Maintenance

Monday night was my first of 3 bike maintenance classes. I was quite excited about it, as I've never done ANYTHING to a bike in my life, though I have pumped up my tyres, I'm really clueless about any other aspect of bike maintenance.

I went into the cycle shop where it was being held, and fortunately there was a young man there with his bike already turned upside down on a piece of cardboard ready for the first instruction.

Getting my bike through the heavy front door of the shop was tricky enough (I won't bore you with the details of the carry on I had getting my bike out of the back of my car...suffice to say there are a few "fresh" scratches on the bit above the bumper!) Once in, and once I'd clocked what the young man had done with his bike, I was able to confidently stroll up to the bit of cardboard next to him and with a hefty. "Ewwouch" turn my not so light bike over. Sadly though my bravado was quickly dampened when one of the helpers shouted, "Wait! Take your light off first, take your light off!" Aah yes, if I'd just dumped it on it's handle bars the light would've ensured that it was unstable enough to fall on to the bike standing all confident and arrogant next to me. So I had to stop and lie it down, work out how to take the light off (actually it was quite easy..it slid off) and then with a deep breath in again and my "Ewwouch!" round it went. Incidentally the young man next to me was called Andrew!! For those of you who have been reading this blog from the beginning there is a definite Andrew theme running through my life just now.

The 2 hours absolutely flew by and I did say on more that one occasion that I'd found childbirth less painful.

We took off first the front wheel, tyre and inner tube, then the back wheel, tyre and inner tube. Checked them all, and put them all back together. I needed step by step instructions but I did it in the end!

With time on our side we were then able to take a bike chain and use a very nifty bit of equipment that removed a link and enabled you to fix it back together.. by this stage I'd given up worrying about how oily I'd become. I was enjoying myself!

The folk there were great, and Ron the teacher was very patient with me.

One slightly disconcerting thing that happened was that 4 out of the 10 folk there said to me independently of each other, " that isn't the bike you're using for the cycle event you're doing though is it? That's just the bike you're practising the maintenance on?!" Each time I said, "NO! That's my bike..that's it...that's the one!" they either smiled, rolled their eyes or just laughed quite loudly.

Next Monday we're doing the brakes and gears - that should be interesting!

I'll keep you posted!

Love,

Kathleen x

"With willing hearts and skillful hands the difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a bit longer." - Author unknown