Will’s View

I have finally made the transition to being moderately technically minded. I changed a bike tyre. Well, technically all I did was change the inner tube, but tyre sounds more impressive.For some people, changing a bike tyre might not seem like a particularly daunting task. But for me it was symbolic. Symbolic of my evolution into an engineer with some (albeit small) degree of hands-on technical skill.

I wasn’t completely ignorant going into this process. I was well acquainted with bicycle spokes thanks to a second year design course where we talked about the varying forces a spoke encounters through an entire revolution. It was rivetting, I can assure you.

But this was a real, hands-0n kind of task. The ones which are so rarely found within my chosen areas of study. The sort of things where you can come out of the garage with oily greasy hands, use the laundry detergent to clean them (because nothing else will work), and feel like you have contributed something to the world. The sort of things that justify, nay, require at least some degree of swearing, and some hastily improvised tool (mine was a spoon in lieu of a tyre iron). The kind of think that means you have to go into a hardware store of some variety, and order a part like you know what you’re talking about, in a tone which says “I know what I’m talking about”.

After much swearing and de-greasing of hands, the inner tube was changed and inflated. But I’m reasonably sure I could do it in a fraction of the time next time. What a learning experience huh?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 9:04 am and is filed under Purely Informative (hah). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.