So what is best? Aluminum? Lifetime warranty? Rebuild-ability? Brand name? What does everyone else use? Give an absent-minded student a tip.
--- When shopping for a pump, test the head--how easy it is to connect to (and remove from) a valve stem. You can test that right in the bike store.
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"The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well." Ivan Illich ('Energy and Equity')1974