Bikes are like cars now

 Our energetic trail builder has been forging alliances all around the region for the ambitious vision of turning Wolfeboro into a unique destination for mountain biking. He recently met the owner of a prominent shop in neighboring Maine, who told him that the pandemic had provided a great opportunity to start nudging service prices up to "where they should be."

This shop owner starts from the laudable goal of paying his staff a good, livable wage. To earn this, the technicians are certified to do suspension work, provide full service to electric bicycles, and any other credentials that will look good in a simple black frame on the waiting room wall. He described it as similar to taking your car to an auto service center, where the people all wear neat jump suits and have documented training. "And you pay for that," my friend said.

And you pay for that. Thing is, the best car service I have ever gotten has been from a hard-drinking, independent genius whose shop uniform may start the day clean, but ends up fully grimed by the time he knocks off somewhere between 8 p.m. and 1:00 the next morning. You'll never find him there before noon. He's semi-nocturnal, because it suits his biorhythms and he finally gets some uninterrupted hours when the phone doesn't ring and people don't drop in on him. He has some certificates hanging crooked on the grubby walls of his waiting area, which is mostly a place for his dog to lounge. The fancy service place isn't just charging for competence and your best interests. They're charging for the jump suits and the spiffy building and the cheerful person who checks your vehicle in, and the ones who answer the phone.

I can see both sides. I hate having to interrupt a tricky bit of mechanical work to answer an insistently ringing phone or launch a party of bike renters or just answer casual questions from someone who hopes to impersonate a customer long enough to be able to ask to use our restroom. I would love to make more money and achieve respect for my knowledge and ability. But I also remember when bikes were a vehicle of true independence. If you want to invest in more and more expensive tools, and learn how to service the more and more temperamental and complicated mechanisms of the modern super bike, you may still achieve a measure of independence. But because of the complexity, and the perfect precision with which all the pieces have to work together, your freedom only lasts as long as someone can make you the parts that fit your particular marvel of modern engineering. It misses the point of the bicycle entirely.

We've gotten used to the idea that a car is old when it's been on the road for three years. People do hold onto them for longer than that, or buy them used from the first owner who loses patience, interest, or trust after three years. The used car owner then holds onto it for another three years before handing it on to the next level of owner, who can't afford to buy anything fresher, and puts up with the increasing eccentricities of an aging vehicle. Eventually the car is too degenerated to function anymore, and gets scrapped. But the system has evolved around motor vehicles to provide the parts it needs at all of these stages. My used car is a 2003. When I got it I felt warm and happy because it wasn't too old and hadn't been driven hard. But the years sneak by, and suddenly it's 17 or 18 years old, and it's been driven by me. But I can still get it fixed. Something will finally break that dooms it. Maybe by then I'll be working for The Dream Shop in Wolfeboro, earning a livable wage, so I can buy a newer old piece of junk to pilot through my declining years.

This is the vision of the crowd that wants riders to pay like drivers. There's already a bit of a used bike progression, but because parts support isn't there for obsolete high-tech bikes, the used buyer of a formerly cutting-edge bike depends a lot more on luck to get any use out of the investment before something breaks that dooms it.

Your odds are better buying a 30-year-old bike than a 10-year-old bike, or even a five-year-old bike. They're even better buying a 40-year-old bike. For instance, I just changed the gearing on this 40-year-old Motobecane road bike, to give the rider the lower gearing of a compact crank and a wider range freewheel.

I'd done the rear derailleur and freewheel earlier in the year. The other parts weren't available yet. The crank is a 74-110 arm set offered by Quality Bike Products under their Dimension house label. The rings -- bought separately -- happen to be ramped and pinned for easier shifting, but the rider is used to flat rings, and shifts in friction, so there are no clicks to coordinate. The inner ring says "for ten speed only," meaning the current version, with a skinny chain and ten cogs in the back. I had to use spacers on the chainwheel bolts to set the ring over properly for the 6-speed chain. If or when he replaces the ring later, maybe we can get a thicker one and ditch the spacers. The whole job took a fraction of the time needed to rebuild the brake lever and caliper on a mountain bike, or replace suspension pivots, or chase down electrical gremlins.

The down side to simple bikes is that the work still takes skill and art, but the machines are so starkly simple that customers don't respect the people who work on them for a living. They don't want to do the work themselves, but they assume any idiot can do it. Therefore, you must be an idiot. Many days, I agree with them. I didn't get into bikes because I wanted to work on bikes. I got into bikes because anyone could learn, and bikes offered a great alternative for a world already getting smothered in asphalt and choking on fumes 50 years ago. Emission standards improved the fume situation somewhat, but the proliferation of pavement and the culture of haste have only gotten worse. And the emissions ignored by the standards are destroying the climate itself. Widespread adoption of the bicycle by those who could, aided by a societal resolve to support that alternative, would have bought us more time to work on the traffic systems and polluting output of the motor vehicles we still legitimately needed. I would much rather sell tools and parts, and share knowledge, than clean up someone's crappy, abused piece of junk or touch my cap and bob my head respectfully to the squire when he brings his immaculate machine for me to fine tune and polish.

