Training Guide

Ever since I was knee-high to a bottom bracket I have enjoyed repairing my own bikes. I have disassembled, re-assembled and re-disassembled more bicycles than I can remember. If I had a penny for every bike I’ve worked on, I would have enough for a nice lunch at the pub, though they would probably be annoyed that I was paying with a bag of pennies.

But this column isn’t about lunch. It’s about fixing your own bike and the joys and disappointments you’ll experience being your own mechanic. Let’s start with the joys. First, there’s the satisfaction of working with your hands, which I find to be two of my most useful appendages.

Then there’s the feeling of accomplishment that comes from dropping small steel ball bearings all over the basement floor and watching them roll under immovable objects such as the furnace or water heater. Sure, you can use a long magnetic wand to retrieve them, but you’ll never really be sure if there are supposed to be 11 of them, or if the 12^th one is still missing. I find such uncertainty thrilling.

As satisfying as disappearing ball bearings are, let’s not forget the countless springs that are found on the modern bicycle. These wondrous pieces of coiled metal are, well, coiled, and ready to make a bid for freedom as soon as the small screw or bolt holding them captive is removed. There are few things in nature as beautiful as the arc described by a metal spring as it launches skyward, never to be seen again. Stripped threads are another favourite of mine, mostly because each one proves that I’m stronger now than I was the last time I tightened that bolt.

But it’s not just the actual parts of the bicycle that make this work so satisfying; it’s the wonderful noises they make. The sharp cracking noise of a carbon tube when a clamp is tightened past the recommended torque value is a sound the home mechanic will never forget.

And what about the disappointments? There’s really only one, and it happens when the efforts of the home mechanic meet with failure. Most of what ails a bicycle can be repaired with a little patience and the right tools, a lot of swearing and the wrong tools or a fit of rage and a hammer. There is one thing, however, that can only be cured with magic: the Mystery Noise. Every cyclist has experienced the Mystery Noise. It could be a creak, a squeak or a click, but whatever form it takes, it’s impossible for the home mechanic (and even many shop mechanics) to eradicate. It has the ability to hide and move around the bike. It may start in the cranks, but as soon as you take them apart, it will scurry up inside the seattube and attach itself under the saddle. When the saddle is removed, it jumps down, slides along the top tube, and somehow gets into the headset (I have concluded that it must be very thin to do this). Once in the headset, nothing short of an exorcism will remove it.

Thankfully, every city has a bike shop that can get rid of these noises. I have no idea how they do it. Despite a decade-long relationship with my local shop, the owner refuses to disclose the secret to banishing the Mystery Noise. One of his mechanics started to tell me once, but he was sent to Kandahar to pick up coffee and donuts hasn’t been seen since. I haven’t had the nerve to ask about it again.

When one of my bikes becomes infected, I deliver it to the shop with a $20 bottle of Australian Shiraz in the bottle cage and no questions asked. It comes back running silently for a week or two, but the noise always returns. I’m not sure about this, but I’m beginning to think that the problem could be the Shiraz. Maybe a nice Chateauneuf du Pape will keep it quiet until mid-September.