Matt got a bike! This is wonderful news. I’m a big cycling proponent, of course, and am very glad to see a friend take up this healthy and convenient hobby. The benefits are myriad: why, just this week I received a check compensating me for the repair bill incurred the last time I was hit by a car (true!). More to the point, though, I think neither Matt nor I are particularly patient people. Hopefully he will enjoy being freed from the torpor of his pathetic human limbs as much as I have.
Naturally Matt’s commenters have a ton of advice for him, ranging from the stupefyingly obvious (you should use a lock!) to the idiotic (don’t sweat the helmet, bro) to the completely inane (you need fenders(!?)). Allow me to add my own suggestions to the chorus:
- Be prepared to adopt startlingly new ideas about the appropriateness of various traffic laws. This may be unsettling at first, but don’t worry: you will quickly develop elaborate justifications for these opinions, many of them loudly based on your right to defend your safety, and many more quietly originating from your own preferences and convenience. The experience roughly approximates what I think it must be like to be an NRA member, except you’re concerned with fending off regulatory challenges to your momentum rather than to your firearms.
- Understand that your bike shop experience is about to get catastrophically worse. If you’re anything like me, while shopping for a bike you probably had a chipper salesgirl show you around, distrac you from your ignorance and gently hint that maybe you two could go out after this major purchase, because, you know, she doesn’t get to meet a lot of guys who know nothing about bikes in this job and she finds that really attractive. But your time in retail land is over, my friend.
From now on you’ll be dealing with the maintenance department, and the experience is fraught. This is the only shopping experience I’m aware of where the customer is treated with more contempt than at a record store. It’s understandable: the employees are highly skilled and in demand, yet still in dead-end jobs. Also, they’re much, much cooler than you, and would prefer to hang out with the messengers milling around the repair counter instead of taking your money. My best advice is to find an older mechanic, as they tend to spend about 80% of their time on long disquisitions about bicycle repair, which is both kind of interesting and leaves them less time for staring at you disdainfully. Special bonus if you go to CityBikes: the guy there looks exactly like Alan Moore! - It’s best to live in constant fear of what bicycling is doing to your sex life. I’ve never experienced any ill effects, and given the small amount of biking I do I doubt I ever will. But it’s a fantastic thing to worry about, particularly given its likelihood to result in your getting hit by a car while carefully fidgeting on your saddle.
- Which reminds me: be prepared for other cyclists to call their bike seats “saddles”. I know, it’s pretty annoying.
- Maintenance tasks you can easily do yourself and probably should: fixing tires, replacing brake pads, tightening brakes, installing saddles and pedals, adjusting your shifting if it gets slightly unaligned. Things you can do but probably will be better off paying someone to do for you: replacing chains, replacing cables. Things that you can’t do: true a wheel, perform a really good tune-up, or anything more complicated. After I post this my friend Chris will probably accost me in the hall and say, “You can totally do all those things!” But that is only true if you have someone like Chris on hand who is overly generous with his time and bike knowledge.
Alright, this list is becoming dangerously practical. I’ll stop right there. Enjoy your new freedom and speed! Oh, and the secret anti-pedestrian meetings are the first Tuesday of every month.
I recently got a decent bike after a long period of denial. (Had a nice one stolen in college).
Now I love the thing, except the saddle-sore-ness, and except the spontaneous shifting. Needs a tune-up, I guess.
You can totally do all those things!
I know, I know. If I just read that big blue book of yours I’ll be mining, smelting and forging ore into my own homemade spokes in no time.
TJ: You may be able to fix that yourself. Try flipping the bike over and watching the gears as you shift through them. Is the chain centered on the cogs? Is there clicking? You can try adjusting its offset by rotating the small barrel that surrounds the cable near where it exits the shifting assembly. That will lengthen or shorten the cable slightly, which might be all you need to get it shifting smoothly again.
Fenders are extremely handy if you live in a place where it ever rains.
I think I’ll take it to the shop from which I purchased. The cute, intimidating girl who assembled it can glower at me during the complementary tune-up.