Cheap stuff

Transcript

I just spent most of a day replacing the rim on a bicycle wheel. Rebuilding a bicycle wheel with 36 spokes is quite a challenge, but after a lot of trial and error I got all the spokes tight, and the wheel is fine.

When I started to inflate the tire, I found a leak in the tire pump hose. So I removed the hose from the tire pump and went to a nearby hardware store, hoping to find a new hose. I'd bought that pump eight months ago at the same store. It was really cheap.

When I got to the store, I found hoses, but they didn't fit my pump. The weird thing, though, was that the store was still selling the same cheap pump that I had, and the price was the same as a replacement hose for a better pump. They refused to sell me just a hose from one of the cheap pumps, so I was stuck.

Finally I bought the best tire pump in the store. It was four times as expensive as the cheapest one, but even then it was still less than two thousand yen, about twenty U.S. dollars. This one has some extra attachments and an air pressure gauge, parts seem to be available, and it works really well. I think this pump is well worth the money.

My only regret is that I'd tried to save money by buying a cheap pump eight months ago. I should have known that cheap stuff, especially tools, can become pretty expensive.