Arrogant Cyclists give Cyclists a Bad Rep

Just moments ago I was nearly hit by a cyclist who had the arrogance to think I was at fault. I was standing on a walking path in a park and giving directions to two lost strangers.

We were not blocking the path and there was plenty of space for the cyclist to go around us and still be well on the path. The path was paved and approx. 14 feet wide (more than enough space for a garbage truck to drive on).

So the cyclist had plenty of space. More than enough.

So why did he make a big fuss and claim we were "blocking the path"?

The incident got me thinking about why cyclists have such a bad reputation amongst car drivers and even amongst pedestrians we have a bad rep.

And I think it really comes down to arrogance and a sense of entitlement (and those cyclists who ignore safety don't help our reputations either).

Yikes! Sam Reynolds Mountain Biking

This video is scary to watch. You half expect to see him fall to his death. Fortunately he does not, but still. Wow!

The video is from October 2015 so I am a bit late sharing it, but oh well.

Martyn Ashton's Bike Stunts

Move over other bicycle stunt riders, it is Martyn Ashton's turn to shine. Along with friends like Danny Macaskill, who may be familiar with already from past posts I have done about Danny Macaskill.

Trippy Bicycle with Lights and Other Bizarre Extras

A friend and I were in Leaside at a shopping plaza and saw this bicycle outside of a South St Burger place. The bicycle was covered in accessories, lights and lots of bizarre weirdness. I am not sure what half of the stuff on the bicycle was for, I can only guess. If you know whose bicycle this belongs to please let them know and maybe they can leave some comments below explaining all the stuff they have on their rather trippy weird bicycle.

Why do people put up with shoddy bicycle assembly?

By Smokey Dymny,
of the Quadra Bike School

Edited by Charles Moffat,
The Bicycle Mechanic

Just before I closed up my shop on Quadra Island, B.C. for the Christmas break a young woman brought me a $3000+ downhill bike to straighten the derailleur hangar she had bent for the second time. (The bike was three months old.) She said the first time it had been straightened by the shop in Squamish, B.C., which had originally sold her the bike. Now she was living on our island off the east coast of Vancouver Island.

I cautioned that I could only straighten the derailleur if the back wheel was true, and she agreed I could true it if necessary. (A minor truing usually takes less than 15 minutes.) Now, this wheel was actually laterally true, but the spoke tension was terrible. Half the spokes on the drive side were close to the correct tension, and the alternate spokes were drastically low. After I re-tensioned this wheel I had to check the front wheel too, hoping it wasn’t as bad. But it was.

In under half an hour I saved her wheels from a potential catastrophic failure. What was deplorable was that a bike shop in a town known for hard-hitting downhill riding, a bicycle shop there would let an expensive cycle go out the door in such pathetic mechanical shape. They even had a chance to correct their sloppy work when she returned to get her derailleur hangar straightened.

I urge everyone buying bikes anywhere in Canada to start demanding that their local bike shops prove the proficiency of their mechanics. Take every bike from a “professional shop” to a community bike shop or clinic, get the volunteers to show you how to use a tension gauge and use it to check every spoke on the drive side of the rear wheel to see if it measures close to 100-120kgf. The front wheel should measure 80-100kgf (measure on the left side if it has a disc brake). If the wheels are not close, go right back to the shop and ask for a proper wheel truing or your money back.

Up till now bike shops have been slow to send their mechanics to professional training schools. I think they’re afraid they’ll have to pay them more. And they will. This has been an industry sleazing by with minimum-wage starting salaries, and only rising above that in minuscule increments. The riding public is suffering, only they don’t know it. When a wheel or other component fails drastically, I’ve seen service managers blame the customer for the fault and then charge them for the repair even within the very short warranty period offered by most shops.

Only bike riders who won’t take bad treatment will make these shops shape up.

Being a rider on the streets of Canadian cities is not for the faint-hearted. Riding a bike assembled to shoddy standards should be an offense under your local highways act.

Editor's Note: Some bicycle shops don't even have a spoke tension gauge. A true sign they don't know what they are doing. They're not even expensive, and they really should be mandatory in every bicycle mechanic's bag of tools. There are many different kinds of spoke tension gauges (like the three shown below) and there is no excuse for not having one and learning its proper use.

Taxi Hooligans attack motorists and block ambulance

I chose the word hooligans because I feel it more accurately describes what happened in Toronto yesterday. Taxi drivers, upset at ride sharing app Uber (which promotes carpooling / ride sharing and other features to make it easier for people to get a ride to work) decided to organize a city wide protest.

Which apparently includes blocking ambulances from doing their job (as caught on video) and attacking motorists' cars / attempting to assault motorists (also caught on video). Clearly hooliganism like that should not be tolerated.

As an advocate of bicycles (and a first hand observer that taxi drivers are ***holes that don't know how to drive) I am going to state that I support Uber's efforts to get more cars off the roads and get more people into cars due to the extra efficiency. Not as good as bicycles, but hey, if it reduces congestion then it makes more room for us cyclists.

The staff at Toronto City Hall in my opinion should scrap the taxi regulations and fees - which are antiquated and obsolete - and embrace Uber as a method to solve Toronto's congestion problems.

More subways and more bicycle lanes would also be nice, but an endorsement of Uber would go a long way to send the message that it is time the taxi industry enter the 21st century.

