Schrader, Presta, and Dunlop

There are three types of bike-pump and bike-tire valves these days: Schrader (which I grew up with), Presta, and Dunlop. I had to educate myself on these valves when, a couple weeks ago, I finally took a hard look at my bike tire with the purpose of reinflating it and saw that the valve had a strange shape. If you're my age, you're probably familiar with Schrader valves. Relatively speaking, they're wide, sturdy, and straightforward—easy for even a moron like me to understand. They're also used on car tires as well as bike tires.

What I have on my bike, as it turns out, is a thin, delicate Presta valve, and I can't imagine how such valves ever came into prominence or what problem they were created to solve. (I'm not a cycling hobbyist, so my ignorance on the subject is vast. But I am, slowly, learning.) Whatever my misgivings, though, I had no choice but to learn about Presta valves if I wanted to refill my bike tires with air. Time to educate myself.

My initial bike pump, given to me for free when I purchased my rather expensive bike, turned out to be a piece of shit: the pump literally fell apart in my hands when I attached it to a tire and began pumping away. I went on Coupang and bought a studier-looking pump, which came with a confusing jumble of special adapters for various valves. 

I also went to YouTube to look up tutorials for how to deal with a Presta valve; it turns out there are many helpful videos. I found a brief one, which focused on the tire valve, then I looked at a longer video that also talked about the pump. When I looked at my own pump, I saw that the main part of the valve had two holes—one bigger, one smaller. I guessed that the smaller hole was for the Presta valve on my tire, and I was right. 

Using the knowledge I'd gained about how to open a Presta bike-tire valve, I attached my sturdy pump to the bike's back tire and began pumping. It took maybe fourteen strokes* to get the tire's inner tube to the proper tension. Delighted, I closed the rear valve, replaced the plastic cap, then focused on pumping the front tire. Job done within seconds. Knowledge is power. And I didn't even need any of the extra adapters.

I now have a bike with reinflated tires that I will be taking out for a spin very late tonight for maybe 30 minutes or an hour. I need to learn how to shift gears properly, and I need to get a proper feel for my ride. When I'd bought the bike, I rode it almost right away, but for no more than a kilometer or two—just tooling around the park next to my building. So practically speaking, the bike is still brand new, and I know next to nothing about it except that I intuitively don't like how the brakes are also the gearshifts. 

The plan is to get my ass used to riding longer and longer distances; I recall the horrible pain, in 2017, when I got onto a rented bike and rode for the first time in over twenty years—at least fifty kilometers out to the Paldang Bridge and back (that also happened to be the longest distance I'd ever ridden). I'll start with short rides, then progress to longer and longer rides. Will this lead to my riding across the country? No. I'm not a biker, and my current focus on biking is only because I want to do something distance-oriented.

It's tempting to want to take the bike along nearby parts of the Four Rivers path, but for now, I'd rather concentrate on the bike-path equivalent of a bunny slope: the route to Bundang and back. That route is almost entirely flat, and since it follows the preternaturally straight Tan-cheon (Tan Creek) all the way down to Seongnam City, there are few curves and turns to worry about. I also plan to do my biking very late at night, when almost no one else will be out except a few nocturnal crazies like me.

So: tires are reinflated. Time to ride.

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*It's hard not to comment on what my adolescent brain is thinking, what with all this pumping and stroking.