Bike Snob Read online

  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 stuff like auto shop, finger painting, and “math,” so you can consider my unwillingness to give instructions here an act of protest.

  That said, you know you’re going to get a flateventually. You also know the flat is going to happen at a bad time, because bicycles are vehicles, and if you were already where you wanted to be you wouldn’t be on the thing in the first place. So before you start riding around, familiarize yourself with the process. Make sure you can remove your tire and tube from both wheels and put them back again. Do it a few times. And always have everything you need on you. It’s not much—a spare tube, a patch kit, a pump, and some tire levers. You can carry all that stuff really easily on either the bike or yourself.

  Chain Maintenance

  If bicycle maintenance is like housecleaning, then the chain is like that part of the floor behind the toilet, in that it gets all dirty and cruddy, yet the dirtier and cruddier it gets the less you want to touch it.

  To clean a chain properly, you have to remove it from the bike. While this is pretty easy, it is one of those things that’s also pretty easy for the novice to mess up. As such, while I encourage you to learn about chain removal, I wouldn’t categorize it as something you absolutely must know how to do. A dirty chain will still work, just like a dirty toilet will still flush.

  But one thing that is essential is lubing your chain. There is absolutely no excuse for riding around with a rusty chain that sounds like a nest of baby mice. Not lubing your chain is like not flushing your toilet. So if you hear any squeaking or chirping sounds coming from your drivetrain, lube your chain. This requires no technical proficiency whatsoever—if you can baste a turkey or make a bowl of cereal, you can lube a chain. Here are detailed instructions:

  —Drip lube on the chain.

  That’s it! You can buy bicycle-specific lube at any bike shop, or you can even use regular household oil. (The bicycle-specific stuff tends to be neater, though it’s more expensive.) Use gefilte fish fat if you have to—just quiet that thing down!

  Saddle Adjustment

  Figuring out your saddle position is a little like figuring out which hole to use on your belt; it might take a little trial and error, but once you figure it out you can pretty much leave it where it is and that’s that (though in both cases, changes to your midriff size can require readjustment).

  Now, you wouldn’t go to the tailor to have your belt put on for you, and similarly you should not have to go to a bike shop to make a simple saddle adjustment (though I have spent enough time in bike shops and helping out at group rides to know how many people cannot adjust their own saddles). All it involves is sliding the seatpost up or down in the frame, and then loosening the clamp at the head of the seatpost and moving the saddle fore or aft and adjusting the angle. Every bike is different, but usually all that’s required for any of it is a couple of Allen keys.

  If you’re a novice mechanic, taking some time to adjust your saddle height and position is good practice, since loosening and tightening small bolts is pretty much what bicycle mechanics is all about. Once you’ve got it where you want it, put a little tape around the seatpost just above the seatpost clamp to mark your position in case you have to pull it out again.

  Handlebar Adjustment

  Now that you’re comfortable in the bold and exciting new world of manipulating small bolts, you should also not be afraid to make adjustments to your stem and handlebar position. There are various types and configurations of bars and stems out there, but most of them are fairly straightforward—you can pretty much tell by looking at them how everything goes together. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different handlebars and to install them yourself. Handlebars are probably the single most important component in determining the feel of your bike. While you can spend hundreds of dollars on a set of handlebars, most of them are pretty cheap. Look at other people’s bar setups, and if something appeals to you and is compatible with your bike, try installing it yourself.

  Wrapping Bars

  For some reason, it’s become acceptable in the fixed-gear world to ride with bare bars. This is ridiculous—you need that extra layer. Would you wear leather pants without underpants? Maybe, if you’re Jim Morrison. But you’re not Jim Morrison. (I know this because he’s dead, and going commando in his leather pants was one of the things that killed him.) So put some grips or tape on your bars.

