Just Fix The Damn Bike
I was raised by an engineer and an accountant. Needless to say, my life has been filled with instances of choosing the thrifty option, or opting for a DIY hack instead of buying something new. While I’d like to simply blame my parents and move on, some of my penny-pinching tendencies play a role I’m sure.
I raced an Ironman back in 2017 on a Trek road bike that I bought from a friend for $100. I finished the race but the bike took the worst of it, blowing a couple spokes among many other things. A lot happens in 112 miles of bike racing.
The Ironman failed to instill a love of long-distance cycling, as the Trek got shoved into the rafters of the garage and has sat there for the last 5+ years through a pandemic and countless other opportunities to get outside and ride.
After becoming a full-time Vermonter, I found an urge to get the Trek going again. Wouldn’t it be nice to feel the wind in my thinning hair and recount my former success as an Ironman? Heck, if I could do that back then, what could I be capable of now??
So, much to my engineer father’s dismay, I threw the bike in the trunk and brought it over to Earl’s Cyclery to get it fixed up. The mechanic looked it up and down, looked at me and delivered the news that it would not be in my financial best interest to pursue getting the bike repaired at Earl’s, as I would spend more to get the bike fixed than it was worth.
This is where I remembered my upbringing.
“I’ll just do the work myself” I told the mechanic, before asking for what parts, tools and YouTube videos I would need to complete the job.
To Earl’s credit, they gave me everything I could have needed and more to fix that bike. Over the next three weeks, I went back a number of times to add a tool to my toolbox, or grab a missing part that I needed. It felt like progress, sooner or later, this bike would ride again!
The derailleur proved to be the back-breaking step, challenging me to think critically while also working with dexterity that I did not possess. After a full afternoon of profanity, I broke down and shamefully brought the bike to REI down the road, hoping that bike mechanics weren’t talking to each other in the area.
REI did everything they could, even diving into the trash bin to find a missing part for the back rotor of the bike that I had improperly installed. It seemed like we were getting somewhere. I could see the open road starting to unroll out in front of me.
Then ten days went by and I didn’t get a call from REI to pick the bike up.
Figuring it was a miscommunication, I called and asked about the bike, only to learn that the bike needed not one but two new wheels. On top of which they “weren’t sure” that there wasn’t more replacing that needed to be done.
All of a sudden, I was $400 in the hole on my $100 road bike and was getting quoted another $500 to get new wheels and a tune up together for it. $900 to get the thing running… I was heartbroken. My sentimental heart was clashing with my penny-pinching brain and I didn’t know where to turn. I could feel my face getting hot as I hung up the phone telling REI that I was coming to get the bike.
The bike went back to sitting back in the garage with new parts but the same old issues keeping it from getting back on the road. I know I should get rid of it and just start saving for a new bike but something was holding me back.
After 5+ years and a few months of headaches, it took one 5-minute conversation to realize what I REALLY should do with the bike.
My dad (the engineer) was telling a story of how he almost bought a new boat for the family in 1993, the year that I was born. I grew up getting to ride in an old thunderbird motor boat with a 70 horse Johnson on the back. That boat was 25 years old in 1993, so as I listened to my dad tell the story, I knew already that he hadn’t bought the new boat in ‘93.
As told by my dad:
“I had already put the deposit down on a new boat, an 18-foot bowrider, brand new and top of the line. Later that day, I was watching your older brother play on the old boat, jumping from the dock to the boat and back again. As I watched, I found myself crying there on the porch. I knew I couldn’t buy that new boat.”
He was remembering all that the boat had been for him as a kid with his parents and he knew that with the right care, it could be the same thing for his kids. Why would he mess with that?
That boat lasted all the way through high school for both me and my brother. We took that boat fishing, camping and water skiing among so many other memories. It was an old boat but it was the boat that we knew worked. We knew what it was and what it could be if we took care of it.
I may never race another Ironman, but I know for a fact that the old Trek bike hanging in the garage could do it if I chose to.
So I fixed the damn bike.