Bikes are for everybody. You can ride a beat up bike for years with just basic knowledge, like changing an inner tube and oiling a chain. General and advanced bike maintenance was a mystery until YouTube came along. Now I get to pass this knowledge directly to my kids.
That is true. But what changed most sceptics, that i met, mind were bikes that actually worked. I understand the fear when people see the price tag and think they could buy a second hand car for that, but once they sit on a good bike they just enjoy it. And if they then learn how to do basic maintenance themselves so that it just stays good and doesn't creak all the time, they fall in love with them. I love bikes.
I use it every day but I'm not going to get a better one, because I don't want to be constantly worried that someone will steal it. I want to use it as transportation, leave it wherever, and know that it will still be there because it's not worth stealing.
Plus, being hard to ride means I get extra exercise for my fixed-length rides.
And being able to do it myself feels really good, I couldn’t agree more!
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.
Most of our bikes were incredibly cheap (sometimes < 20 EUR) because you couldn't ride them anymore, and restoring them was quite relaxing. For example, I restored one with a mint-condition frame, using mostly original parts. Originally, it cost 70 EUR. It now looks exactly like this (minus the pannier and with the original gearshift): https://old.reddit.com/r/bikecommuting/comments/uxt0tb/new_b... My wife uses it daily. In my opinion, these bikes have a beauty and elegance which modern bikes simply do not have.
I have made some valuable contacts over the years. For example, I know an eccentric local guy who literally has a 3 meter mountain of old bikes behind his workshop and has every original spare part of pre-2000 bikes imaginable in his cellar. I also know someone on the internet who manufactures pulleys (the little plastic gears) for old Simplex derailleurs at home (they are hard to replace, as modern pulleys don't fit).
My basic rule of thumb of buying an old bike: if the frame is OK, you can restore it for under 200 EUR. Most of the time, it's trivial things like a broken chain, broken brakes, missing spokes, etc.
Once the bike is restored, maintenance is usually painless. The typical wearing parts (chain, bowden cables, tires, brakes) can be replaced with modern standard parts which you can get everywhere.
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.
That said a lot of people are crazy on roads, motorbikes, cars too (probably more often and more dangerously).
So, every idiot cyclist you see is an idiot not in a car and thus a reason to celebrate them.
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.
At least that’s my experience in Chicago.
Windshield perspective (or myopia) and car brain are both real phenomena:
- https://grist.org/cities/2011-01-25-if-driving-is-so-great-w...
I haven’t had to mess around with gear indexing once since I bought a bike with electronic shifting (SRAM Rival) a couple years ago, and it always shifts perfectly. I do have to keep the batteries charged, but one charge a week is more than enough with daily riding - so never had any issues there.
With wax lube (I use Squirt) I spend a lot less time cleaning my chain. What used to be a pretty annoying weekly process of degreasing and lubing my chain now takes a minute or two: use a dry brush to scrape off any excess wax buildup and then apply more wax. Much quicker and much cleaner than the old dry lube I used to use. And the chain is cleaner and quieter too.
Other than that, I basically hose off the bike and wipe it with a towel after every ride, and align/clean the disc brakes occasionally. My ratio of ride time to maintenance time has never been higher.
But I’ve noticed that if what I want to be doing is be out riding my bike, I sure do hate it when something needs to be fixed!
I think all city bikes should be belt and internal hub.
However, when I was topping-up the treatment with Squirt, I thought why not just use the Squirt and not bother with the whole waxing business. The problem I have is not being good at looking after my bike straight after a ride and here in the UK, that means the chain tends to get rusty so I end up getting through more chains than I should.
EDIT: autocorrect
It's just very zen. Both because it tends to relatively less tasking on your executive functions, is physical and provides tangible results that you can see and "feel" relatively quickly. It may also be because programming is frankly a craftmanship for the most parts. There are a few projects where I'm doing Computer Science, but for the most part I'm a digital plumber.
But for me it always just feels like a chore - something I need to get done before tomorrow morning or else I have to listen to some dreadful sound for the entire ride.
I personally love working on bikes. I'd replace my behind the keyboard all day tech job in a split second, if I could afford to do so.
Clean after every ride? That's way overkill. I only clean my bike when I need to re-wax my chain.
I tend to sweat a lot, and sweat is corrosive. If it’s not a sweaty ride, and the roads are dry, I’ll skip the cleaning sometimes.
When the project was finished took apart my old off-the-shelf mountain bike, now all that remains of it is a frame with the paint stripped off. I plan to convert it to internal cable routing, paint it (I've been watching Etoe on YouTube) and then turn it into an e-bike.
