Today was day 1 of Bike Repair School, and - spoiler alert - I had a great time. This is something I’ve wanted to do for years, so to finally be here is very satisfying just to begin with. I think I would have even been OK with the school turning out to be a bit mediocre - but it’s anything but. In a way, it probably wouldn’t seem that impressive to somebody who wasn’t interested in the topic or didn’t know what to look for. But to me - who is neither of those - it is not even shy of amazing. I heard from the local hostel owner that people actually come from all over the world to go to school there, and I can understand why. I’ve never seen a more well-equipped bike repair facility; everything is immaculate, every tool is provided, and the place is spacious and immaculate. From the outside it doesn’t appear to be anything special but once you get inside it is clearly a custom built facility with one purpose in mind: to teach you how to repair a bicycle. Particularly impressive was the state-of-the-art digital whiteboard facility which let the teachers draw dynamically on top of custom notebooks filled with schematics and drawings on-the-fly. I’ve already learned a few things, not least of which include:

Learning things is incredibly fun and exhilarating. It restores my joy at being alive and my faith in humanity. I knew that already of course, but it just further cements how much I love school, and how much I love learning about something I’m passionate about.

I like fixing bikes. It triggers the same puzzle-solving joy that writing code does; figuring out how to use a tool to solve a mystery and get a job done.

Today we specifically worked on a couple of topics, some of which I knew some about and at least one topic I knew very little about: we worked on tires, tubes, and hubs, and we learned how to use a bike stand and some general repair tips. (We got a slow start because a portion of the morning was taken up with administrative stuff). Some useful individual tips I learned: you should use a bike stand by clamping it specifically to the seat post, You always want to start with a wrench that you know won’t fit inside (or around) and go up or down until you find the right one. Also Shimano parts don’t use Phillips screws, they use JIS, which looks similar but is actually totally different. You should shift to the smallest cog before removing a rear tire, you never want to touch a disc brake rotor, and you have to have the narrow end of a quick release spring towards the inside or they won’t go back on.

Of particular interest was taking apart a bike hub and repacking the bearings, which I had never done and didn’t know how to do. We also got a full lecture on how bike hub freewheels work, which I kinda sorta knew but really didn’t.

All in all, an amazing beginning!