Bike Maintenance

I was emailing back and forth with Peter Reid a few weeks ago. He was telling me what a bike geek he was, and about his seven bikes he owns, and all that. Since he is, after all, the world's best long-distance triathlete, I felt the need to compensate.

So I told him about my tools. I told him that the real measure of a bike geek isn't in the bikes he owns, but in the tools he owns.

I don't know if I impressed Peter or not, but it was the best I could think of at the time. As for impressing anybody else, no illusions here. Many aspire to be the world's great practitioner of cycling; few to be the world's great mechanic of cycling.

But I always scratched my head at the fact that champion motorcycle racers could take their engines apart and put them back together again, and yet they still hired their own mechanics. Pro triathletes -- as a group -- are lucky if they can adjust their derailleurs. I used to travel to pro-heavy races around the world, and would always be asked if I could work on somebody's bike or other -- there was always a pro in trouble. I would often recognize my own handiwork -- performed months earlier -- and realized that I'd been the last person to do any work on this bike. The fact that there were so many pro mechanical DNFs in these races didn't surprise me.

I've got a million stories I could tell. But I don't want to embarrass anybody. Instead I'm going to show Slowtwitch readers -- in serialized fashion -- the tools I've got, and how to use them. I'm by no means a great mechanic. But I can keep a bike running smoothly, and the fact that I'm not a red-hot mechanic ought to be of consolation to you, i.e., you can keep your bike running smoothly and reliably too.

This will be a never-ending series, since my quest to acquire tools will be a never-ending one (I've got to keep me one step ahead of Peter).

A case for tools

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