Patience Is Key for Home Bicycle Repairs

By Stan Purdum

Jim Langley recently wrote in Road Bike Rider about the retirement of bicycle mechanic par excellence Calvin Jones, who has made many videos for the Park Tool YouTube channel showing how to make bicycle repairs. Jim rightly praised Calvin for his efforts to educate bike enthusiasts in how to handle these repairs themselves.

In the reader response section below Jim’s article, I made this comment: “I’ve been helped by several of Calvin Jones’ videos, but he always used nice, clean parts that weren’t worn out where I could see the results of his adjustments, whereas I was trying to fix greasy stuff that was more worn out than I realized. He really gave good advice and instruction, nonetheless.”

I intended the “greasy stuff” and worn-out parts comment lightheartedly, but Jim, who makes helpful bike-fix videos of his own, patiently provided a solid, useful answer: “There’s a reason for showing non-greasy parts, Stan. It’s so that the camera can pick up the important details. I’ve worked with multiple pro photographers on how to repair articles and cleanliness is rule #1: they insist on it. Also, it’s always best to clean a bike and parts first at least enough to see the entire part you’re working on. Otherwise you may not see what’s actually causing the problem.”

And Jim is right on. The reason I was often working on greasy parts was because of my inherent impatience. I was often so focused on getting my bike problems fixed right away that I not only didn’t bother cleaning stuff up first, but also so quickly jumped to what seemed to be the obvious solution that I often missed the correct one.

Here’s a case in point: Years ago, when I first started trying to fix my bike myself, I found that my front derailleur wasn’t moving the chain correctly from chain ring to chain ring, meaning that I wasn’t able to shift gears properly. I knew about the screws on the derailleur that set the limits as to how far the cage can move, so I grabbed a screwdriver and started turning the screws one way and then the other, but no matter what I did, the problem persisted. And not only that, but the chain now jumped right off the chain rings when I spun the pedals. Frustrated, I decided I needed a new derailleur, but when I took the bike to a shop to get one, the shop mechanic pointed out that there was nothing wrong with the one I had. Rather the cable controlling the derailleur was loose, something I’d have seen if I had taken the time to study the problem. In 30 seconds, he had tightened it, and the problem was eliminated. 

I’ve also been frustrated when my attempts to adjust derailleurs that were shifting sloppily didn’t work — only to later be told by the shop mechanic that my chain and/or cassette and/or chainrings were worn out, and that no amount of adjusting was going to solve that problem. 

My impatience has sometimes meant that I had to learn the same lessons over again, but those experiences and some similar ones eventually taught me that there is a logical order for checking things on a bike, and if you start at the right place, and patiently make sure certain functions are working properly, you often save yourself time and frustration. In short, I gradually learned to be more patient when working on bikes, so that now I’m reasonably competent at fixing them.

But I should have learned such patience sooner, because years ago, I read Robert Pirsig’s now classic book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is an autobiographical novel about a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, but it also served as an odyssey into fundamental questions on how to live and how to reconcile science, religion and humanism. It’s not a motorcycle repair manual, but that vehicle sometimes became the starting point for monologs about philosophical topics, with impatience being one of them. 

Pirsig wrote, “Impatience is close to boredom but always results from one cause: an underestimation of the amount of time the job will take. … Impatience is best handled by allowing an indefinite time for the job, particularly new jobs that require unfamiliar techniques; by doubling the allotted time when circumstances force time planning; and by scaling down the scope of what you want to do. Overall goals must be scaled down in importance and immediate goals must be scaled up. This requires value flexibility, and the value shift is usually accompanied by some loss of gumption, but it’s a sacrifice that must be made. It’s nothing like the loss of gumption that will occur if a Big Mistake caused by impatience occurs.” In short, impatience for Pirsig isn’t just being antsy; it’s a cognitive error about time.

Pirsig went on to say that his “favorite scaling-down exercise is cleaning up nuts and bolts and studs and tapped holes,” and another is “cleaning up tools that have been used and not put away and are cluttering up the place.” He says that doing both of these things give him “a whole new perspective on patience.” He finds the tool cleaning up important “because one of the first warning signs of impatience is frustration at not being able to lay your hand on the tool you need right away. If you just stop and put tools away neatly you will both find the tool and also scale down your impatience without wasting time or endangering the work.”

(You can read Pirsig’s full comments on this topic at this link, but because the webpage contains an entire chapter, use your word-search function to find the word “impatience,” and start reading there.)

As I’ve worked at being patient with repairs, Calvin Jones’ videos, along with Jim Langley’s, have often helped me figure out next steps, and we bike tinkerers owe these guys a debt of gratitude.

---

Stan Purdum has ridden several long-distance bike trips, including an across-America ride recounted in his book Roll Around Heaven All Day, and a trek on U.S. 62, from Niagara Falls, New York, to El Paso, Texas, the subject of his book Playing in Traffic. Stan, a freelance writer and editor, lives in Ohio. See more at www.StanPurdum.com.