The Pro Mechanic. Is that a cigarette and is that diesel in there? Photo: HBStache
I love working on my bikes. I feel closer to them, like a samurai sharpening their blade or a soldier cleaning their pistol; this simple act of preparation prepares us for the suffering that is to come, with the notable distinction that a Cyclist chooses this suffering with no tangible consequence while the warrior faces probably death. Apart from this minor detail, the analogy feels complete.
The cathartic beauty of working on a bicycle was taught to me many years ago, by a Dutch bike shop owner named Herman in Zevenaar, the Netherlands. He had been the team mechanic for Helvetia la Suisse, a good but not extraordinary team in the late eighties. His tools were a work of art; they didn’t match, they were all different brands; some of them weren’t even real “tools”, he just made them himself, purpose built for a specific function.
His truing stand was a homemade affair constructed of metal bits to hold the wheel and a rudimentary mechanism which might have come off a medieval torture device, repurposed in this particular case to check the trueness of the wheel. There was also a micrometer attached to said thumbscrew-turned-truing stand which was so finely adjusted that should the meter not be spinning in circles, the wheel was already well within true. He never stopped trueing until the needle stopped moving.
While my dad taught me the mechanics of caring for and servicing a bicycle, Herman taught me to love doing that work. His master lesson was in the care that goes into wrapping the bars. My dad had bought a Merckx from him, and (correctly) insisted on Scott Drop-Ins as the handlebars. The challenge with those bars was that they were a bit longer than regular drop bars, and so a roll of bar tape didn’t make it all the way up. Herman, unable to tolerate the lump at the juncture of the two rolls of bar tape, meticulously spliced the two rolls together so the point of intersection was indistinguishable.
This was a crucial moment in my development as a Velominatus: bar tape should always maintain these three essential properties: be white, be clean, be perfect.
Only one of my bikes has white bar tape, and that’s Number One. But Number One always has white bar tape, never black. And all of my bikes, irrespective of its level, always has clean, perfect tape.
I have a hard time leaving the house on a dirty bike. I always wipe the chain down, and wiping the chain down usually leads to wiping the rest of the frame and the wheels down prior to departure. One simply feels better setting out on a spotless bike. This is common sense, I know.
Not to mention the pride one has in pushing the gear levers and feeling the crisp, perfect shifts escape into the drivetrain. A clean bike has loads of perfect shifts stored up, just waiting to be released; a dirty bike has nothing but mis-shifts waiting to disappoint you. A well-tuned bicycle is also a quiet bicycle, and while I always prefer to announce my arrival to anyone I might be overtaking, I do take a small degree of enjoyment in their startled surprise which belies the fact that my bicycle moves as silently as a ninja in the night, were it not for the heaving pilot.
It feels to me like a perfect job is to be a Pro Tour bike mechanic, apart from the fact that I know it’s a thankless, difficult, and demanding job. When you’re not wrenching into the wee hours of the night, you’re sitting in the team car with your head bobbling about out the passenger window and a frisky freewheel tickling your sphincter. But on the plus side, it’s the only vocation in Cycling that encourages heavy drinking and smoking combined with the liberal use of white spirits (diesel fuel).
If you can’t make it as a world class Cyclist, then hopefully you can at least make it as a death-defying alcoholic.
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Too true..cleaning the bike gives me a much pleasure as riding the bike.
Agreed! Nothing quite like the feeling of a perfectly tunes ride. I often find I can enjoy tinkering with my bikes almost as much as riding them.
Another great article Frank, thanks for keeping us informed and entertained as usual.
The quest for a perfect bar tape wrap... I suppose do or not, there is no try but dang, I've been wrapping more than a few times and have yet to get it just exactly perfect. It drives me crazy that I've yet to perfect a bar wrap. I've replaced good bar tape in an attempt to get a mo' better wrap.
A silent ninja bike in the night? Belt drive. No joke. My neighborhood fun bike is a single speed belt drive ninja w/flat pedals and bars that's a flat out blast on summer nights. And as silent as... the night. I used to love chasing my hound thru the neighborhood at night on that bike but then the dog tore its ACL on a run. Seriously. Dogs apparently can have ACL injuries. Who'd have thunk it?
Cigarettes and diesel. Cool pic.
Haha, I love it! "A frisky freewheel tickling my sphincter" totally sums up my time in a convoy! And I'm totally with you on the clean bike is a happy bike ethos. Nice work.
And just for you, here's the great Gilles Delion outsprinting teammate (and later Olympic Champion) Pascal Richard in the 1990 Criterium International (with Charly Mottet and Bob Millar leading in eventual winner Laurent Fignon).
You're welcome.
Er, that is to say *here* is Gilles Delion...
Yes it's my dream job, just have to win the lottery and that's what I'll do..... Based on my appetite for new bikes and the matching sofas/furniture/vacation for the VMH it takes to get these, it'll have to be an el gordo win....
One of the SRAM mechanics liked to tell us a story of how Jens Voigt would sneak over to them at races to get "more oil" on his chain, since his mechanics liked it dry and he preferred a slobbery chain.
@Oli
Superbe Pro?!
I would say there is a feeling of...not accomplishment, that's not the right word...more of a feeling of completeness when ones bike is fully clean. Fully clean like, cleaning your jockey pulley with a q-tip and making sure there isn't a single grain of sand or the tiniest smudge of road grime left after a hard day in the saddle. Where anything that would cause the slightest of grind between chain and sprocket means the process must be repeated, however small the nuisance is, it may as well be nails on a chalkboard.
@frank As someone who has spent an absolute stupid amount of hours cleaning and detailing a rifle so it wouldn't fail me when i needed it most, i can without-a-doubt say that your analogy is complete. When cleaning my bike i'm in the exact same mindset, the same perfection is sought after...no the stakes may not be the same, but the bike is the same type of extension of the body. Where when used properly, man and machine are blended into one thing, a cyclist.
Nice one! All of my bikes are treated to frame polishing and a drivetrain cleaning constantly. Even my lowly SS commuter is never allowed to hold the grime of a rain ride for much time at all. I don't even think about it, I just clean them. Probably doesn't hurt that my house is one story and my bike room is just off the main bathroom. Seeing a dirty bike is a real pisser.
wilburrox - As much as I love perfect bar tape, I've recently realized that overthinking the wrap job leads to headaches. Be true and steady, be meticulous, but don't overthink it. This will lead to too much stress during the wrapping. I'm not saying we shouldn't strive for perfection, just that you must relax when doing it. Kinda like not death-gripping the bars on rough stuff.
Oh, and I've recently engaged in the joys of toothbrush cleaning my cassettes. I used to go for the floss with a rag or a brush. Lately I've been pulling the wheel and scrubbing fully clean with a toothbrush.
The taste during tooth brushing is not that great, but it's worth the glimmering cogs.