This little sucker goes in my seatbag, along with a CO2 loaded into it and a spare. I've needed to use it a few times and it hasn't screwed up yet.
We also have a smaller screw on deal that just has the chuck head. Positives are that it is tiny and works with the big 16g CO2 cartridges. Negative is that threaded CO2 cartridges are about 5 times the price of non-threaded.
A few years ago I bought a box of 12g Crossman CO2 cartridges from Dick's Sporting Goods. I think it had 25 cartridges in it. It's still got most of them. It may have been as much as $15, but I don't think it was. When you have to buy them out of the fish bowl on the bike shop counter, they are like $4 each. My love for the bike shops extends very far but not that far.
Speaking of inflation, the price of tubes has jumped the shark. I bought two yesterday, with 48mm valves since I have some rims on which this works much better. $15 and change. WTF?? Youch. No wonder I'm such a fan of the patch kit. I only take a spare tube when I'm going on a really long ride, or doing something like a Poolesville trip through the dirt, or whenever I ride with Jay Moglia. If Jay had been friends with Gary Fisher and those guys, the mountain bike would never have been invented. Road bikes are perfect mountain bikes too.
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So one of my boys at a local bike shop (unnamed to protect the guilty) usually hooks me up with a two-digit discount. I go in to pick up a pair of tubes and he charges me like $16. I was like... WTF?!?! Yeah, that included the discount. These were good Vredestein tubes and one of them came with a slow leak. Hell, the house performance brand tubes have treated me juts fine for $3, thanks.
Those last few lines crack me up. Just yesterday Jay and I were reminiscing about my shreaded tire on the scree descent... yeah. About that. Finishing the 35 miles of that ride on a tire patched up with duct tape and a dollar bill riding 40 psi can only make you stronger.
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