Having established that MalAdjusted had gone the predictable way of a bicycle repair shop with such a silly name, I took my bike down to a street a little further away from my house where I'd noticed another repair shop had opened recently.
What I wanted was to have a flat tyre mended. When I explained this, the assistant told me I should learn to do it myself. I pointed out that I was wearing a shirt I'd made myself (at the same time hastily adjusting my scarf, so that he wouldn't see quite what a hopeless job I'd made of the collar area). I said this didn't mean that I expected everyone else to know how make their own clothes. He parried, rather cleverly, I have to admit, by saying that that was true but that he would expect people to know how to sew a button on. I left.
Luckily, just a little further down the street I found a place where they were prepared to actually do what the sign over the door said they did - repair bikes - so now I can ride about Canberra again. Unfortunately, my trips are spoiled by a new feeling of guilt about my lack of skill in the bicycle maintenance area. Do I have a moral duty to learn how to fix my bike and if so, why?
No you don't! While I can mend a puncture on a bike (or could when I had two good hands), you need to buy specific patching outfits, be prepared to learn how to remove a tyre and put it back on, get your hands dirty and probably spend an hour doing it, all going well. If you value your time and add the cost, getting an expert to do it (in 5 mins) and thus do it properly, and pay a few $$, is the way to go. Oh, and don't ever go back to that put-down-women guy, except to ask him if he's ever gone to Maccas.... instead of cooking his own dinner....
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't a women thing - it was a holier than thou, dreadlocked, sustainable earth thing (which probably means he's never been near Maccas and anyway he'd start talking about who did the washing up, I suspect.) I have actually changed a tyre - once. My memory of it was exactly as you describe - boring, dirty, difficult for me as I'm extremely inept anyway (I mean unusually so - nowadays they call it dyspraxia but, sadly, it was called being clumsy when I was young), plus it was a front one so didn't involve trying to deal with putting gear cogs back together. I'll go back and ask him whether he's ever bought a cup of coffee at a cafe though. Also whether he's ever read a book or only written his own. Or whether he mends his own shoes (he probably does though). The whole thing was demented.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, he probably knits his own shoes. Out of his own dreadlocks.
ReplyDeleteI am normally a fairly practical bloke, but I must confess I pay the man at the bike shop to fix my tyres, which I feel is an act of charity that keeps an otherwise unemployable pierced and tattooed weirdo busy and off the streets.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it with repair people? Whenever I walk into the bike shop in my town, the woman behind the counter just looks at me and says: "What?" How else can one respond but with: "Um. I need my bike repaired and . . . uh . . . this is a repair shop, so . . ." Then she bellows to her bald son who comes out and snatches the bike like a wild wolf might take a piece of chicken from a human hand and disappears into the back. Sometimes I'm so flustered, I leave without telling them what needs to be done.
ReplyDeleteMy brother was once greatly amused that I took a car to the dealership to have them replace a burst radiator hose; he's the sort who can replace brake rotors. In fairness to myself, a relative by marriage had called from the car and turned it over to me in Georgetown, an area where it is far easier to buy antiques and expensive clothing than auto parts.
ReplyDeleteWorm - 'an act of charity that keeps an otherwise unemployable pierced and tattooed weirdo busy and off the streets': a) so you've met him too b) an even more important act of charity than usual at the moment, I'd guess
ReplyDeleteChris - I would suggest you find a new place, except that they're all the same (it's something about bikes, I suspect [Flann O'Brien said you must never let bikes in the house, I think])
George - I cannot imagine what else your brother would expect you to do - fashion a new hose out of your socks?
Z: You are thinking of Flann O'Brien and the atomic theory. As I recall, the problem was not so much letting them in the house as riding them, but the novel is not at hand.
ReplyDeleteI can certainly change a radiator hose, provided always that I have a replacement at hand. Had the car swap taken place in downtown Silver Spring, where there are at least two auto parts shops, probably I'd have done so.
I think O'Brien says that if you go into a house and see a bicycle leaning against the dresser, the householders are a lost cause, but I haven't got the book here either, so that may be completely inaccurate.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have a moral duty but perhaps a self-preservation duty. What happens if you are out riding in the middle of nowhere and you get a puncture. Of course that means you must take you bike repair kit with you everywhere you go along with your button sewing kit. How big are you paniers?
ReplyDelete(Of course, I just ask hubby, independent woman that I am!)
ReplyDeleteOh, and that was youR paniers, not you paniers, in case you hadn't worked that out!
I've got a folding bike, Whispering, so I can just fold it up and carry it to a repair shop, in the hope that I won't be told to take it home and operate on it myself.
ReplyDeleteRe. a holier than thou, dreadlocked, sustainable earth thing
ReplyDeleteHe sounds like a Puritan. I've been revolving this in my head, and it occurs to me that a better way (from his shop's point of view and possibly the customer's) of handling it, and maintaining his principles at the same time, would have been something like this:
"Of course I can fix that tyre! It's such a great, easy bit of work. In fact it's so easy I feel silly taking your money for it, so let me sell you a repair kit, in case you get caught out one day, far away from bike repair shops and helpful willing souls, prime example, me."
He gets paid for fixing your bike, the shop sells a repair kit, he makes his point, you get what you want, and everybody is happy. Though I suppose there are also arguments to be made for the right of salespeople to assert their personalities and not always put customer service robotically first, and if one's natural tendency is to be a guilt-sucking vampire in dreads then so be it.
He was a jerk, and I hate evangelism in all its forms. I don't care much for dreads either - especially Anglo, fair-haired dreads like his, which someone once told me can only be formed by rubbing tar into the hair (apologies if you have them).
ReplyDelete