One day not too long ago, some shabby looking dude walks in with a bike. Bags hanging from the bars, cane strapped to the top tube—this was a really hard ridden ride. With desperation in his voice he asks if I can fix it, pointing to the rear derailleur. At first glance it looked as though the chain had gotten wrapped around it somehow. Not wanting to put out too big of a charity vibe, I ask if he’s got a few bucks. To which, in reply, I receive a litany of reasons why I should do this repair for free. These ranged from his just paying rent, bus fare, and something about his needing to meet his parole officer in an hour. “Just a quick fix to get on the road man!” So it was to be free, and quick! I relented to look at it closer and see if I could help the dude.

Rolling his bike to the back I saw it had decent old school Suntour components on it. An older nicely crafted Schwinn made with CrMo Columbus Tenax tubing. Closer inspection revealed however that this bike was trashed. Just over-used and abused. Sadly I had to tell the dude there wasn’t much I could do for him. The Suntour Sprint rear derailleur was blown out and lacking a pulley, but surprisingly the right dropout itself was stretched to about twice the normal at the opening—significant frame damage. His rear wheel was forced fit into the the damaged dropout with the QR screw-down method. This bike was wholly unsafe to ride. 

After my safety explanations were flatly ignored, I listened to another deluge of excuses and reasons why I needed to get him back on the road. What was I to do? Here was a guy, requiring a cane to walk, with a bike that needed considerable repair, that needed to get to a parole hearing within the hour lest he go back to prison. I could no doubt fix his bike, repair his dropout and return this mistreated machine close to its original glory, but there was nothing I could do for the dude. And with either case, I couldn’t do anything within such a time restraint.

Either his protests prevailed, or I merely wanted to see him packing, I explained thoroughly that the bike was unsafe to ride, recommending he only walk the bike. I chose a moderate cog on the freewheel and cut the chain to length rendering the bike a single speed. I didn’t like doing that, but I also didn’t like putting the guy out. It was a lousy compromise, I hope he made it to his meeting and hasn’t landed back in prison. 

This wasn’t the first similar instance and surely won’t be the last. Who knows what’s happened to these bikes before they come into the shop? Maybe the dude is not the original owner, one can guess that the bike has been stolen and resold, lost and then found. What adventures could it tell us? What are people doing in order to damage their bikes in such a way. I know the bicycle is a tool, and we use them in different ways, but like any tool, good care should always be applied. 

A philosophical mind might draw a parallel between the bike and the rider. Life can sometimes result in jail time, poverty, or physical handicaps; the harder the life, the more likely perhaps. I guess, whenever possible, be good to your life, it might be the last one you get.

Ever get a customer in your shop who says they can get a deal on a groupset or some other expensive bike component for such and such an amount but asks what you can sell it for because they “want to do business with your shop”. No matter how low you can bring the cost down, they insist they can get it cheaper, and still claim they want to do business locally? Campy 11 doesn’t grow on trees brother! I’m still waiting to hear back from this dude, my bet is he wanted to save money more than help the local bike shop. I can’t say I blame him, but I’d rather not have wasted any time researching costs—maybe it was my billing him for this in labor that drove him away.

It’s an annoying precedent to set from the get go. In my opinion, if you can get something for such and such, then get it. None of this BS about wanting to “do business locally” unless you really want to do that business—if you really want to, sometimes it’ll cost more, but it’s better for everyone in the long run. You’re not helping a local shop stay afloat if it has to lower it’s prices to the point of not making any profit. 

I’ve heard a lot of racers out there have a similar attitude. The mentality that they should get something for free, or next to nothing. How much does this devalue local businesses? When the everyday customer finds out (or more likely already knows) they’re paying top dollar for something some hack competitive racer got for free. Does it cheapen the local businesses? Does it build envy among other cyclists? What does a sponsored rider really do for that business? (I ask because I really only have assumptions on the subject).

This topic brings me to another point, and that’s the policy of getting an employee discount [a subject I'm sure I'd like to discuss in the future]. Isn’t this one of the major benefits of working in the bike industry? It’s entirely different in my mind when compared to what I described above, because we’re not typically wealthy, and we don’t make a lot of money to begin with. If anything the mechanics should get their gear for free! I don’t know, just rambling here in a way. I’m curious what other people out there think on this subject. What are other shop policies on employee purchasing? Sponsored riders? And cost estimates?

Today a dude came into my shop with a pretty alright looking old school track bike. Some nice bits on it, just in for a quick check-up. 

As I’m admiring his stem, I notice his headset is indexed. This is one of my favorites. The best part is, the guy thought it was intentional. The brinelling was dead straight ahead, meaning the handlebars/front wheel would ride perfectly straight when in this position (taking into consideration frame/fork/wheel straightness of course). He was under the impression that it was designed that way to allow a rider to ride hands-free during straight descents in order to remove their jacket or something.

He had  a great attitude about it. I didn’t make him feel stupid or anything (I hope I didn’t at least) and he walked out with a smile, knowing that he’ll need a new headset soon. I told him I didn’t think there’d be any harm in continuing to ride it, but there wouldn’t be much to be done for it but replacement. 

My friend Dan in Seattle has a bike or two with indexed headsets. One of which I know has multiple indices for very specific turn angles, from what I know, that dude wins races.

Certain color combinations with wheelbuilds always yields a black heart and a black soul.

I’m not sure if that was ever a reference to anything other than gothic morbidity, but whenever anyone ever requested an all black wheel set at Wright Bros that gregarious german Hotte would utter the doomed words: “black heart, black soul.”

