Categories: Awesome Dutch GuysDefining MomentsEtiquetteLa Vie Velominatus

Dream Job

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.

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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View Comments

sengelov says:

Feb 9 2016 at 9:01 am

Toothbrush rules !

Btw: any one uses the very expensive "clean your bike" products?

I find plain petrol cheap and effective........
TheAnvil says:

Feb 9 2016 at 9:05 am

@frank, I often remind fellow riders of the safety benefits of regularly cleaning one's bike since cleaning results in inspection. Even a quick wipe down can mean the difference between catching a frame or rim crack before heading out or finding out the hard way. Catastrophic failures are most likely to happen during aggressive maneuvers - high speed corners, bunny-hopping tracks, emergency braking - the worst time for a cable, rim, spoke or frame break.
PeakInTwoYears says:

Feb 9 2016 at 9:15 am

Bravely articulated as usual, Frank. Recently I've been paying more attention to my workspace. We have a modest little outbuilding that we're slowly getting properly organized. Solid workbench, better lighting, space heater, bookshelf music system. I considered a small fridge but rejected the idea since it would be fatal to my ability to climb which is already on life support figuratively speaking.
kixsand says:

Feb 9 2016 at 9:36 am

When I don't ride my bike for a couple of days I begin to feel as though something isn't right; with me. It's not obvious but more of an under the surface feeling of being unwell. I might become short tempered with my family or co-workers. You might find me pacing about from one task to another pissed off with all of it...till I realize what it is that is ailing me.

"Go and ride a bike shithead"!

Having a dirty bike in the house doesn't hit me as strong as the above but there is a similar, if more subdued feeling of unwellness that floats along with me till the situation can be identified and remedied.

I rode on Sunday and haven't been able to tend to the bike....yet.
MangoDave says:

Feb 9 2016 at 9:41 am

This reminds me that I love the opening scene in A Sunday from Hell. There's beauty in the skilled efficiency of the pro mechanic. I enjoy working on my bikes, but I'm stupid slow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ktTXjSqvJc
Greg says:

Feb 9 2016 at 10:18 am

@hudson

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

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.

Very well put. If you view the maintenance aspect of such objects as just another part of using them, you know it is something you enjoy with a passion.

As @hudson stated, a feeling of completeness is to be had with perfectly clean and functioning mechanical objects, whether it is a perfectly shifting, silent bike, or a perfectly functioning and smooth operating precision firearm. It just feels right, and complete that when you finish putting in work with them, you then put in the work to keep them pristine.

Once you are finished with both, you can sit back and feel right about the world (or at least your world, for those moments after).
Sparty says:

Feb 9 2016 at 10:39 am

I worked part-time during a few summers as a bike mechanic. There is a substantial difference in actually being able to wrench on a bike and just keeping a bike clean or replacing bar tape. Working on a bike today is much less difficult than in the late 80s and early 90s when I still had to hone or cut bearing races, re-true forks, frames, hangers, etc. Today, it is basically push and play.

Bike mechanics in the pro ranks wrench and rag a whole squadron of bikes daily. It is fast paced and there are no shortcuts (just like a pre-flight inspection). One of the fellow mechanics I worked with spent some time with a continental team. According to his stories, and there were a good many, his work days started before sun-up and ended just before sun-up. He would eat, shower, and rest during the race. He said he would actually pray before each race that no one on his team would crash. Not only because he feared injury to the rider, but because a crash often meant a rebuild and a very late night.

Personally, I loved the wrenching aspect of the job, but the cleaning is no fun when it isn't your bike. I actually debated telling a few customers that they did not deserve the bike they were riding because of how poorly they maintained it.
wiscot says:

Feb 9 2016 at 10:55 am

@RobSandy

I do enjoy keeping my bike clean and in good working order. Sometimes this means getting the tools out, sometimes this means taking it to a mechanic. I think accepting you’re not very good at something is nothing to be ashamed of.

I need to tighten the bearings in my rear wheel and it’s filling me with a certain amount of dread in case if fuck it up. But my bike is lovely and clean and the chain never makes a squeak!

I do too, but just as important is knowing when to wrench and when not to wrench. This means truing wheels and installing BB cups are left to professionals in my case.
wiscot says:

Feb 9 2016 at 11:03 am

@MangoDave

This reminds me that I love the opening scene in A Sunday from Hell. There’s beauty in the skilled efficiency of the pro mechanic. I enjoy working on my bikes, but I’m stupid slow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ktTXjSqvJc

I see you A Sunday in Hell and raise you a Stars and Watercarriers at 31:20. Sublime!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUIr9LG1juw&list=PLeIvTjdPDVyGR-PPfJXC15mRceYOhBMCm
Waz says:

Feb 9 2016 at 11:24 am

@Buck Rogers

@Ron

Every time I think, “Wouldn’t it be fun to work on bikes all day?” I just head to the shop and see what they have to deal with. Last week they had a pretty decent Specialized road bike in the stand. Thing looked as if it had been sand-blasted with road grit. Apparently the guy loves to ride and his approach is to ride hard for months at a time, zero cleaning. Then he brings the bike in for a full overhaul. Mechanic told me they’ve told him he’d save tons of money by doing some minimal upkeep, but dude never does. What a bad way to go through life riding your bike.

I’ll keep my day job and spend my nights moonlighting as my own private mechanic.

Yes. This. My VMH often thinks how romantic it would be to start a farm and live off the land. I was raised on a dairy farm and I can tell you that it ain’t romantic AT ALL. Milking goddamn cows every morning at 0430 and every night at 0430, 365 days a year, rain/snow/100 degrees, whatever the weather gets REALLY old REALLY fast.

I imagine wrenching must be similar.

There is a huge difference between doing what you love b/c you love it and doing what you love whether you love it or not because you actually have to eat that day.

I often wonder what porn stars do in their spare time? a little bit of filing, run something up on a lathe?