I didn't even have a bike until last night as my old bike (a hand me down from my partner, who had it since he did paper rounds) became a rusty heap after a winter of working nightshifts at Royal Mail when I first started the business and didn't oil it as recommended - after all who wants to do that at 5am!
Yesterday a friend of mine gave me her bike (used twice!) to see if it would suit me with a view to buying it. This morning I learned some new skills:
- How to remove wheels from a bike (ask your much stronger partner to jump on the spanner if particularly stuck!)
- How to remove a tyre and inner tube from the wheel
- How to replace an inner tube and tyre (as one of the tyres had splits, so needed to be replaced)
- How to adjust the brakes and make sure they are 'toed-in' and not catching on the wheel
Not sure how useful these will be as 'life skills' but certainly will be useful for the whole biking to work thing! Now, apparently they use that saying of 'it's just like riding a bike' to refer to always being able to remember how to ride a bike once you've learned .. here's hoping that holds true for me tomorrow! Watch out streets of Ipswich, here I come!
