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A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

tegowerk.eu

21–30 of 172 posts

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#21

Beautifully written, but I couldn't disagree more. Bicycle maintenance is an annoying chore to me that gets in the way of my enjoyment of cycling. I even have good bicycle shops near me that did maintenance far quicker/cheaper/better than I would do. It just all seemed like such a hassle. I finally ended up buying a belt-drive hub-geared hydraulic-brakes medium/fat-tyre bicycle and my maintenance woes appear to be ma…

I’m kind of stuck in the worst spot between both. Maintenance is a chore, but I still prefer to DIY vs taking it to the shops near me, which are various combinations of rude, unreliable (both in terms of scheduling and quality of work), and expensive.

So I just suck it up and try to fit the work in when I can, which is almost never.

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#22
post #12

I had a similar experience during the pandemic. I got hold of an old frame for a road bike that I somehow liked. Even the paint was pretty bad so I went all the way of stripping the old paint, cold-setting the rear dropouts (thanks to Sheldon Brown's website) so that it will take the modern wheels, painting the frame, and assembling everything with new parts. It took me two years because I had to learn a lot how diff…

Now you've got me interested in what your bike looks like

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#23

Beautifully written, but I couldn't disagree more. Bicycle maintenance is an annoying chore to me that gets in the way of my enjoyment of cycling. I even have good bicycle shops near me that did maintenance far quicker/cheaper/better than I would do. It just all seemed like such a hassle. I finally ended up buying a belt-drive hub-geared hydraulic-brakes medium/fat-tyre bicycle and my maintenance woes appear to be ma…

Interesting point of view, thank you! For me maintenance and repair have enhanced riding rather than diminish it. I find it's similar to how cooking enhances eating, or yard work enhances laying around the yard. Of course I hate having a malfunction while riding as much as the next guy, but I also ride with more confidence because I know I can handle pretty much anything that can go wrong, even on the go.

[deleted]

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#24
post #12

I had a similar experience during the pandemic. I got hold of an old frame for a road bike that I somehow liked. Even the paint was pretty bad so I went all the way of stripping the old paint, cold-setting the rear dropouts (thanks to Sheldon Brown's website) so that it will take the modern wheels, painting the frame, and assembling everything with new parts. It took me two years because I had to learn a lot how diff…

> Now, I have a very unique and beautiful bike (people on the street tell me).

Well you can't just entice us like that without posting a photo! Here's one I painted that I am really proud of how it came out: https://tegowerk.eu/posts/nakamura-shadow-city-bike/

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#25

Cycling is a joy. When I experience / see people diss cyclists, I'm sad for them. It implies they cannot empathise with others (me). My physical and mental health are better thanks to cycling.

People don't like cyclists because their only interaction with cyclists is when they're holding up traffic.

Read: making someone drive slower to the next red light 100 feet ahead.

At least that’s my experience in Chicago.

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#26

Cycling is a joy. When I experience / see people diss cyclists, I'm sad for them. It implies they cannot empathise with others (me). My physical and mental health are better thanks to cycling.

People don't like cyclists because their only interaction with cyclists is when they're holding up traffic.

This one surprises me because it seems far more common to me that cars hold up traffic than bicycles. When you look at images of traffic jams it's almost always other cars in the way, not bicycles.

I suppose maybe it's a city/countryside thing? Cars are great at long straights, but they take forever to safely clear an intersection compared to a bicycle -- and they block most of the road while they do.

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#27

Cycling is a joy. When I experience / see people diss cyclists, I'm sad for them. It implies they cannot empathise with others (me). My physical and mental health are better thanks to cycling.

People don't like cyclists because their only interaction with cyclists is when they're holding up traffic.

Cyclists are traffic.

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#28
There's a certain zen that comes with maintenance or building of everything, from bikes to radios to cars. I'm not sure if it comes from experience or age, but when it happens it changes how you think of things. Finding that zen leads to faster and better quality work. Maybe it's just an exercise in patience that feels zen like.

My back's not got much in it these days, so I've mostly been supervising my wife who stubbornly wants to learn it all. It's funny watching her go through the same hot head, cuss, throw your tools experience I did years ago. I tried to explain my zen theory, but she sure wasn't having it, so I'm leaning towards experience.

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#29

But it is true. Most websites concern with companies competing in a market. If you believe a war-industry is good because it provides jobs, but you don't take into consideration that war destroys stuff and lives and just creates misery for most of us, you are shortsighted at best.

That's quite a stretch. Competition is good for the market. The problem are the big tech quasi-monopolies and they usually don't hire small web agencies to build their website.

Or to stay in your analogy: if your country is at war, you apparently see every manufacturing business as part of this war-industry. Even the bakery around the corner.

Re: A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair

#30

Beautifully written, but I couldn't disagree more. Bicycle maintenance is an annoying chore to me that gets in the way of my enjoyment of cycling. I even have good bicycle shops near me that did maintenance far quicker/cheaper/better than I would do. It just all seemed like such a hassle. I finally ended up buying a belt-drive hub-geared hydraulic-brakes medium/fat-tyre bicycle and my maintenance woes appear to be ma…

Bicycle maintenance is what got me out of the habit of riding. You don’t ride for a little while and soon trying to pick it back up first means tires need a lot of air… oh that one’s going flat before the end of the block… Christ, it’s the rear one, there goes the whole afternoon expecially since I’ll for-sure mess up other stuff in the process. Guess I’ll do it next time.

Then I don’t, and stop riding.

It’s crazy that my car beats every bike I’ve owned handily in both maintenance-hours-per-hour-of-use and (obviously, by a loooong shot) maintenance-hours-per-mile. And it has complex electronics and has to contain little explosions and has parts than spin thousands of times per minute! And a damn air conditioner, which is a whole thing all in its own! Plus only cost as much as a surprisingly small number of allegedly-minimally-decent bikes despite requiring way more mass in materials and far more complex manufacturing. Hell, the precious metals in it alone… the bikes have none or practically none of that.

I love riding bikes though. Negative interest in spending any time maintaining them, and taking them to the shop all the time’s impractical (now the costs are really crazy, plus I have to transport them there and back)

[edit] fwiw when I eventually get over the sticker shock at what bikes with any nice features at all cost, I’ll probably get a low-maintenance bike like yours. Do wanna try those airless tires some companies make first, though. Shit’s always going flat, it’s the worst, hardly worth it if I’m still gonna have that problem or if the airless tires are terrible in other ways.

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