This Is This

A growing number adults ride bikes now because of environmental concerns, lack of parking in the city and general economic downturn.

I think this is cool, because bikes are fun, clean and quick, plus they keep you healthy and that improves your mood which affects other people. I’m sure that in small, immeasurable ways, my life has been affected by good bicycle karma.

These commuter cyclists care not for fixing their own bikes, and why should they? There was a time when every motorcyclist had to be a weekend grease monkey, but I’d bet that most bikers now wouldn’t know an impact wrench from a pair of tyre spoons.

What they do instead is get people to service their bikes for them. This sounds a little fanciful, but I respect that their bikes cost hundreds of pounds and might need a tune-up every now and then. My own bicycle maintenance stretches little further than doing the thing where you get the front wheel between your legs and twist the handlebars so they line up a bit straight.

It is, however, a symptom of our skills being in decline. Maybe I’m being a little wistful for a time that never existed, where adults would know the exact knot to tie together two chords of different thicknesses to pull someone from a well, but do people really need to pay to have their bikes serviced?

It’s outsourcing all over again. I saw an interview where one guy was boasting about his outsourced guy in Bangalore who read the client’s kids a bedtime story because daddy had to work late.

He said this proudly, like he had been resourceful. Well done mate, you’ve got someone to do your living for you while you work to pay them.

Tell you what, you stay on, let me make a few calls and I’ll see if can get someone to schtup your wife. Save you the trouble.

Go home, read to your kids, fix your bike and tell your wife you love her. Please.

Do what you must. Work if you have to, then do what you can. Always. And when you’ve done that, take a step back and do what you should.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 9:16 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.