Some things stick in my head, and I’ve taken this utterance with me to the shop I’m at now. The above wheelset—NMSW Deep V in the rear, and a low profile Aerohead up front, built to the customer’s black IRO (Formula) hubs looks good. The order was placed and the nipple and spoke color choice was emphasized: black. 

I understood, and expected, the customer’s askance look at what I said next. Of course the dude wasn’t on the same macabre wavelength I was. There’s no reason such darkness should be inspired by a guy wanting a sexy new wheelset to match his sexy new track bike, by all means, black goes extremely well with orange. But nonetheless, we all harbor dismal thoughts down in the depths of our being, and therefore…

Black heart, black soul.

While at Wright Bros I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to assemble many new bikes out of the box. We didn’t sell complete bikes per se, I assembled many bikes there, more from the ground up though. The few “new” bikes I did put together at Wright Bros were completely disassembled and reassembled substituting the minimal factory grease with proper amounts, checked bolt tightness all over, greased cables, trued wheels, repacked hubs, etc. Pretty thorough.

Where I’m at now I try to assemble new bikes with a similar thoroughness, checking all elements of the “factory” assembly, but leaving some as is if they pass my inspection. I don’t place any little annoying stickers on components that “pass” however. Part of my inspection is thoroughly removing the stickers the manufacturing factory places all over the bike. Recently some of our Jamis bikes have arrived with little numbered stickers on the braking surface of the rims. Not a big deal to remove, just annoying. As are the ones on the wheel’s reflectors. Seems excessive, albeit contradictory when the handlebar reflector is dangling looses with a missing binder bolt. Where was Wang on that one?

This pedal can somehow "pass" inspection.

Assembling these bikes sometimes brings up questiona as to the manufacturing process. I’d love to visit one of these factories one day. Our Chinese or Taiwanese friends in the factory are thorough in sticker placement, but are oftentimes over-casual when it comes to actual working cable tension on the derailleurs. Or how about the time I assembled a Marin and noticed an oddly placed inspection sticker on the backside of the fork, below the headset. The dust seal was mangled and crimped, hanging half outside of the bearing. I guess the sticker was just to alert me to this mistake. Procuring a new dust seal and rebuilding the headset kept that bike off the showroom floor for a few days. With or without that sticker, I’m sure I would have noticed the crunchiness in the headset bearings. While not always this bad, nearly every manufacturer I’ve assembled have had some odd incongruities that needed correcting.

At Wright Bros, we would joke about the factory workers where the manufacturing is done. Blaming Wang with some Asian manufactured component, or Giuseppe with some Campagnolo hub (yeah, that never happened), or perhaps when we’d see a defect in a Velocity rim (once what looked like a small curly hair in the powdercoat): “Angus had one too many Foster’s on his lunch break, eh!” All in good fun of course.

It is up to us, the shop mechanics to vet these components and bikes. Making sure the end user is satisfied and safe with their purchase. This is why the bike boxes asserts that only a trained mechanic should assemble the bike. Yeah, and depending on the manufacturer, the box also says the tools required are merely two screwdrivers, and a crescent wrench. Believe me, I use more than three tools to dial these bikes in, and beyond tightening the reflectors, I don’t use any of those three.

That's it, two cable crimps, nothing else.

Yeah, bike assembly is an odd task sometimes. The things you find, the questionable “efficiency” in the factory process: two cable crimps in a taped bag all to themselves. A pedal without threads? Definitely dubious.

Two screwdrivers and an adjustable wrench

Working in a bike shop you quickly get excited about the delivery people. The UPS dude especially. UPS seems to be the standard method of shipping for most of the distributors, I’ve heard the term brown santa a couple times, and its true. It’s usually like Christmas morning once you start taking in the new inventory. Throwing the craft paper/bubble wrap/newspaper/whatever over your shoulder looking for that new component you ordered for yourself. Federal Express is just a bit less frequent and only a little less exciting. It’s probably different in other parts of the country maybe. 

One driver we frequently get, Jim with UPS, is a rad dude. When he can, he’ll hang out and chat a bit about this or that. Sometimes merely about the weather, or about coffee, other times (probably when he’s been cut off by a cyclist or something similar) he asks how we (bikers) do what we do in some specific manner depending on the circumstances I’m guessing. Pretty casual dude—nicely open-minded, but I can tell that while he’s interested, he doesn’t ride a bike too much. 

Getting a shipment of bikes is another story. It is exciting to open up a box with a new bike it it, but that wears off after the first few that you need to assemble. The delivery person though, that’s completely hit or miss; these shipments usually come from some miscellaneous charter company. The guy the other day was really nice and helpful. He actually used the tommy lift on the back of his truck, volunteered to take his pallet with him. This stands out by the numerous others that have affirmed that we’ll get charged more if he has to use the lift, while standing around looking bored, this dude insisted that me and my boss shoulder the full pallet that’s on the back of his truck four feet off the ground. Not wanting a blown-out back and a couple hand’s full of splinters, I told him to cut the plastic off and hand us the boxes if he wouldn’t mind. As he drove off, we noted the truck number and called the company to voice our opinion of their driver’s service.

Delivery days can be easy going sometimes and completely chaotic others. This time of year—like everything in the bike industry probably—always pretty casual. We’re approaching Spring, our orders are getting bigger, the chaos will be increasing soon enough. I can’t wait. If it’s really bad Jim’s just gonna have to settle for a smile and a howareya!