The Common Wrench

 

Harvard Yard is bustling right now with commencement coming up on Friday.  Banners are being hung, stages and tents are being constructed, and fresh sod is being rolled out.  This is one of my favorite times of the year.  Why?  Because today we go out and cut the locks of all the poor bikes that have been abandoned on the yard.

 

 

 

We usually give about two weeks for people to remove the tag/bike.  A student once told me that her bike got tagged all the time, so she would just move the bike to another rack and let it continue rusting away.  This time around there were a few bikes that had the locks just taken off of them.  Apparently the owners were more than happy to have a way of getting rid of them.

 

  

 

We don’t have any official Harvard clothing or hats, just a bunch of bike kids with an angle grinder, so we get a fair amount of questions and comments from people.  This is also prime tourist season at Harvard (though why anyone would travel from, say, Japan and visit Harvard escapes me), so we get a fair amount of pictures taken, too.

 

 

 

The bikes are in every kind of condition.  This Giant had its fork, stem, handlebars, and seat taken.  Other bikes were in near perfect condition, though most are rusted beyond repair.  I often wonder why people leave these bikes to rot away on the racks, whether it’s just negligence or necessity or something else.  Some of the dorms do offer indoor bike racks, but on the yard there isn’t even a covered rack to protect bikes from the weather.  I suspect it would clash with the style of the place.

 

 

 

Out of maybe 30 bikes, I think we got 12 that can be refurbished and sold.  Harvard Recycling helps us with a box truck to move everything from the yard to the shop.  Whatever we can’t use gets recycled.

 

 

If you’re reading this, you most likely ride a bike.  Either that or you’ve stumbled across this page thinking it’s about the study of a small brown bird.  You might know how to fix bikes as well, maybe even work in a shop.  Whatever you are– whether rider, mechanic, or amateur ornithologist– the bicycle plays a big part in your life. 

When thinking about how we relate to our bikes I was reminded of a quote from Levi Strauss.  Strauss once said that “food is good think with…” and I think the same can be said about bicycles.  What did Strauss mean, though?  How do you think with your food?  Strauss understood the extent to which food defines us socially, economically, and even politically.  When you decide which super market to shop at or what restaurants to go to, what kind of food to buy and what to cook, you’re thinking about a lot of things.  Is health a concern to you?  Do you care about organic foods and supply chains, read ingredient lists or count calories?  Maybe you never cook but just order out, or eat only raw foods.  We define ourselves through what we eat and how we eat it.  We also create a public image through food.  Eating is something that’s usually done with other people, either in our home or out at a restaurant.  There are entire blogs devoted to what we cook and eat. 

  Certainly we do the same with our bikes.  What components we use, what companies we buy from, what we make ourselves.  Our bikes talk about where we go and what kind of riding we do, our aesthetic taste and our economic status.  But unlike food, bikes stay around for a long time, get bought and sold or stuff in basements or garages.  And so bikes become rolling timelines:  every bike I work on has a story in it.  This is one of my favorite things about working on bikes, and it’s what keeps each day new and interesting.  At Quad, we don’t assemble a lot of brand-spankin new bikes.  We work on the old stuff, the rides a lot of other shops might tell you to just toss out.  These rusted, dirt-encrusted machines are like an archeological dig, telling you tales about where the bike’s been, what kind of people owned it and how they treated it.

 

The sad thing is, we see a lot of new department store bikes too, and those aren’t made to last.  I feel my stomach drop every time one of these dual-suspension monsters rolls through the door on wheels that are already out of true, brakes that don’t stop and derailleurs too weak to shift. They just don’t make ’em like they used too.  I see old Free Spirits and Roadmasters (Sears bikes) from the 60’s and 70’s come into the shop still rolling, and often they’re lighter than these new clunkers.  Something tells me no one’s going to be working on 30yr old Triaxs.  

I’ll sum up with another quote, this one from an Architecture professor of mine, Bill Hubbard.  He told me “Buildings are tools to think with, not objects to look at”, and his words ring true for bikes as well.  No matter how beautiful or hideous, bikes are always a means in the end.  So as I ride this morning to Harvard Yard to cut free all of the bikes abandoned this semester, I say “Think with your bike!”  That, and ride often.