As a side effect of buying all the tools you need to build and repair bikes, I've also repaired my almost two decades sold exercise bike, which had trashed ball bearings. It also made me realize that most people would have thrown it away and bought a brand new one.
Like many things, bike maintenance eventually becomes a chore. Most of my (many) bikes over the last 30 years have been built from the ground up, including the wheels. And I don’t (or won’t) trust any shop mechanic to touch them. But now, the thought of doing any sort of maintenance fills me with dread - I want to ride my bikes, not spend hours fiddling with brake hydraulics and suspension seals!
Not a problem! Why not...
> I don’t (or won’t) trust any shop mechanic to touch them
Oh. That explains it.
Have you considered reverting to simpler bicycles that require less frequent and simpler maintenance. Rigid frame, cable-actuated brakes, possibly a gearbox?
At the moment the US is asleep, and I’m getting more of a European vibe from the comments.
I also have an older road racing bike that is completely equipped with a Shimano 105 groupset. With it, maintenance and getting it running is child's play. The simplicity of a frame shifter makes everything much easier.
Bikes are the best invention since sliced bread.
I will also say that e-bikes are much more fun than I would have thought. And not very serviceable.
Take a look at the local rate of machinists and mechanical engineers and then decide whether you truly want to have your bike part "repaired".
Might also be a good idea looking for other bike shops in your area. Mine is always trying to recycle and repair components.
It took me two years because I had to learn a lot how different components fit together and all sorts of specific spacings.
Now, I have a very unique and beautiful bike (people on the street tell me). But above all, I know every detail of that bicycle and how to fix it.
The reason why IT people love this stuff (also woodworking, gardening, etc.) so much is that there's routine. Most of the bikes are very similar. If you've rebuilt one, you have the competency to build another one.
In software, every project is a new challenge. It's more like building a new technical object all the time. I think software development could benefit from rewriting stuff every now and then. Many of my former projects would benefit a lot if I had a couple of week to take apart all the functions and assemble them in a better way that consideres everything I've learned so far.
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/
It gave me an admiration for the cleverness but also the simplicity of the design. Truing the wheels felt like an art, and I got so interested in the concept that I ended up writing my thesis around lacing patterns for the spokes on the wheels. It actually got posted to HN at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10410813
I do all maintenance on my bikes now. Always a good excuse to buy some new gadget, right? This other week I applied new bar tape and bled my brakes. I originally wanted some repair shop to do it, but that would mean bike there, get to work somehow, then get back there and then be able to bike home. Seemed more hassle than just fixing it myself, given I'm dependent on my bike.
I maintain a small but shrinking amount of hope that we might be able to get rid of cars. Sometimes I think it's getting better, but then I remember how much had already been ceded to them in just my lifetime. Maybe when I'm old it will be possible to cycle around safely and young people will know true freedom.
Repairing bicycles is part of that freedom really. You don't a lot of space or super expensive tools. There's no toxic liquids to deal with. I rebuilt a bike from the frame up around 2006 without any help from YouTube. I realised later I did a lot of it wrong as I was essentially guessing, but I still rode it for many hundreds of miles.
The blog comes very close to quoting ‘zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’ -I wonder if the author read that…
I did! But I did so long before I started with bike repair, so at that time I couldn't really connect with it. Thank you for reminding me that I should give it a second read!
I remember first seeing this and thinking in some way it is more than funny, a more equal world.
Especially older, carbureted motorcycles with minimal electronics. You can often work everything out and get them going like new again with just some elbow grease and replacing perishables like fluids, seals, gaskets, etc.
Not to mention it's fun riding a bike that previously didn't even kick over before it came into your hands.
> and the greater the chance they’ll conclude they’re working in a bullshit job.
OK but you guys all know how many software have been involved in the creation and shipping of that bicycle and all its material? It's software all the way. The 3D modelling, the logistics, all the payment processing making buying/shipping the materials, etc.
I won't comment on taxes (on revenues for all the companies involved and on their employees too and on the sale etc.) and all the software that implicates and all the bureaucracy that it allows to thrive because, to me, that is the real bullshit that should be decimated (not reduced to zero but decimated).
But anyway many things we enjoy and take for granted exists thanks to and because of software.
Put it this way: even if they're similar in that they both have two wheels, I'm not trading an early 20th century for my Specialized (californian company btw even though I'm in the EU) full carbon S-Works (S-Works is the top end from Specialized) bicycle.
Thank you very much, software devs, for having made the creation of that wonderful bicycle possible.
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 massively reduced.
I love the concept of bicycles that are deliberately built to be low maintenance.
