Bikes in Literature: The Cold Cold Ground

 "... Take me to a land of alien topography. Away from Ireland, where there's always a fight, always a duality, never a synthesis.  Protestant: Catholic; Green:Orange; Beatles:Stones; Presta valve:Shrader valve. How tedious it all is. How wearying."

Now, in books that have nothing to do with bicycles it is not unusual to find a random reference to one, often as a minor description helping to set a scene or move the story forward. For instance, the one other reference in The Cold Cold Ground, which is a crime novel and found in the mystery section of the local Barnes & Noble, concerns the protagonist in the story - Sergeant Duffy - being reprimanded and reassigned to a bike theft case. A small thing that, never-the-less, moves the story forward.

Anyway, the reference to valves seems particularly unusual, especially random. I mean, while out of. the blue, it does fit within the dichotomy of the paragraph, but so could a thousand other comparisons. I had to stop right there and consider where it might have come from. On the day the author wrote the passage above, did he want to go for a ride only to realize he had a flat. Running out to the local bike shop did he go in and say he needed a new tube, to which the mechanic asked what kind of valve, Presta or Shrader? Oh, man, the author responds, I don't know, and then has to run back home to check. Then again, perhaps he is a well-versed cyclist and always looking for any excuse to insert that random bicycle reference into one of his stories. Where did it come from? If I ever were to meet Adrian McKinty, that would be my question.