I started this blog with nearly no clear intention as to what it will be, nor have I any real experience writing down my opinion about much of anything.  It will no doubt take a bit of time for this blog to form into something consistent and cohesive, or even something worth the reader’s while.  But I’ll do my best to make that happen, and hopefully some day ahead, someone will find this column useful and maybe helpful.  

But today I thought I should start with a subject I know fairly well, and that’s me. I’m a short, scrawny kid that just finished a stint at the smfa, or School of the Museum of Fine Arts for those lucky enough not to know.  During my four years there I built huge installations of wood and plastic, videotaped myself smashing various objects and eating strange materials, and shoved double-ended dildos into giant logs, all in the name of Art.  Now, all of these projects were intellectually rigorous, make no mistake.  A lot of reading and research went into the processes that led to these horrid creations, a lot of cud chewed.  In fact, studying at the museum school was so intense for me that I sort of burned out towards the end.  I couldn’t grasp concepts the way I had before, couldn’t roll up my sleeves and dive into the metaphysical dirt.  Whenever someone wanted to talk with me about theory I felt a great sinking in my stomach, like that sense of dread you felt as a kid when the p.a. calls your name to the office. Which I did hear.  All the time.  But that’s another boring story entirely.

Why is this important to write about, especially on a bike blog that you foolishly thought might actually relate to bikes or wrenches somehow?  Well, it’s not really.  I told you before I’m not very good at this.  But what is relevant is that right around the time I started to fall from the graces of the museum school, I found inspiration in the graceful form and function of the bicycle.  I bought my first bike off a nice old lady in Southie for maybe double what it was worth, and my life has never been the same.  It was a handsome Schwinn Collegiate, maroon in color, old enough to still have been made in Chicago.  Now, I’ve ridden bikes all my life.  As a kid in the burbs of Boston I tore around daily on my bmx, but I had never experienced riding in the city, or I should say experienced the city while riding.  That bike took me to places I didn’t know existed, introduced me to new friends, and slowly ate away at the pudge I had developed during my adolescence.

Long story short, I was addicted.  The chain on the Schwinn gave out on me one day, and instead of just rolling it to my nearest shop to get it fixed, I decided it was time to build my own ride.  This procedure occurred, much to the dismay of my roommates, in the living room of our mission hill apartment.  A high-back chair worked (kind of) as a stand, and I slowly (4 months?) pieced my new bike together with old parts and tools I had gotten off of ebay.

(I should take this opportunity to thank all of the mechanics in the greater Boston area who had the misfortune of dealing with me during this period of time.  I spent many days touring around to different shops, asking the stupidest of questions, and despite a scoff or smirk here and there, everyone I ever met was kind and extremely helpful.  Thank You. )

 My first ride didn’t last long (cracked downtube), but my journey into the bike world was only getting started.  It was maybe a year later that I discovered the bike shop I now manage, Quad Bikes, and began to volunteer there.  Compared to the time I spent at school, working on bikes was like a meditation for me.  The managers would give me a frame to strip or a bunch of wheels to true, and I’d go into the back shop and spend the afternoon in sweet bike-dork bliss.  I stuck around long enough that they eventually gave me a job, and I felt a great surge of honor and esteem when I was finally able to describe myself as a ‘wrench’.

So, ergo, the name of this blog.  I’ve been working at Quad now for maybe two years, not a lot of time at the stand and I’m learning new things every day, the passion only growing.  Hopefully my skills as a mechanic, likewise my ability as a writer, will continue to grow with it.  A lot of what gets put down in this blog will be related to working on bikes and the bike shop experience.  The rest will include pictures of the various projects I’m working on (hats, trailers, arts n’ farts n’ crafts), and bikey things I find interesting enough to share.  I hope you’ll find it gratifying in some way, even if it’s just laughing at my poor attempt to piece coherent thoughts together.