Anticipation

I’ve always been best at getting things done under a looming deadline. Pressure sharpens my focus. That’s probably why a long list of bike maintenance chores have suddenly seemed important over the past few days. With Moab and Fruita only weeks away, my motivation has spiked.

I spent last Saturday afternoon repacking a rear hub, and installing brake pads and a new rear derailleur—with fresh cable housings, of course—on my trail bike. This came after a week of suddenly experimenting with the pressures and rebound settings on my shocks. I’m also developing a neurotic tendency to stare at the box holding my new front derailleur as I wrestle with the decision of whether to install it now, or stick with the old one that’s working just fine.

Weeklong trips in one of mountain biking’s meccas don’t happen every year, so I always want my bike to fit and work perfectly when I arrive in a place like Moab. That’s one of the reasons I always take my own ride, instead of renting. The weeks of obsessive tweaking as I fine-tune it are just part of the anticipation that makes a biking vacation fun.

Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I’ll throw on some new brake rotors and maybe a new bottom bracket, because now that I’m running out of time, that clicking sound I’ve ignored all summer is suddenly driving me batshit crazy.

Fix it yourself

The clacking sound of stone on metal was unmistakable.

I grabbed my brakes and turned to see if the guy needed help as he continued slamming the grapefruit-size rock on the top of his old quill stem. He was a working guy—battered old department-store mountain bike, jeans, ball cap and a too-warm jacket that had seemed like a good idea hours nine or 10 hours earlier in the morning chill. He had the look of a guy just trying the whole riding-to-work thing. And now his stem was working loose from his old threaded headset during the afternoon commute.

“Need a tool?” I asked as I rolled up.

“Nah, I think this’ll work,” he said. “I’m only a couple miles from home.”

“I’ve got a hex wrench that’ll fix that.”

“Oh, ya do?” he said. “That’d be awesome!”

With so many new bike commuters on the trails this summer, there are a lot of people out there relying on luck. Many of them carry no tools, no spare tube, no pump. One minor breakdown and they’re either walking home, or calling for a ride.

The bike preacher in me wants to climb on a pulpit and give them all a sermon about self-reliance on the trail. I’m thrilled whenever I look up the trail at “rush hour” and see a few riders with daypacks or rack trunks, but it pains me to see someone pushing a bike with a flat tire because they didn’t bother to carry supplies—or learn to use them.

When I started mountain biking 20 years ago, I made a point of knowing trail repairs. Spending a few dollars on tools and reading a couple of good articles on how to keep my bike rolling gave me the mechanical confidence to enjoy riding not only to work, but into mountains and deserts.

It’s a good feeling to stand at a trail junction in the middle of nowhere and make a decision based only on the map and your food supply. That’s no time to suffer doubts because you don’t know how to amputate a derailleur, splice a broken chain, boot a torn sidewall or fix a simple flat.

The same thing applies in town. Riding to work becomes more fun when you don’t need to worry about a 5-mile commute turning into 2-mile ride followed by a 3-mile walk.

If you’ve been riding awhile, offer to show a newbie how to change a flat and repair a chain. Give them advice on buying a spare tube, tire levers, an air pump and multi-tool for tightening loose bolts.

With gas prices so high, this summer is the best recruiting opportunity we’ve ever seen. It’s time to expand the cult.

Let’s get ’em to drink the Kool-Aid.

The fast fix

I once took an overnight flight to Salt Lake City, then jumped in a rented minivan and got to Moab in time to hit the Slickrock Trail after lunch. Two hours, one broken derailleur and a few patches of skin later, I came to understand that “Slickrock” and “sleep-deprived” is a very dangerous combination.

At the end of the day, I stood in Rim Cyclery minutes before closing time with a new XT rear derailleur in my hand, dreading the prospect of installing it by headlamp, in a campsite, with minimal tools and no work stand. When he realized I planned to carry the derailleur out of the shop in a box, the surprised shop guy said, “You don’t want us to install it for you?”

When I explained that I was in a hurry because my brother and I were planning to ride the next morning, the guy told me I could swing by after breakfast and my bike would be ready. His tone indicated he was surprised that he had to explain this.

The next morning, I walked out of the shop with a belly full of breakfast burrito, and a bike that shifted like a dream all day long. It was a revelation to find a shop that would do a repair without keeping a bike for three days. I had been doing almost all of my own bike maintenance for years (and still am) because I was unwilling to leave my ride in one shop or another for days at a time.

When my brother busted a shifter and shredded a tire in Fruita during a morning ride a couple of years later, a shop mechanic repaired repaired his bike while we grabbed a sandwiches for lunch. We were back on the trail that afternoon.

