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.
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
@frank
Worth reposting for another look-see at Bauer's Look shoes. Damn they're fine shoes. Sleek, sexy but probably a fit flexy by today's standards. They're almost as good looking as Charley's Rivats. Almost . . . but not quite.
@TheAnvil
Yes, and a true wheel should not ever get out of true. Perfect balance etc, unless you really do something bad to it.
@wiscot
Yes! This!
@RobSandy
Absolutely! Hammer, nail and all that good stuff!
@frank
This is correct as long as you mean a true wheel with perfect balance that was built correctly. A machine in a factory can bang out a perfectly "true" wheel as long as you define true as simply zero lateral or radial run-out, but it won't last. Because it isn't balanced.
A machine can force and squeeze these parts into the correct shape, but it isn't right. Aluminum is malleable, steel is springy, and they both have some memory to them. A hand built wheel, on the other hand, take this all into account. It is laced, tensioned, rested, re-tensioned, de-tensioned, then tensioned once again before truing. This all takes time, precision, and love. A bicycle wheel isn't a thing, it's a system of smaller parts that work together in harmony. A wheel built by hand will take on the true nature of the Bicycle Wheel. It will be balanced. And it will stay true.
@RobSandy
I did not create this one for you specifically. This same 14-23 can be turned into a 14-29.
@chuckp
Of course. They have a big event/group ride/race tomorrow and they really really really want you to do it for them now. Pretty please.
[ed note: polite entreaty added for my personal amusement; no one ever says 'please' to the mechanic]
I learned my lesson when I was first starting out, first year of grad school. Owner of shop my father in law went to at the time gave me a good deal on an aluminum Scott Speedster with Sora gruppo-san. Not high rolling by any means, but hey, a gateway bike.
Few months later I brought it in for an adjustment. Dan says, the fuck did you bring me? I couldn't figure out what he meant, he threw a part of some kind at me and told me to never bring him a dirty fucking road bike ever again.
Never brought him or anyone else a dirty bike again.
@litvi
In grad school I used to wrench part time in a bike shop. The frats at school had these ridiculous races on a running track that they did on tricycles. Nothing against trikes, but they are not designed to be ridden at speed around relatively sharp turns - and not by douchebags who don't know what they're doing. Result? Lots of fucked up wheels and axles that absolutely had to be repaired today, or if possible, yesterday.
Almost as bad as the wummin who bought her son a bike at Service Merchandise and brought it (brand new) in for service. (For those of you unfamiliar with this long-defunct retailer of homegoods, it sold bicycles that were assembled in the loading dock by monkeys with an adjustable wrench and some WD 40.) She was not impressed when I quoted her a somewhat hefty price to make her son's new bicycle into something beyond a "death trap." (For the record: loose headset, brake blocks that missed the rim or barely made contact, and generally loose parts.)
It's bicycle mechanics, not alchemy. A turd will always be a turd.
@litvi
Remembering, of course, that not all wheel builders are equal - I've seen plenty of hand-built wheels that were worse than some machine-built ones.
@Oli
Well, there are those shops, where wheel builds are "assigned" to the youngest kid because it's a chore. (!)
In my first shop only the owner was allowed to build wheels (his rule) until I said "bullshit. I'm building my own." Eventually I earned permission to build for customers by proving I appreciated it as an art. That's the right mentality.
One quick conversation with a prospective builder should tell you whether he's your guy.
@litvi
Hmm, appreciating what you're doing is vital but I've said this many times before; I don't believe it *is* an art. Having been building wheels to some success for over 35 years I prefer to think of it as a finely-honed skill. There's no magic to a good wheel, just knowing what to do do and learning how to do it well and conscientiously. This is why you'll find 17 year-olds that can build awesome wheels after just a short time learning, and old dogs who build shitty wheels after 40 years of doing it the same way they've always done it just because.