I recently acquired some new bike toys that hopefully will solve some nagging little bugaboos in my bike life.

The Click-Stand: The Mule doesn’t have a kickstand which can be annoying when parking when a wall isn’t around. Enter the Click-Stand. I first saw one in use on my 2019 bike trip. Corey had one and used it often. He liked it a lot (until he bent it on our 2022 tour. Derp.). I figured it was worth a try. It’s basically a collapsible tent pole with a cradle on top. Two straps hold the brakes tight to stabilize the bike.

So far the reviews are mixed. My friend Chris used his Click-Stand at a stop on the Cider Ride. It didn’t hold and his bike fell over. Hmmm. Also, there are little rubber band thingies that you use to squeeze the brakes levers to keep the bike stable. Because I use bar end shifters, I had to assemble the thingies myself. One assembled (it’s really just a plastic clasp on the ends of a rubber cord) without incident. The other failed and I can’t get it to work. I guess I’ll be using a velcro strap instead.

VAR tire levers: I ride on Schwable and Panaracer tires. Both brands make tires that are super hard to mount onto the rim. You can get one bead over the rim easily. You can get 90 percent of the opposite bead over the rim then you cry. If you try to use conventional tire levers to get the remaining bead over, you’ll succeed but you’ll puncture the tube in the process. More tears. Without levers you’ll tear the skin off your thumbs. What to do?

Beth at Bikes at Vienna convinced me to try a clever combination tire lever/tire jack. There are three arms to this arrangement. One arm is a stand-alone, conventional tire lever. The other marries a tire lever with a second arm, the jack part. You plant one end on the rim and use the opposite end to hook the bead on the opposite side of the rim. Then you use leverage to pull the bead over the rim. Beth uses it in the shop. I tried it at home. It works. The skin on my thumbs is happy. No more tears.

The Silca Tattico minipump: I have been very frustrated with portable bike pumps. For many years I relied on a Zefal frame pump. This pump lasted about 20 years until it wore out. It worked great but, lacking a hose, it could be prone to damaging the tire valve during the last bit of pumping. Mounted under the top tube, the Zefal got in the way when I needed to heft my bike and carry it.

I switched to Top Peak Road Morph pumps. A foot pad flips out of the bottom allowing this pump to convert from a small size into a mini floor pump. It’s a clever design but small parts of the pump (such as the lever securing the pump head to the tire valve) fall off from time to time. And after a couple of years the pump seals start to fail. This isn’t a problem if you only want 30 pounds per square inch of air in your tire but that’s not enough for me. So I tried a Lezyne micro floor pump. It’s a little bigger and operates similarly to the Top Peak. It doesn’t have the problem with parts falling off but it has a handle that digs into your hand as you use the pump. More problematic, the chuck threads onto the valve stem. It’s a very secure connection except it can be too secure; the chuck can pull the valve stem out of the valve. This can ruin your whole day. Ugh. (I am told that the valve that I have was redesigned to avoid this problem. Let’s hope so.)

I found a video comparing the Lezyne and a hand pump made by Silca. Like the Top Peak and the Lezyne, the Silca Tattico pump has a hose to keep the valve stem from being damaged while pumping. It lacks the foot peg that turns the other pumps into a mini floor pump. But, according to the video, it works. It takes a while but it does the job. Time will tell.

MKS Lambda pedals: I am a die-hard user of flat pedals with toe clips. (I’ve tried clipless of various designs and hated them.) These work great but they have two limitations. First, when riding in winter, I often use booties over my bike shoes. Getting my booted feet in and out of the toe clips is an ergonomic mess. I could take the toe clips off but then I’d have a short pedal that my feet would slip off of. Second, in the summer, I can’t ride with sandals because the toe clips are designed for a closed-toe shoe.

My requirements are a solid, non-slippery surface and a wide platform for my wide feet. I have been asking people including YouTubers what they use. Mat Ryder used platforms with pins on some short tours but he found that if the pedal hit his calf it would cut into his skin. The whole blood on his calf thing just didn’t work for him. For his Great Divide Mountain Bike Ride and his TransAmerica Ride he used MKS Lambda pedals. They look weird but are kind of long and have nubby bits to keep your feet stable. Mat never mentioned his pedals after over 6,000 miles of use, on road and off. That’s as good a recommendation as you can hope for so I picked up a pair at Bikes at Vienna. I’ll put install them soon and we’ll see how I like them.