  Sliding on a pair of rubber grips is easy, but if your bars require tape that’s a little trickier, and it does take practice. However, it’s really something you should do for yourself. Having someone else tape your bars is like having someone else bathe you. (I mean that in the childish way, not the erotic way.) Most packages of bar tape come with instructions, but as I said, putting it on does take practice. To start, try to buy bar tape without adhesive on the back. That way you can wrap and rewrap your bars over and over again until you’ve got it right. Once you’ve done it a few times it gets really easy.

  Brake
Adjustment

  While brakes are an essential component, in a way they’re also a maintenance item since they prevent your bike from crashing into other objects. There are many types of bicycle brakes out there: coaster, single-pivot, dual-pivot, center-pull, cantilever, linear-pull cantilever (V-brake), mechanical disc brake, hydraulic disc brake, and so forth. Moreover, each type works differently, so describing how to fix them all is outside of the purview of this sidebar.

  However, you should at least know what type of brakes you have. Once you know that, you should take some time to familiarize yourself with their operation. If they’re cable-operated, then they’re pretty easy to adjust. (If they’re hydraulic, they probably don’t need much adjustment at all until the pads wear out.) And whatever kind of brakes you have, you should check the pads every now and again, and if you’ve mastered loosening and tightening small bolts you might even try to replace them yourself.

  Once you’ve finished, make sure to test them a few times, since making last-minute adjustments as you’re speeding toward an intersection is a difficult task for any mechanic.

  Must-Have Tools

  As you get more comfortable working on your bike, you may start tackling bigger jobs. These jobs may call for tools you don’t have, and sometimes they can be expensive. However, new tools are almost always worth it, since after you’ve used them a few times they usually pay for themselves.

  But there are some tools you should have from the very beginning, and they’ll let you do pretty much everything I’ve described above:

  —Set of Allen keys (not to be confused with conservative political activist Alan Keyes)

  —A floor pump

  —Appropriate-sized wrench to remove your wheels if your axle is nutted instead of quick-release

  That’s it!

  Seriously, you can perform almost every basic repair on a newer bike with just a set of Allen keys. Between those and your flat-fix kit, you’re mostly covered. No wonder GM is going out of business. As you go, you may or may not get more involved and comfortable with repairing your own bike. Either way, the above are things everybody should do. They’re the mechanical equivalent of making spaghetti or heating up soup.

  4. Your Bike Is Already Stolen

  You probably know what it feels like to fuss over something and do everything you can to keep it in good condition, only for some accident to befall it that you could not have possibly accounted for. It’s a painful feeling—not only because you wanted to keep that thing perfect, but also because you realize at the moment the accident happens that all your care and energy were completely wasted. You paradoxically think to yourself, “If only I had that thing back, I’d have cared about it less.” This can apply to everything from a relationship to a new car—and of course, to a bicycle.

  When it comes to your bicycle, the worst “accident” that can befall it is theft. Crashes are also accidents, but at least you get to keep the bike afterward—even a mangled bike is better than no bike at all. And really, getting your bike stolen isn’t much different from crashing it, since both are things you didn’t plan for and you could have prevented, but you only realize your mistake in hindsight. Nobody tries to get their bike stolen, and nobody tries to crash. If you knew fifteen seconds ago what you know now, you could have easily avoided it. But you didn’t, so you didn’t.

  This is not to say you should resign yourself to bike theft. You should take every precaution to prevent it. However, any use of your bicycle potentially exposes it to theft. Even if the possibility is remote, it’s still there. Even if you don’t get off the bike someone might take it right out from under you if they really want it. The only way to truly theft-proof your bike would be to lock it away in a vault. And even though there are plenty of “soul” bike owners out there who think that sounds pretty reasonable, that doesn’t work if you want to make riding a part of your life.

  You shouldn’t be apathetic, but you should know that any material possession’s existence in your life is fleeting. It can disappear at any time. If you invest yourself in an object, you will always lose that investment. Instead, invest your emotion and resources in riding and in enjoying those rides. Those feelings cannot be taken. They can’t rust, they can’t be stolen, and they’re highly dent-resistant. Use the bike; lock up the bike; ride the bike hard; scratch it up; dent it. It may get stolen, or break, or you might even need to sell it in a pinch. But just make sure that when that happens you know that all you lost was a bike. Big deal.