You end up spending about 300/year. And for that money you have no need to worry about repairs. Or theft. These things seem to be immune to being stolen. Both those things are big issues because repairs are expensive if you don't do them yourself and bike theft means you need to replace them (or pay extra for insurance) when that happens and it also means that using a nice bike to get around is risky.
With Swapfiets, I never worried about theft. You just lock it and the bike thieves apparently ignore them as they are probably hard to sell on (as they are very recognizable). I've done that all over Berlin, including many of the hot spots where I'd normally be reluctant to leave anything of value unattended.
So I just suck it up and try to fit the work in when I can, which is almost never.
There is no bike repair in walking distance from me, so taking a bike in for repair means having to find other means of getting home and back there. To me, that's the biggest hurdle. Also, they give Littles guarantees to when they will actually work on the bike, and I don't want to be without it for an indefinite time.
If I instead could book a slot, come there, deliver it, walk around some other shops for an hour or two, then pick it up and bike home, I would've probably given them more business.
I enjoy most of my bike repairs, but some of them I can do without. For instance switching to studded winter tires, my tire+rim combo is a hassle to get on.
I think it's worth mentioning that cycle touring doesn't have to be complicated either. I was always scared to take a bike ride longer than a weekend because so many people in that scene appear to be major gear nerds. Then I met a hobo who had just jumped off a train with a battered up omafiets and he inspired me to strap a bunch of crap to my cheap hybrid and cycle all the way across North America.
Turns out you don't need the latest and greatest anything, you don't need to spend a zillion dollars on tools, or sit around tinkering every day. If you can change a tube and oil the chain, that's about all you need to know how to do. Even with broken spokes or a snapped cable you can hobble along for a couple days, till the next town with a bike shop. And if your bike is cheap and generic, every bike shop will have the replacement parts already in stock.
When I cycled through Colombia I did it on a Buffalo Bike which was slow, heavy and pretty much indestructible. Took ages to get anywhere, but who cares? Rather spend my time pootling along slowly than trying to fix stuff. Fixing stuff is my job, that's the last thing I want to do in my personal time.
Makes me think of the old, well-known saying, that you should focus on the journey rather than destination. In my mind, it does not compute. I often wonder if I'm broken somehow.
Take hydraulic disc brakes for example, when they work they are great but when they fail they don't work at all. You then have to bleed them which is fiddly, messy and requires special tools then you'll probably have to do it all over again after a few rides. Tubeless tyres are similar.
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.
I don't know what it is about this, I've owned bikes for 30 years to ride in a mix of conditions (from mountain trail to city) and I've had like 5 flats, tops. One because I failed to bunny hop a curb and blew the whole thing, busting the wheel in the process, and the others because I drove over something that punctured the tube.
My last bike I've had for about 10 years til it was stolen last year, at some point I left it unattended for like 3 years, and when I picked it up again it wasn't at perfect pressure, but certainly wasn't flat at all, far from it, and definitely ridable. I know because my el cheapo pump was bust and I rode it to the nearest shop.
By the time it got stolen, only the front tube had a change a couple years before because of a puncture (rode on shattered glass) but the other was still factory and perfectly fine at holding air.
This experience has been consistent with all my bikes, and friends that ride good hardware have a similar experience. Some others though, they keep on regularly being flat but from what I gather it's a) cheaping out on the hardware and b) being mind boggingly careless about what they ride over.
So your problem doesn't really sound like one most people have. I normally get flats like every other year or so. And that's with thousands and thousands of kilometers of riding each year.
In a (flat) city for commuting short distances, you simply don't need gears if you're below 50. It's a nice to have.
It also helps that I live in the "Low Lands" (Flanders, Belgium), so no hills around here, and it's a bicycle-first city.
Even got my dad a single speed e-bike. If you live somewhere mildly flat, that's a fantastic choice for durability with an ebike.
So many bikes end up unridden because the gears went wonky.
And here I am with all the gears; on a nice road bike; and I struggle to maintain 30 km/h on flat.
Modern bikes is something I don’t understand. Complex aggregates, systems and subsystems, spaceship furniture, etc. And the cost of a low-end car, sometimes mid. Plus all the “niceties” of the modern market, like planned obsolescence, milking the customer, necessary extras and so on. Feels like you’re meant to more touch yourself about how much of a cyclist you are than to ride. Say that these bikes are softer, easier, cadence friendly. Doesn’t matter, all off this is bs to me. Yet another area defiled by marketing, scammers and those who charge 5x on top of that for being “honest”.
I'm sorry to say I do understand all these above pricing categories short of potlatch.
Don’t be deterred from learning it for yourself!
And small airplane maintenance isn't that complex actually. Modern cars are way more complex.
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.