In the photo below it shows a similar protest in Madrid in 2014, wherein taxi hooligans were attacking motorists while police just stood back and watched.

The Catch-22 of Bicycle Mechanics

Back in 2011 Matt Faulkner (a bicycle mechanic) sent me an email praising my website, but also bringing up an issue he had had problems with in the past.

His comment was the following:

"Being dedicated to the profession of bike mechanics and seeing the pathetic hack jobs that come out of some shops (and occasionally mine, unfortunately), I am a firm supporter of programs like the short lived BAM course, Winterborne, and the hope of government recognized bike mechanic certification.  The only issue I have with these courses and schools, is that the mechanics coming out of them just plainly are not skilled enough.  We brought in a number of co-op students from the BAM program, and had a handful of Winterborne graduates come in for tryouts, and simply none of them met the standards for us to give them permanent positions.  A friend of mine who owns another shop also had to let go of his Winterborne graduate because the amount of returned repairs was far beyond what is acceptable.  I understand that people of different mechanical and cycling backgrounds will come away from these courses differently, but the sheer number of shoddy mechanics I've seen some through these courses makes me a little suspicious of their curriculum.  I'm sure a school with the pedigree of Barnett's would have different results, but obviously their graduates are hard to come by up here.  I have heard talk lately, though, that BTAC (I may be wrong, but I think it was BTAC) is in the works with George Brown College to implement government acknowledged bike mechanic certification.  Keep your eyes peeled!"

Now what Matt brought up essentially, perhaps without realizing it, is the old Catch-22 of training bicycle mechanics. You have to train bicycle mechanics in order to get bicycle mechanics that are "up to snuff".

Bicycle mechanics who failed to meet the standards set by the shop or not acceptable simply ended up being let go at later dates because the shop didn't feel compelled to train the new recruits to the level they wanted - or to use the techniques that the head mechanic preferred to use.

This is something I have noticed about various bicycle mechanic shops, the head mechanic always has their own opinion about the "correct way" to fix something in a particular way. That means a student, recently graduated from a bicycle mechanic program will be doing the methodology they were taught in class - including methods outlined by the esteemed Barnett* - and the head mechanic will disapprove of the method the graduate uses, but doesn't bother to actually teach the new recruit the so-called "proper way" that the head mechanic prefers to use. And these so-called proper methods will vary from shop to shop, with the differences largely being issues of how much time a particular method takes.

* Note - Matt also mentions Barnett's pedigree and reputation, although it is important to note that the BAM program followed the same curriculum and the same course book's that Barnett teaches. I cannot speak for what Winterborne program does however. If anyone knows if the Winterborne program copies the Barnett curriculum, please post a comment below.

So for my example, when I studied bicycle mechanics we were taught the Barnett method of doing everything - which unfortunately, is also the slowest method - which is to say, it is the "true proper way" of fixing something, in an effort to make sure it is done absolutely properly. However bike shops often skip over many of the steps that Barnett uses in order to save time and make the process more efficient. This in turn means that some bike shops are churning out shoddy repair jobs that are done hastily.

Now back to the original problem, how to get bicycle mechanics that are up to snuff.

Honestly it really comes down to training them in person, which means the head mechanic needs to get off seat and actually teach for once. Which means the owner of the bike shop needs to make teaching bicycle mechanics part of the job description.

Every graduate bicycle mechanic coming into a shop is going to have a different background, different training, and if they went through Barnett's or only program that is replicating Barnett's then they are the ones who actually know the "proper way" to do a particular task. It is up to the head mechanic to teach them the fast / efficient way that they personally approve of.

Writing about this reminds me of my interest of becoming a helicopter mechanic. Why? Because of the following reasons:

#1. Helicopter mechanics don't skimp on time when it comes to repairing the helicopter. If they fail to do the job properly, people fall out of the sky and die. Thus they have to do everything "by the book" and each repair is recorded, dated and logged.

#2. Helicopter mechanics are better paid, although not always by much.

"The average salary for a helicopter mechanic was $54,500 annually in May 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure breaks down to $26.20 per hour. The top 10 percent of mechanics made an average of $74,210 annually, or $35.68 per hour. The lowest 10 percent made an average of $34,630 annually, equivalent to $16.65 per hour."

Bicycle mechanics get barely minimum wage and treated like dirt, because people don't value a skill they could do themselves (in theory) but are too lazy to do themselves.

People working at McDonald's get paid better than bicycle mechanics.

No seriously, McDonalds workers get paid $15 per hour. Although we should note the same month McDonald's agreed to start paying their workers $15 per hour they started decreasing the staff by introducing automated kiosks.

The minimum wage in Ontario is currently $11.25, whereas the average bicycle mechanic in Ontario makes between $12 and $14 per hour - and often works part time, which means they are struggling to pay bills, to pay rent, and they are saving nothing for retirement.


The only real way for a bicycle mechanic to be saving for retirement is if they open their own shop and start charging whatever rates they want, building bikes and selling bicycles, bicycle parts, tools, etc. Which is what many bicycle mechanics eventually do, because they realize working for minimum wage and being treated like dirt just isn't enough.

In theory bike shops should also be offering private lessons in how to fix bicycles, which means they could then hire the best students as permanent staff. And they couldn't complain about what methods they use for fixing things, because it was the same methods they taught them.