People can break their bikes in more profound ways than the local auto service center will see in the cars that people bring to them. Because the whole mechanism is exposed, it's all vulnerable. I don't see how a flat rate book can account for stuff like the twisted wad of this derailleur:

This rider didn't just shove it in or pedal hard enough to yank it up in the back. He rode it all the way around the dropout, making a full wrap with the chain and cable.

With the trail system and the Dream Shop fantasy, its supporters believe that if you build it, riders will come, and bring business with them. But that also assumes that the consumerist, privileged lifestyle of expensive toys ridden by highly paid people with both the leisure time and the temperament to play that way will survive much longer in the economic and social adjustments being forced on us by our decades of unwillingness to enact incremental changes to head off the problems that are now boiling over. In my research on some other service topic I found a guy's blog post from the beginning of the pandemic shutdown, about trying to make an "apocalypse-proof bike." If it has suspension and a complicated shifting system, it ain't apocalypse-proof. You want a real apocalypse-resistant bike, build yourself a fixed-gear. Find a frame with long horizontal dropouts so you can stack cogs that will allow you to get off and shift manually among a small selection of maybe four gears, tops. You'll need a two-sided hub.

The trail builder wants to build a little Bentonville North, with trails for all abilities, including completely non-technical path riders. It still ignores the real-world transportation cyclist. We have to dream our own dreams and live in the real world, negotiating our way among the indifferent majority. I guess their nod to the transportation cyclist on the open streets is the e-bike section of the service department, because the only way bikes are going to become popular is if they are actually motor vehicles. And you'll pay for that.

Your Dream Bike Shop

 The invigorated mountain bike crowd around Wolfe City has been dreaming hard about the perfect shop, while, for the most part, driving out of town or ordering parts and watching videos to get their bikes worked on. We've seen very little of them since their renaissance began more than a decade ago. At the time, after not riding since the end of the 1990s, the returning enthusiasts came in one at a time at irregular intervals, expecting to see that we had somehow managed to maintain a state of the art department for their renewed interest, funded by a nonexistent customer base for more than a decade. That's not how business works.

Having rapidly decided that we couldn't possibly know our asses from a hole in the ground, the new in-crowd quickly turned to their own resources, like a shop owner in a neighboring town, who gave it a good long try, but ultimately succumbed to the fact that you don't stay in business by only selling to the people you identify with. Despite his considerable skill set in his own arena, he could not overcome the reality that the vast majority of bike shop income derives from recreational riders on unexciting bikes, with a smattering of other categories, and a few commuters. The balance will shift somewhat from one location to another, but you'll be hard pressed to find a shop in a rural area or a small town that supports itself mainly with the high end technical hardware lusted after by the most addicted consumers.

As of last year or the year before, I was telling people that a nice $500 bike costs more than a thousand dollars now. The quality of mid and low end componentry has plunged to shameful levels of sheet metal and plastic. Cheap suspension remains heavy, inefficient, and hardly worth servicing. The more complicated the ideal bike becomes, the more expensive, complicated, and vulnerable its low priced imitators become as well. I don't mean box-store bikes. I mean mid- and low-end name brands.

Because Wolfeboro has a little pocket of affluence, the enthusiast clientele comes pre-equipped with a sense of entitlement as they view the world around them through their bubble of financially insulated self interest. Self interest is often interpreted as economic activity that supports an individual and their chosen circle on a broad front, but in specialty retail and absorbing, expensive hobbies it is focused narrowly on creating a small world to their liking, and funneling resources to it, while they might participate in the general economy in a much more even-handed manner.

The supporters of the Dream Shop concept have focused on creating for themselves a new endeavor. They've made no positive moves so far, because a number of factors impede them. The pandemic and its shortages of bikes and parts are only the most recent impediment. Prior to that they were already having trouble finding anyone with shop experience who was enough of a sucker to be their human sacrifice and actually run the place. Once bitten, twice shy. They are further seriously hampered by the fact that most of the rest of them have no shop experience at all. And a few years as a wrench or a salesperson doesn't make you an expert.

In the 1990s, when riders would come in foaming at the mouth over something they'd just read about in a magazine (pre-Internet), my answer was, "Just because you know the latest thing doesn't mean you know everything." Because mountain bikes were still closer kin to bicycles than motorcycles, this assertion carried some weight. Now we have been through decades of "latest things," so some guy who did some wrenching five years ago will be dropping into a new and constantly changing landscape. Granted, if this former mechanic has remained an enthusiast, they will know about the newest stuff, and maybe even have dug into it a bit. But someone who has only been a consumer has no idea what circles of Hell await the owner and key staff of a bike shop in this age of throwaway products and rapid mutation.

