My bicycle maintenance class

I remember my Dad saying he quit playing golf because he wanted to play for fun and relaxation, but got so frustrated that he ended up leaving the course angry and wound up tighter than John McEnroe after a questionable call. I am finding myself feeling the same way about bicycle mechanics. The more I read about cycling and repair the more I want to learn how to do all of those things myself. Recently, I read an article about a sixty-one year old woman, who rode her bike to work every day in Boston! She got on that thing and rode through the snow and the rain and all the mushy, messy weather that is New England. The bike she rode on her daily excursions she made herself!!! That woman picked out every aspect of her bike down to the type of fenders hovering above her tires. With her own two hands she pieced that puppy together. Am I the only one who thinks that is incredibly and amazingly cool. I doubt it. After reading that article, I slapped the magazine across my legs with a firm determination and thought, “Well, darn it, if that woman can do it at sixty-one, then I should be able to do it too.” HA! So far, it turns out age has very little to do with mechanical ability. At thirty three, I was hoping for somewhat of an edge over this woman. Unfortunately, I am not proving to be much of a mechanic.

To my credit, here is a list of bicycle maintenance items I currently perform fairly well:
• Remove my front and back tire
• replace a flat tire
• Pump my tires
• Put on brand new tires
• Adjust my breaks (I just learned this in my class this weekend)
• raise and adjust my saddle and seat stem
• clean my chain
• lube my cables
• adjust the tension on my pedals
• install my own cleats

As I write all of that down, I’ll admit, I do feel a little bit better. It reminds me of all my years of teaching and how we were always told to approach our students with a “strengths based” attitude. In essence, start with what they know and can do well first, then more onto their “challenges”.

My challenge is that the more I learn, the more I realize I know nothing. For example, before this weekend I thought my bike had Shimano components. Don’t ask me why I thought this. I just never thought to look at my components on my bike to double check. It says about 5 times on my bike, Campagnolo Veloce. Not Shimano, but Campy components. As it happens, these are pretty decent components.

Also, as long as I am coming clean, before this weekend I had NO IDEA that the cables on a bike not only work the breaks, but TA-DA, they also are what shift your gears up and down! And it works strictly by adding or releasing tension, which was really cool for me to learn actually. How did I miss all of this? Do you people know this? Not only have I missed this in the past, but I asked our poor instructor about 46 thousand follow up questions to really understand how it all works. Let me tell you, that was one patient man!

Maybe the secret in life is that I should feel like a dumb ass for at least part of the time, just to remind me that yes, there is a lot out there that has been right under my nose that I never took the time to learn about. Really, if I take the “I should know this…” factor out of it, it’s really like being eight years old again, playing in the garage and seeing just what will happen if you loosen that bolt and pry off that washer?

The thirteen year old boy in our bicycle class this weekend was by far the most confident and the most at ease with the new material. He patiently played with his bike as his Dad, my Dad and I all frowned at our mounted frames, silently mumbling to ourselves as we tried to perform the tasks we’d just been taught. I’m hoping that learning more about bikes and what makes them work doesn’t leave me like my Dad and golf, throwing tantrums and cursing into the wind.

Instead, I’ll try to remain “strengths based”, and look at my “I can do these things “list frequently. So even though I can’t seem to figure out how to raise my threaded stemmed handlebars, at least I can say that I know the difference between a threaded and a threadless stem, for the most part at least. From what I can tell so far, the one I don’t have would be easier to adjust!