  How to Lock Your Bike

  Two thousand years ago Archimedes famously said, “Give me a large enough lever and a place to stand and I will move the world!” Well, nobody ever gave him that lever, and that’s why the world is still in pretty much the same place now as it was then: between Venus and Mars, orbiting the sun, and crawling with idiots.

  Since the Earth is the least portable thing in the world (inasmuch as it is the world), if you want something to stay where you left it, you need to anchor it to the Earth securely. (This is why buildings generally stay put and birds are highly elusive.) This is especially true when it comes to locking bikes. Basically, the more intermediary objects between your bike and the Earth, the less safe it is. Your bike was actually most theft-proof when it was just some ore in the ground, and the first theft occurred when it was mined, smelted, and built. Ever since then, it’s been vulnerable.

  As such, unless you live in an area where there are naturally occurring bike racks in the bedrock, the fewest number of things you can have between the bike and the earth is two: the object you’re locking the bike to, and the lock itself.

  The Lock Itself

  Every city and town is different. There are some places where you can leave a bike sitting outside for days and nobody will touch it, and there are others where they’ll take your bike right out from under you. Furthermore, you never know how risky a place is. Sure, the lock companies will put little numbered charts on their products telling you how secure their product is, but this doesn’t really mean anything since, as far as I know, no city or town in the world uses the same system. (“Welcome to Cleveland. We’re a six! A heavy cable lock will suffice.”)

  As such, use the heaviest lock available to you. I have never, ever heard of anybody who regretted having too much lock. On the other hand, plenty of people regret using too little lock. I have a neighbor who left work only to find his bicycle missing. Incredibly, he spotted the thief nearby and was able to wrest the bicycle back from him. After making some lame explanation about how his circumstances forced him to steal, the thief then told my neighbor that he really should use a heavy chain lock instead of a U-lock. So there you go.

  Of course, even locking your bike with a few feet of mint dental floss is better than using no lock at all. Amazingly, though, people do this all the time (use no lock at all, that is; I’ve never seen anyone actually lock a bike with floss)—even in New York City, where people steal the pigeons. It’s always the same story, too: “I was just running into the bodega for a second.” There is no increment of time, no matter how infinitesimally small, inside of which a theft cannot occur. Yes, it sucks that it takes you twice as long to lock your bike as it takes you to purchase a bag of M&Ms, a Yoo-hoo, and a copy of Martha Stewart Living (that’s my pre-pedicure shopping list), but that’s just the way it is.

  The Object You’re Locking the Bike To

  So let’s say you’ve got your M&Ms, your Yoo-hoo, and your copy of Martha Stewart Living, and you arrive at the nail salon. Now, you may have the strongest bicycle lock in the world, but that lock is only as strong as the object to which your bicycle is fastened. A thief may not have the tools or time to cut your lock, but if you lock it to a giant peppermint stick or a gingerbread house because you’re naive and you treat life like it’s a stroll through Candyland, it’s not going to matter. So make sure whatever you use is completely solid, closed-ended, and permanently attached to the Earth.

  Here are things to which you should not lock your b
ike:

  —Things that are not attached to anything else

  —Short poles off of which your bike can be lifted

  —Chain link fences

  —Saplings

  —Ice sculptures

  —Things shaped like the letter “C”

  —Thieves

  —The bike itself

  That last one is especially important. A lot of people seem to think that if a bicycle cannot be ridden that it also cannot be stolen. As such, they do things like locking the wheel to the frame without locking the bike to something else as well. This does absolutely nothing. Firstly, professional bike thieves don’t check your tire pressure, lube the chain, and change the pedals to their favorite system before making off with your bike. They just throw the thing in a van. Secondly, even an opportunistic part-time amateur thief can just pick up your bike and run. If you think somebody’s going to stop him, think again. They’ll just assume he’s practicing his urban cyclocross.