[email protected] (Steve McDonald) wrote in message
news:<
[email protected]>...
> It makes me sad to read so many responses that downplay the value of learning bicycle maintenance
> and repair.
What, precisely, is so objectionable about the proposition that a beginner should first learn to
ride his bicycle before he begins to repair it?
>The implication that women should especially be unconcerned and unwilling to learn even the basics
>of tire repair and brake adjustment leaves me wondering how much social progress has been made.
Who said that? Claire can change a tire, for sure, and better than I can. She could probably also
ride my sorry ass into the ground--and I'm supposed to be a young strong lad. Nobody is saying that
one *should not* learn to fix a bicycle at all costs; the consensus is that one should first learn
to ride, and then learn to repair a bicycle.
>I also wonder how many of the unbiased respondents to this thread have ownership or employment at
>bicycle sales and repair shops.
I've never worked an honest day in my life, much less at a bike shop.
You are presumably an accomplished wrench as well as a keen cyclist; you are therefore a credit to
yourself and an asset to the community, and I'd be very happy to be on a ride with you or to be in
the same neighborhood, the better to learn the necessary skills.
But the OP is *neither* a skillful mechanic *nor* a committed cyclist. It would profit him little at
all to buy a bare frame and a stack of components and to tell him that in order to ride a bicycle
he's got to build one up himself. The suggestion is absurd. At the age of five, or whenever it was
when you first stood astride a bike, did your parents make you weld the frame together yourself
before you could ride it? Have you made your own shoes? Woven your own clothes? Grown your own
grain? I wonder how you posted to this newsgroup; did you build the computer yourself? If so, does
the photolithography equipment for making silicon chips take up much space in your living room?
Repair and maintenance are not insignificant, and ignored at great personal cost (and sometimes
peril). But, I maintain, they are secondary to the experience of riding a bicycle itself: the
ability to get from place to place under your own power at surprising speed, the sensation of
movement, the awareness to your surroundings--not to mention getting to work/school/home, going to
the store, etc. Learning repair and maintenance is a long process--I still haven't seen the inside
of a bearing assembly yet--but a process that is reinforced from the experience of actual riding.
Advising a potential beginner to buy an old, clapped-out bicycle and then repairing it puts an
unnecessary burden on him; not only does he need to learn to ride the bicycle, he first has to make
the bicycle rideable; were this a necessary prerequisite to cycling, I doubt many cyclists would be
left on the street. What's wrong with letting the OP buy a new (and presumably properly-built-up,
adjusted, and reliable) bicycle and then having him learn maintenance, as most of us learn--step by
step, minor tweak to minor tweak to major project?
You can carry on wrenching if you like. But the sun's shining, and I'm riding to the store.
-Luigi
