I used to ride my BMX hard. Everyday, after school, I’d ride over to Keith’s house. Then we’d go back to the red clay hills. They were supposedly building a new neighborhood behind his, but we never saw anyone working. One day, the grassy meadow was carved up into red clay roads and piles of dirt. And for years after that day, the bulldozers and earthmovers sat empty. Since no adults were around, it was our land. Our place, with mounds of mineral-rich dirt just waiting to be formed.
To us, they weren’t mounds of dirt; they were raw materials for a trail network. Over months with shovels, rakes, and my favorite trail compaction tool (my bike), we carved an elaborate course of uphills and downs. Without brakes or pedaling, you could ride down one hill and gather the speed you’d need to climb the next. In between hills were jumps, whoop-de-doos, and ramps made of scrap wood, buckets, and cement blocks. It’s a wonder we never broke more than spokes or pedals.
On this course is where I learned to repair bikes. If we couldn’t fix it, then we had to wait until one of our dad’s got home. Worse still was when we’d have to wait til the weekend and take it to a shop, which might then take a week or more to fix it. We didn’t like to wait, so we figured out the basics of bicycle mechanics. Because we had no idea there were tools specially designed for working on bikes, it was pretty amazing what we could do with a screwdriver, an adjustable wrench, and a set of pliers.
Usually, a pair of needlenose pliers was all I needed to true a wheel. But once when I taco’d my front wheel on a brick’n'board ramp, my heart sank. I didn’t want to admit it, but I knew it wasn’t fixable. Before I quietly accepted that the wheel was dead, I tried even the most desperate of techniques: whacking the rim against a sturdy tree. It straightened out the wheel enough to get me home, but no farther. It had to be replaced. (…to be continued)
