bicycle repair

how a bicycle repair workshop changed my life

My Devinci ebike in pieces during my K2O School of Bicycle Mechanics bike repair workshop

Note: The podcast version of this posting is here.

• Bicycles are one of the most energy efficient forms of transportation and yet they too require mining and extraction for materials and energy for manufacturing and maintenance however the footprint is so small.  Cycling has a carbon footprint of just 33 grams of CO2 per mile traveled. (How Much Carbon - and Money - You Can Save by Biking | Future.Green)

I love bikes (and radios).

They move my body and my spirit. 

In March 2024 I took a one day course with K2O School of Bicycle Mechanics in Ottawa on how to repair my own bicycle.

It was pretty intense. 

In the morning I took my Devinci ebike apart and put it back together in the afternoon (with a bit of help from our teacher John).

It was a terrifying but liberating experience. 

What does a bike repair course have to do with my concerns about the ecological crisis, healing our relations or the end of the world as we know it? 

it’s about connections

As the course unfolded, I started feeling how my bicycle actually works :

• the torque of the bolts

• the pressure of the mineral oil brakes

• the tension of the drive chain

• the energy from my body propelling me forward

• the balance in my body that keeps me standing upright

After I learned about the mechanics of each bicycle component, I then researched the origins of the raw materials of each part, the labour practices used in their manufacturing and how these materials are reused and recycled, or not. 

April  24, 2024 8am before a 115K trip to our cottage

As a result, I now understood the full story - the life cycle - of my bike. 

an accident

With my bike now re-assembled, on April 14th, 2024, I set off on a 5 hour, 115k trip to our cottage. At 50k, in Thurso, Québec, I hit a U shaped  piece of metal that punctured my rear tire and slammed the bike’s mud guard into the frame, bringing my bike and me to a sudden, quite violent halt. 

piece of metal I hit during my bike trip to my cottage

A woman, walking her dog, overheard me swearing loudly in French in front of the local catholic church. She stopped to ask if I was injured or in need of help. ‘Ça va, merci. Je suis un peu bouleversé mais pas blessé’ I said.

I apologized to the church. 

As I stood by the roadside in the cold rain, I felt a deep connection to my bike, as if it was one of my own limbs that had been wounded. I sat there for quite a while, meditating upon this moment of convergence between machine and human. It felt like my bike and I had become one. 

I took a taxi home. 

After this incident I realized that : 

• my body is made from many of the same raw materials as my bicycle (mostly carbon)

• that I owe more respect to those who made my bicycle, repair it or recycle it’s parts 

• bicycle repair is a form of self-repair in the sense that what you do to your bike, you do to yourself

jimmy ung’s wise words

This reckoning reminded me of an excerpt from my April 23rd, 2024 conversation with Jimmy Ung, conscient podcast episode e164 about proximity proportionate responsibility: 

• If we were to do an inventory of where all the things we own were made, that would give us a very interesting map of where our responsibility, our attention and our donations ought to go because our pressures on the global systems can be revealed. That's a much more reasonable way to interact with different crises than to simply read about it on the news and interact with the whole of it without the context of our footprint. 

a prayer (or poem)

Inspired by Jimmy’s wisdom, I came up with this prayer (or poem) to help me stay connected to both local and global context :

• May I have the wisdom to read the map of where my responsibilities, attention and donations ought to go

• May I notice when the pressures of my behavior on global systems are revealed 

• May I interact with whole experiences, informed by the context of my footprint