“Surprising…not many miles on that…”
I hear this phrase a lot. It is usually accompanied by many other words that usually go in my right ear, swirl around angerly, and shoot the fuck out of my left ear. Why? You ask. Because they mean nothing to a mechanic. The “angrly” part is not anger pointed towards the rider… Okay……you know that you are incorrect about the “not many miles” part. You know that it has a fuck load of miles, very little maintance and oh yeah it was ridden throughout a New England winter or I should say winters, without any love.
When people (friends, customers, and coworkers) say “not many miles” I usually chuckle inside. This means that they wished that they had gotten another 10,000 miles before they brought it to me. This way they wouldn’t be spending the paper to fix their clapped out shit now. Instead dealing with even more clapped out shit later…more excuse to by completely new… right? More reasoning to convince their spouse that it was REALLLY neeeded. When they wouldn’t have to “convince” anyone if they had loved it a bit earlier.
This is how I think of it, and many mechanics think this way as well. If you had an infected wound. It was a small wound and you thought to your self “ehhh that sucks but it’ll get better the less I take care of it.” After about a month of picking at it and showing your friends of how disgusting it is, you realize “Fuck this might be bad…my wound is oozing and I can smell it…”. You go to your favorite doctor and he/she says ” Hey Fucking asshole we now have to cut your arm off with a butter knife…might hurt a bit…but it won’t be infected any more!” This is what happens with your bike. You neglect obvious problems (even though you don’t admit it to yourself) and you end up loosing much more. Like your wallet or debit card.
My job is to help you realize these issues. My job is to tell you that your bike , with out the proper care, will loose its original extremities and will need some new bits. 7,000miles without bringing it to someone that has a non-biased opinion is neglect. Neglect on your bike and honestly negelect on your own well being.
We, as “wrench monkeys”, know more about how things look and act when they are worn and burnt out then anyone riding there “own” bike. Why? Because we see it once every so often. Your bikes integrity degrades over time slowly. So you never notice how shitty it actually rolls. We do! Listen to us and we will have your bike ridding like buttah the next time you see it. We are not BSing you, we are not getting paid commision, we are not here to make a buck. We are here to love 2 wheeled creatures and machines. Doubt us and we will doubt you as a “rider” as a person who loves the tools we use to get from A to B. Doubt us and your next ride will be shittier than the last…and don’t blame it on us. We are just the ones that you supposedly trust to work on your bikes. We get paid pennies to make your adventures more relaxed and fun. Do not make the mistake thinking that we are in it for the money.
Cheers to those who ride! Cheers to those who maintain! Cheers to those that wrench!
Tuned bikes make tuned riders.
