As far as chores go, I don’t mind the those that only need equipment on hand, like mowing the lawn, laundry, or very minor repairs with a hammer, saw or screwdriver.
It annoys me, then, when I set on a job that means paying money, even something as trivial as a visit to one of our local gas stations to pump air into tires.
I have an old bicycle, a Columbia, and I’d like to use it except that the tires are pretty much flat.
I’d bought a small compressed air pump to use for the off-roading I’ve promised myself to try one of these days. They say if you want to drive your truck on the beach, you need to deflate the tires “some” amount and have a portable pump to reinflate them.
The air pump works off a cigarette lighter, and the directions claim it works best while the vehicle is running, churning away at $3/gallon.
Because I hate relying on anything outside these four walls, I tried it yesterday. I hope the air pump works better on truck tires than it did on the bike. Very likely the tires on the bike are shot – they are probably 20 years old at least, and that’s probably why they refused to inflate.
To prove this out will require external resources, though, a nuisance, like getting the propane tank refilled. It’s one of the reasons I bought an electric lawn mower: I got tired of hauling the old gas model to be tuned. If only I’d gone to the vo tech instead of college!