Let me tell you a story. It’s long, but bare with me. Back in the summer, I realised I needed to change the brake pads on my mountain bike, which has hydraulic brakes. I bought some new pads and got to work, but I simply couldn’t get the pads to fit; there just didn’t seem to be enough room in the chamber to slide the pads in. I decided to turn to my local bike shop. I put the old pads back in (I read this can be useful when forcing the callipers back, and I like to be useful). My girlfriend agreed to take the bike down to the shop as she was off work and she’s nice like that. I gave her the new pads to give to the shop.
The bike was duly collected a few days later believing the job to be complete and a ride around the local woods was undertaken. Nearing the end of the ride, a horrible noise from the brake. Bugger, I thought, I only got these replaced a couple of days ago.
Back at the house of the other half of FMFT, we had a look. Upon removing the pads, we found them fully worn through.
Strange, we thought, how could I have fully worn down a new set of pads in one quick ride? Bombing down a Morzine mountain, maybe, but Swinley Forest? No. After scratching our heads for a while we worked it out. The thieving, underhand, under qualified, fuckwits at my local friendly and trustworthy bike shop, upon finding that they didn’t have the skill to fit the new pads, had simply but the worn (and therefore easy to fit) pads back into the bike. They even got to keep the new pads as a reward for their ingenuity.
Ok, it’s only a theory, but I promise this story is true and I haven’t left out any details to make it lean towards a particular conclusion. I invite anybody to think of an alternative explanation other than that the bike shop was prepared to risk the safety of one of their customers simply to insure that they got paid.
R
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