Krishna and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance
- Chapter Four -
The Triangular Theory of Bicycle Maintenance
As I recall, the first bicycles I worked on belonged to a school teacher who lived down the street from my apartment in Saratoga Springs. They had flat tires and needed some minor adjustments, having been stored in a shed over the long winter.
Without any transportation and wanting a 10-speed of my own, I began to notice in town several used bikes for sale. After shopping around to see what was available, I picked out a real nice one at a used-furniture store for only thirty-five dollars. Being able to find a bicycle so quickly, at such a reasonable price, plus having just made a few dollars repairing my neighbors’ bikes, all started me thinking of opening my own business. Before I knew it I had four or five bicycles in my upstairs apartment, doing the work in the living room.
With the recent opportunity to rent an old garage still on the table, opening a bicycle shop now seemed quite plausible. What finally convinced me, however, was when a friend asked if I would like to go with her to some yard sales, as she needed a cheap television set. Although bicycles were not on the shopping list, I ended up buying two of them for about ten dollars each, and another bike was just given to me. I also bought a front wheel for fifty cents, a seat for a quarter, and for a few more dollars, some other parts dumped in a cardboard box.
Feeling elated with my unexpected fortune and realizing that I could probably find more bargains the following weekend, my friend promised to take me. Sure enough, hardly spending any money at all, once again I was able to purchase many perfectly good parts. I even found an old balloon-tire bicycle for twelve dollars.
So this is how the Adirondack Wheel Works came to life: buying bicycles at garage sales and after fixing them up, selling them for a nice profit. I think at one time I counted nearly sixty bikes in my shop. Before long I was also doing a brisk business buying and selling used parts such as tubes, tires, wheels, handlebars and even selling entire bikes that I had put together from miscellaneous parts.
Wanting to increase business, I got the idea of placing a small ad in the local Pennysaver to attract more customers. Immediately after my ad was printed, car after car came driving up to my shop, unloading all sorts of bicycles for me to fix.
Because my shop was located right next to the YMCA, on several different occasions, bicycle clubs, consisting of around twenty riders from nearby towns would ask if they could store their bikes in my garage overnight. Charging a couple of dollars each, I eagerly agreed to provide them the room.
As time went on, people were bringing me all sorts of problems to repair: flat tires, bent wheels, derailleur’s that needed adjustment, brakes that wouldn’t work, stiff and broken cables, missing and broken spokes, and just about every other problem imaginable.
Since most repairs took so little time and inexpensive to complete, I found that the secret to getting paid a good wage was to spend an extra fifteen minutes, or so, dedicated to cleaning and shining my customer’s bike, even though not asked to. On more than one occasion someone would come to pick up their bicycle but was unable to recognize it. It would look brand-new, and all that was required was a few minutes of my time. When people saw their bicycle smartly sitting there in my showroom, they never hesitated to pay what I asked.
After putting in hundreds of hours repairing bicycles, I suddenly began to get realizations about what I was actually doing when solving the various problems that confronted me. I didn’t consciously set out to formulate any of these concepts, but rather, certain ideas just came to me. In time I noticed that there were three prominent factors involved in performing any repair, a simple concept, but I gave it a fancy title: The Triangular Theory of Bicycle Maintenance.
