In the ideal world bike maintenance and repair takes place in a well lit and fairly clean area with tools and spares to hand and nowhere to lose your carefully organised spare small bits.
This is the world that is in the magazines and books and is a lovely and relaxed way to sort a bike out.
In the real world it happens in situations far more like the other night. That is to say, looking at a bike you don’t know well, with parts you’ve never fixed before, in the dark and on the street in the rain after a couple of beers. This means parts going missing, a bit of doubt about whether the fix is going to work and the annoyance of getting wet at the same time.
However, like all good fixes, it invariably comes together in the end and there’s something satisfying about fixing a bike to make it ridable in the worst of conditions. It’s like the feeling of fixing your bike miles from home on a mountain and then riding it back home. It makes you self-sufficient and a better cyclist by knowing you are confident in your ability to make the bike work and get home from anywhere.
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