Boring mechanical stuff

Why can't bikes be more like dogs?

I LOVED this bike. Despite it being eminently unsuitable for gravel towpaths. Also look how neat my packing was for 3.5 weeks of camping

While I love riding my bike (even, retrospectively, up big hills and into Shetland headwinds), I am less keen on taking care of him. Fundamentally, I suppose, I understand how a dog works, while mechanical items, despite my best efforts, remain a mystery – I can feel my brain unfocusing as soon as anyone starts talking about groupsets so poor Eddy* is doomed to be forever shamed by his filthy chain and threadbare tyres.

Thus far in my cycle touring life, I’ve been remarkably lucky, if you don’t count the fluoro yellow Mango bent beyond repair by the couriers who brought him home from Marseille after we cycled from St Malo to Sete in the summer of 2017. There was a small and easily resolved brake issue which became apparent on the vertiginous descent from Notre Dame de la Garde in Marseille – better then than when cycling the highest sea cliffs in France the day afterwards on the adventure that became One More Croissant for the Road.

There was a single puncture on the outskirts of Hyères, the fixing of which was considerably expedited by the appearance of a very dapper older gentlemen on his evening promenade, who popped the wheel on without getting so much as a drop of chain grease on himself – sadly the same couldn’t be said for me when I checked into the grand Casino shortly afterwards. Eddy spent the night in the ballroom. 

Please let me into your fancy hotel

Though I took on the Hebridean Way and a coast to coast in between, my next away-from-home puncture came three years later while writing Red Sauce Brown Sauce, shortly after eating a truly excellent bacon sandwich at Emmetts of Peasenhall (I do not believe the two were related), and was also followed by the fortuitous appearance of a kind retired gentlemen with a garage full of bike tools. In short, I’m probably overdue a disaster, and the vast open spaces of the United States are, one assumes, rather less well furnished with silver-haired dab hands with a tyre lever. (To be clear I can fix a puncture… it’s just like watching the dog trying to open a door. Not a natural.)

By way of preparation, therefore, I took the drastic step of enrolling on one of the London Bike Kitchen’s emergency roadside repairs classes with Jenni Gwiazdowski (who, as it happens, I first met on an Avon writing course in 2022 – having set up this all-woman and non-binary workshop in 2012 with the aim of empowering people, particularly beginners, of all genders with the confidence to fix their own bikes, she now also writes a great substack). A couple of Sundays ago, Wilf and I spent the morning in LBK’s Hoxton workshop being reassured by Jenni’s calming confidence in my mechanical abilities, despite all evidence to the contrary (me), and bathing in patches of sunlight (Wilf). 

What I’ve found helpful in both the classes I’ve taken at LBK is the absence of… ego. No question is too stupid, no knowledge of mechanics, or jargon, is taken for granted. This time the pupils were me and a chap who’s planning to cycle the Great Divide mountain bike route between Jasper, Alberta (Canada) and Antelope Wells, New Mexico (USA) in July, and talked casually of swapping components in and out with his bare hands. The proverbial chalk and the cheese. 

A catalogue of disasters

Jenni kicked off by asking our greatest fear (in mechanical terms, not in general), and then went through all the stuff she thought we probably needed to know in case a spoke broke or the chain or various cables snapped. I came away understanding a little more about how my bike gets me from A to B, with a short shopping list, and a lot more confidence that if the worst happens, I might at least be able to bodge something that would get me moving towards some more expert help.

My tool packing list. May it all arrive on time and never be opened in anger:

• 2 x inner tubes

• Lezyne patch kit and tyre boot kit which comes with some helpful glue

• Small pair of scissors

• Mini pump (bought a new Lezyne HP one to replace the rubbish version I bought before doing Ride London a million years ago)

• Tyre Tool (genuine game changer for tight tyres)

• Multi chain pliers and 2 x quick links (please God let me never be called upon to remember how to use these)

• Fiberfix replacement spoke (ditto)

• 3 x long allen keys (4, 5 and 6) rather than a load of weighty small ones 

• Cable ties and duct tape, for bodging purposes

I also booked Eddy in for a service at Condor Cycles on Grays Inn Road – where he was conceived way back in 2018, following the demise of the aforementioned Mango – and asked for some advice about packing him for air travel. (The cabbie who drove us home afterwards asked if it wouldn’t be simpler just to buy a bike in the US, which it certainly would be, but it would also be a lot more expensive – British Airways will let you take a bike as your luggage allowance – and risky. Even I can see that breaking in a new bike on the road is less than ideal.)

They kindly offered to pack him up for me, in front of my eyes, so I’d know what to do in New York if I didn’t manage to outsource the job again – and Adrian did a sterling job patiently explaining everything, so I knew how to do it in reverse in San Francisco. Whether I’ll be able to remember his instructions after a transatlantic flight is another matter, but if the wheel goes on wrong it won’t be his fault. 

Apparently as soon as I remove the cable tie from the rear mech it will be clear where it needs to go?

He was also genuinely inspirational, echoing what I keep hearing from other cycle tourists** – that when things seem daunting, just keep pedalling, however slowly, and you will get there eventually.

His assurances gained particular weight when he told me that he’d had a pacemaker fitted a couple of years ago, and assumed his cycling days were over. As someone who’d previously been an endurance nut, cycling 400 miles on a fixie, and taking on Lands End to John O’Groats completely unsupported for charity, that was hard, especially when working in one of London’s best-known bike shops, helping other people to live out their dreams on a daily basis (ok, I imagine he’s more often helping them with a flat tyre on the way to work, but still, it sounds like he has some amazing customers). 

Seeing he was struggling, a friend and colleague persuaded him to take on the festive 500 (a challenge in which cyclists attempt to ride 500km between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when they should be busy eating cheese footballs and arguing over Monopoly) for the British Heart Foundation. That completed, he moved on to Swains Lane, a notoriously punchy little North London climb that I have done once, by mistake (the mistake was to follow my friend Jon blindly on a ride), and has since climbed it almost 100 times, if I remember correctly (I was supposed to be concentrating on how to twist the bars so the brake levers aren’t flush with the side of the box). He said he doesn’t ride fast, it’s not about that, it’s about doing it his own way, but still doing it, and often with cake to share with others en route. He talked about sending a little piece of energy around the world, and I knew I’d remember his energy when I was struggling in a headwind on a straight flat road somewhere in the Midwest.

In short, sometimes the big picture is unhelpful. Sometimes the next turn of the pedals is all you need to focus on. On which note, please all think positive thoughts for my appointment at the American Embassy on Monday morning. 

How are you planning to get this to Heathrow then pal?

*named, for newcomers, in honour of the great Belgian cyclist and pastry enthusiast Eddy Merckx 

** on the Seek Travel Ride podcast I mentioned in my first email