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.
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View Comments
@sthilzy
Good spotting! Yes, on a Villiger branded TVT.
I've always said that clean bike is a happy bike.
Spending countless hours cleaning your own bike is one thing ... a labor of love. And you have the luxury being an absolute perfectionist and doing it on your time and your schedule. But being a shop/team mechanic cleaning and maintaining a fleet of bikes ... hard work and not quite as much fun. You're on a clock to get it done. Been there, done that. It's still fun, but not what I'd call a dream job.
@Oli
That has to be one of the cleanest top 5 results in modern times! Mottet and Delion were staunch anti-dopers, Millar was a vegetarian and Le Professeur was clean too. Richard, not sure, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
This article has made me feel a bit guilty. #4 is a wee bit dirty from Sundays ride. Not filthy, just needs a wipe down. Trouble is, it's in the mid to low 20s in my garage. Oh well, Rule % with the apron on I guess. I'll have to go down anyway, I'm doing a 25kms fat tire ride on Lake Winnebago on Saturday. Expected temp is in the low teens.I know the bike is running fine but I just need to make sure.
@chuckp
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.
@wiscot
I just loved Gilles!!! He was one of my most favorite riders. Talk about looking just FANTASTIC on a bike. That guy was more gorgeous than Big Mig. So, so sad that he hit it big when he did. Nothing but respect for him and his anti-doping views. Gilles deserves an AOP write-up, no?
But @wiscot: Le Professeur clean??? Now I love my Professeur as much as anyone and I suppose, relatively speaking, he can be considered "clean" by today's standards but I seem to remember that he said it was just too much trouble and not worth the risk for EPO at that point in his career but he had some CRAZY stories of snorting coke for racing and I think that he might have dabbled in the steroids as well.
And how's this for stealing a thread but FUCKING Katusha escape with no ban. Fuck me and the sport that I love!!! Just FUCK!!!
@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.
True, like unique, has no comparative or superlative form. For some, there is no such thing as true enough. A wheel is true or it ain't. When the needle stops moving, the wheel is true. Those lacking this understanding should not true wheels.
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 would say this is a continuation of the "Body Language" post from a few days ago, but then I'm reminded of Rule 4 and realize that, as expected, the author forgot his own damn rules and published the wrong article first.
An aspiring cyclist once said "To be clean is to be fast." While that aspiring cyclist hasn't accomplished anything in his life of note (I'm still working on it, bug off), I think the underlying message still rings true. My bicycle is cleaned top to bottom twice weekly. While I'd like to do it more, this damn thing called life usually happens and I can't devote the hour or so I like to spend partaking in such a task more than twice a week. If you can't do it right, don't do it at all.