Bike Geeks

Christopher phoned me this afternoon at work sounding a little dejected. His bike broke on the way home today (luckily he was on our street when it happened).

Poor Christopher has to bike to his NY Bar exam prep course everyday (except when it rains and I give him a ride). It is so cute to see him ride off each morning with his backpack overflowing with books. He is the only one in the class (of ~60 people) that rides a bike each day. His first week a girl saw him walking in with his bike helmet and exclaimed "Don't tell me you ride your bike all the way here! Wow - that's so good". The next few days he noticed a few more bikes in the bike rack, but that was short-lived and now Christopher gets his choice of the prime bike-locking slots.

Anyways, today Christopher's rear derailleur made a nose-dive into his spokes. So I left work early to pick him and the broken bicycle up to be repaired. We took his bike to *exactly* the type of store one would want to have their bike repaired.

As soon as we walked in, one-by-one sales and service people came by to check out the bike and comment on which parts they all thought were salvageable. They were really into the whole thing - which was nice to see, but I couldn't keep myself from thinking these guys were taking this whole thing a little too seriously.

At one point, Christopher's bike was hanging from some repair stand thing with 3 guys crowded around inspecting the carnage. One guy kept asking Christopher all sorts of questions, determined to figure out how it happened. And unlike most bike shops I've been to, these guys were trying their hardest to keep the price down. They almost winced when they said that it was going to cost $90 to fix.

This was probably the best bike shop I've ever been to. I'm looking forward to our next trip there to pick it up :)