Three-day waits for routine repairs just ain’t the way things work in places like Moab and Fruita. Those shops there know that customers are burning cash and vacation days to ride, not wait. Bikes have to roll in and out the door like they’re going through an Indy 500 pit stop, so mechanics learn to specialize in fast turnaround times.

I don't mean to bash bike shops—I have friends and relatives who work in them, and they're my all-time favorite stores—but I think it’s a shame that bicyclists everywhere can’t count on fast, in-and-out service that keeps them riding every day. It’s no fun for anyone to drop off a bike and know it’s going to sit in the back room for 72 hours before a 30-minute repair will be done.

Imagine telling the average American whose cable TV service has just gone dark, “Oh, we’ll get someone out there in three or four days.” Most people wouldn’t stand for it. Hell, if there were a big NASCAR race coming up, an enraged Billy Joe might get boozed up on Coors Light and park his Ford pickup in the cable company's lobby at 2 a.m..

I realize that shops in mountain bike towns generally deal with more customers who are pressed for time (and ride high-end bikes in generally good repair), while shops have to deal with things like kids’ bikes, long-neglected bikes, and the sales and tune-up rush that comes with spring. But wouldn’t it be great if you could drop in and get a new bottom bracket the same way you can stop and have your car’s oil changed while you wait?

Zip it good

I think zip ties and duct tape may be the ultimate tool combination. One or the other will often get the job done, but combine them, and you can really kick a little ass. Whatever situation you're in, if you can't accomplish at least a temporary repair with both of them, you're probably in big trouble.

I've used zip ties to attach all sorts of things to my bikes, but I really love the utilitarian beauty of mounting a pair of fenders to my commuter bike with a bunch of sticky tape and plastic.

That's part of the beauty of old bikes: You don't have to care what they look like, so you can rig up whatever works. (Yeah, yeah. I know some of you take this approach even with new bikes, but I prefer to maintain at least a modicum of aesthetic appeal for a few years, especially on an expensive bike.)

My old Stumpjumper was my last big purchase before leaving New Mexico for Alaska back in 1996. It's down to being my commuter these days, but I still love the old thing. The M2 frame is bomb-proof. It has survived more crashes than I can count, not to mention a roof-rack collision with the entrance to my garage. Other than the frame, the only original part left of this bike is the stem. Everything else has been replaced at least two or three times, and after going through a couple of Rock Shox forks, I took it rigid with a Surly Instigator fork that has no seals to blow out when I'm riding to work at -15F.

In '96, the Stumpjumper M2 was an off-the-shelf XC race bike with no braze-ons, so mounting full-coverage fenders requires a bit of ingenuity. I wrap some black duct tape around the parts of the frame where I need to attach fender supports, then zip-tie on the metal supports. The tape helps keep the ties from slipping, and protects the frame from nasty scratches.

The supports that come off the back of the fender don't reach any part of the frame when the fender is pushed out far enough to make room for studded tires, so I zip 'em to the middle of another pair of supports and then tape 'em up like a nerd's broken glasses so they can't slip downward.

Badda bing badda boom, I've got a commuter that looks funky, practical, cool and dry all at the same time.

Pure vision, baby

"I tell ya, Sundance, I've got vision

where the rest of the world wears bifocals."

—Butch Cassidy

(From "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,"
one of the greatest movies ever made)

Sometimes I just feel like a gol'darn genius.

Since building my Pugsley with disc brakes a month ago, I've been meaning to find a way to cover the threads of the canti-brake mounts on the frame. (I removed the brake bosses to shave that critical half-ounce off my fat-assed 35-pound bike, don'tcha know.)

So I'm tinkerin' around in the garage tonight, and as I'm getting a couple of other parts out of a little pastic organizer box, I see four rubber plugs that came with some carbon-fiber bottle cages I bought for my road bike over the winter. The manufacturer put the mounting bolts through the cages and then held them in place by putting the rubber plugs on the ends of the bolts.

I kept the little plugs because I figured they might be useful someday. That's just the kind of resourceful, forward-thinking dude I am.

I pulled a plug out of the box, stuck it in one of the Pugsley's brake mounts and, bang! Perfect fit. I even had to twist all the plugs a little bit to work them down in the mounts, so I'm not worry about them falling out.

The beloved Pugs now has that refined, no-detail-overlooked appearance that just screams "class." Plus, I recycled some odd rubber parts and didn't have to buy special threaded brake-mount plugs like I thought I would. The threads on my brake mounts are protected from moisture, and I'm sure to be the envy of all my fat-bike friends, who will be awed by my ingenuity.

I'm so impressed with myself, I need to go be alone for a while.

Talk amongst yourselves.