if you need one. Dealing with getting your bikes on/into and off/ out of your car can be a de-motivator. I’m currently shoving mine into my GTI and it’s a pain in the ass.
If you’ve got a smartphone, you can use one of several apps to track your rides, and this can add to the experience. I use the EveryTrail app for the iPhone and its correlated website www.everytrail.com
Never meant to suggest not having a full size floor pump at home, just that you can get full pressures on the road in a compact size.
Are there actually bikes that take 120 psi in the tires? My hybrid bike only takes something like 60.
Every road bike that uses 700c/650c 23or 25 mm wide tires.
You may not need that much though. There’s a chart you can search for that tells you what psi to run depending on your weight, tire size, etc. I like to keep between 35-40 on my MTB and right at 100 on my road bike. If I ever go tubeless on the MTB, I might go even lower.
I have to go on a sudden business trip (lasting 5 days) so, remembering The Conqueror Worm’s advice, I went to Borders yesterday (40% off coupon) and bought The Big Book of Bicycling, a layman’s overview of the sport, equipment, and other tips and tricks.
Perhaps enough will soak in that I won’t ask completely useless questions… One can only hope.
The tire itself will have a pressure rating printed on it. You’ll want to stay near the top of that rating, whatever it is. Higher pressure will mean less losses from rolling resistance.
Ooh, this is a nice thread…I am thinking of the same thing. I live in Arlington, VA, which has both good bike trails/lanes and Local Bike Shops, so all I need is a Round Tuit. Thanks for everyone’s contributions; I’ll bet there’s a few of us out there that can find this thread useful.
And speaking from recent personal experience: when you’re on the trail it doesn’t matter how many spare tubes, tube repair kits and tire levers you have. If you don’t have a pump you still have to walk! Or I guess hope for a well prepared good samaritan to wander by.
All in all, great advice. A couple of amendments…
True, but higher pressure != greater efficiency. You can have excessively high pressure, where the lack of deformation of the tire not only makes you lose grip (which is nice to have when cornering), but keeps your bike bouncing so much that your speed goes down. More of an issue for roadies, but still good to know. Here is Michelin’s recommended MTB tire pressure chart.
Your front brake provides the majority of your stopping power. You essentially only want to be using the rear brake enough to avoid the lovely “endo” referenced above. The common setup, wherein the front brake is modulated by the left hand, which one is also supposedly signaling with, is therefore a bit foolish. You might consider asking your LBS to re-route the cables on whatever bike you end up with so that your right hand modulates the front brake, for a bit of a safer ride.
If you’re curious about these and other cycling tips, I can’t recommend the late, great, Sheldon Brown enough. Here he is on braking technique.
Just remember, rubber side down, shiny side up. Have fun!
and, chronos, i swear i’m not picking on you…
That depends a lot on the surface you’re riding on, of course. Which when you get right down to it is why there’s a distinction between street bikes and mountain bikes (and everything in between) to begin with. If you had an ideal surface, you’d want pressure to be as high as possible, but of course no surface (even the streets that road bikes are designed for) is perfectly ideal. In my experience, though, at hybrid-bike pressures, I’ve never found that my tires are above optimum pressure for the street.
All true. I’m not sure what the track guys run for pressures, but I’m sure it’s considerably higher than the rest of us. I mentioned it mainly because I spent many years running my (road) tires at 120psi, only to later learn after talking with folks smarter than myself and a bit of tinkering that 90 front/100 rear gives me noticeably better traction on corners without diminishing my efficiency on the straights. What’s probably more applicable to the OP is the fact that pumping the tires as high as possible will give a harsher ride without any benefit in efficiency.
cheers
My MTB tires can go to 55 or 60 psi, but that’s way too high for the kind of riding I do. If you stick to pavement, it might work for you, but I do lots of rocks off road with sand occasionally mixed in. I run lower pressure for the same reason rock crawlers and other 4x4s do. I think on my road bike I actually run 100/90.
MTB? Is that a company or an acronym for “mountain bike”?
Yep, short for mountain bike.
One reason to keep the tires inflated to 100/120 psi (whatever it suggests) is that you will get a lot fewer flats if you do. Just being a mere 10-20 psi below top pressure can spell trouble on terrain that is a little more rough than a recently paved road.
That’s one of the benefits of tubeless. You can run low pressures off road (less than 30 psi) without the risk of pinch flats.
I no longer want to take up bicycling, so thanks to all your help in how to research, purchase, and test bicycles.
The reason I no longer want to take up bicycling is because today I became a bicyclist, with my purchase of a Giant Roam 1 (http://www.giant-bicycles.com/en-US/bikes/model/roam.1/7507/44080/) at the LBS!
I definitely made the guys day, $$-wise, even suggest selling to him - “don’t you think I need two tire pumps, one stand-up, one for emergencies?” 
In addition to the bike I purchased:
2 shirts
1 shorts
stand-up pump with gauge
clip-on tire pump
tube changing kit
little bag for tube changing kit
water bottle holder
water bottle (got this one for free)
Also downloaded an app to my (brand-new) android smartphone, measuring mph, time spent, calories, etc. Also, I have a bicycle path layer on the phone’s map, and I found that there is quite a long trail about 2 miles from where I live.
I’ve taken it out for 6 miles already and will go out some more tonight. Gears were stupidly easy, so much so that I’m embarassed I went on about them so. I even had a small “challenge” moment where I thought I was losing it on a steep climb, but I was able to pull that b**** out. 
I’m so happy about this - thanks, everybody.