Very recently, someone advanced a version of the Dream Shop concept that was centered on our existing business. It's all very nebulous at this point. No one is getting excited. But it acknowledges the extensive contributions that the shop has made to the community since it opened in the 1970s, and it acknowledges some of the realities of operating a completely independent, small shop on the fringes of the economy. Move our place ten miles from the big lake and it would have died in infancy, long forgotten. Even in its favored spot, the course has been mostly rough, negotiating changing fashions in outdoor recreation, and the contrast between the bustling summer scene and the small and notoriously frugal population of year-round residents.

What any dreamer needs to understand is that in order to meet the desires of the technolemmings, and still service the real clientele that actually pays the bills, the service department space will have to be large, well-ordered, fully equipped, and subsidized. I wrote years ago about how the many good sports with simple bikes, whose repairs don't eat up vast amounts of shop time and call for expensive tools, upgraded frequently, subsidize the tech weenies with their endless problems with temperamental, fashionable equipment. This is now hampered by the lack of good applicants to serve as mechanics, and commerce still restricted by the effects of the pandemic. We can't get a full selection of products in most of our departments, not just bike stuff. 

One of our excellent part-time and drop-in helpers got to experience the joys of tubeless tire problems last week. A rider came in with a broken valve stem. He was about to go riding with the kiddies, so we did a pit-crew stem change for him and sent him on his way. The next day he was back with the tire dead flat. Neither the tech who fixed it, nor I, were there, so El Queso Grande checked it in as "just worked on here, tire went flat." It looks more accusatory when it's written out than it might be when the rider returns with his tale of woe. But sometimes it's exactly that accusatory. More joys of being on the front lines of service for an expensive, complicated recreational toy.

Helper dropped in soon thereafter, and dove in willingly to figure out what went wrong. We ran the diagnostic process from what you hope it is to what you knew it would be and really don't look forward to. Tighten the stem nut? Nope. Change out the stem again? Nope. We can hear it leaking into the rim. I say it's the rim tape, which will require completely dismounting the tire, cleaning and thoroughly drying the rim, and applying new tape. We also spotted where the rider had dented the rim. I theorized that the impact could have damaged the rim floor and compromised the tape there. That turned out to be the case. So, strip the tire, peel the tape, clean and dry the rim, apply new tape. Note that the rim floor is now permanently deviated at the dent, so tape may be unreliable. Remount, reseat the beads, reinflate. We don't hear hissing. Soap water produces no bubbles. We could be good. Helper leaves to get on with one of his many other endeavors in a busy and admirably productive life.

By the end of the day, the tire was flat again. Odds are, the wheel will have to be rebuilt with a new rim, or replaced entirely with another factory built wheel. The latter option wastes more material but occupies less time. And then the tubeless setup will have to be installed. 

"Tubeless lets you run lower pressures without the fear of pinch flats," say the technolemmings. Yep. But you can still ding your rim and make tubeless operation impossible. You can also pinch flat the actual tire casing. 

This is the reality of the enthusiast shop. Helper, who is working off his debt for a Specialized e-mountain bike, put in probably three hours not curing the problem. I say this not to indict his lack of skill. He did nothing that any of the rest of us would not have done as well. It's an indictment of the technology and a warning to the dreamers. I'm sure it will fall on deaf ears.

I closed out my week with a "simple pad replacement and brake bleed" on a Trech road bike with Dura Ace hydraulic brakes. Following Shimano's own recommended procedure for that brake, I dismounted the caliper from the frame. Because the brake lines run internally, that still didn't let me get a perfect rising line to the master cylinder in the brifter body. The brifter itself had to be partially disassembled to expose the bleed port. And the handlebar stem clamp had to be undone for part of the late stages of the bleed, which meant that I had to undo the rider's GPS mount, which was blocking the four stem bolts. This is after the standard removal of the brake pads, resetting the caliper pistons, and inserting the bleed block.

They make it easy to get a wrench on the mounting bolts for that caliper, don't they?

Neatly tucked into the crook of the rear stays, the caliper also sits only a few inches from where the brake line emerges from the interior of the frame. The bleed port is on the front end of the caliper, aiming down.

I made the Bleed Board years ago for the many cases similar to this one, in which the brake needs to be dismounted from the frame to do the bleed.

After the bleed, everything has to be completely reassembled in order to find out if what felt good on the bleed block will actually feel right on the brake rotor. In this case, not so much. But by then it was long after closing time, and I still had to ride home. Another 10 p.m. supper. When I get back in the shop after the bike has been hanging for a while I have an idea for a shortcut to chase the last little air ninjas out of it.

We haven't even gotten into tooling up seriously for the smokeless moped market. Smokeless mopeds appear to be unavoidable, at least for now. When a category of technology comes to dominate your industry, regardless of whether it's a good idea, well executed, you have to deal with it.

All the time that someone spends on the delicate needs of sophisticated, expensive machinery is time that we don't have for the high volume of simpler repairs that keep the real majority of America's bike fleet rolling. This will remain the reality, no matter what the dreamers envision. You remember the sappy saying, "If you can dream it you can do it?" Yeah, that's crap. How often have you dreamed that you could fly? Then you wake up.