Bike Snob - Anonymous [45]
Another way bike fear manifests itself is in the fear of performing your own repairs. It’s true, certain repairs are complicated, and the first time you try them you might end up spending more money than you save. Every experienced cyclist has walked into the shop with a sheepish grin and a stripped component. Also, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with giving your local shop some business and having them do some work for you. But there’s a difference between knowing your limits and being afraid to work on your own bike for fear of messing it up. When it comes to bikes, or cooking, or sex, if you haven’t messed up at least once then you’re not doing it right. Few things are more enlightening than mistakes. Sometimes you’ve got to strip a bolt or cut a cable too short or get in over your head and bring the bike over to the shop. That’s how you learn. There are very few things on a bicycle that are so complicated that someone reasonably competent can’t figure them out eventually. And you’d have to try pretty hard to seriously damage the bike or yourself while performing a repair. It’s not like a car or a house, which can electrocute you or burn you. At worst maybe you’ll cut yourself. Really, basic bike repair is only marginally more risky than making a collage.
Basic Bike Repairs (The Bare Minimum)
A decent quality bike that’s been assembled well will require surprisingly little maintenance, and what maintenance it does require basically involves lubricating the chain every now and again, not leaving the bike outside for long periods of time, and not crashing the bike into stuff.
Eventually, though, things do break or wear out, at which point you have two choices: bring it to a shop, or fix it yourself. I know people who are relatively new to cycling who won’t hesitate to tackle their own repairs, and I know people who have raced for twenty years who still bring their bikes to the shop to have their brakes adjusted. The fact is, everybody’s different, and some people simply don’t have the time or inclination to work on their own bikes.
This is fine. However, it’s also true that bikes these days are extremely simple and you can pretty much assemble an entire bike with the contents of a typical saddlebag. So while stuff like wheelbuilding or bearing repacking may not be for everyone, there are basic tasks that I believe all cyclists should be able to do for themselves:
Flat Repair
Flat tires are to cyclists what stomach bugs are to budget travelers; you’re guaranteed to get one eventually. And while you don’t always have much control over when they happen, in all but the most extreme cases you can repair them quickly and easily—provided you know how to do it, and provided you’ve always got all that you need with you.
I am not going to give detailed flat repair instructions here for two reasons. Firstly, they’re everywhere—in bicycle maintenance books, online, and in pretty much every single issue of Bicycling magazine. (If you need instructions I recommend visiting Sheldonbrown.com. If you don’t have a computer, get a computer.) Secondly, in an enlightened society they’d teach every child how to repair a flat tire on a bicycle in grade school instead of teaching them worthless