Posted By John Jones on February 4, 2011

I have long harbored the notion that bicycles can change lives. They can help us to be healthier. They can help to make the air we breathe cleaner, our environment less polluted by noise. If we allow them into our lives they insist that we organize our time better. They invite us to imagine new vistas, new possibilities and an alternative way to interact with those around us, the cities where we live and this amazing planet we’ve landed on.

I remember explaining to a young child how the gearing system worked on a new bicycle that her father was purchasing for her. Asking that she circulate the bike shop parking lot, I called out instructions for her to manipulate the gears; the look on her face was worth a million bucks as she visualized steep roads that she would now climb, neighborhoods a little further away to which she could now cycle. And still be home for dinner! Something happened to that young pilot, a realization similar to that which women felt at the start of the last century when bicycles allowed them to venture out of the home unburdened by a chaperone. The world opens up when you jump on a bike!

I became a wheel builder because it was a sign of progress in my skills as a bicycle mechanic. I really can’t say when I absorbed a deeper appreciation for them, but at some early point I began to understand wheels as living things; capable of amazing exploits if assembled with care, but conversely, able to disappoint terribly if built poorly. There is a sixth sense that a skilled wheel builder develops, a sense usually connected with his or her hands and fingertips. An ability to listen to a spoke as it comes close to maximum tension, or a feeling that tells them when a rim is ready to finally surrender to the spoke wrench and run true. I remember building a wheel late one night, after the shop had closed and silence reigned, when I was struck by a thought that has stayed with me ever since. It was a Mavic MA40 on a Sanshin cartridge bearing hub laced with Wheelsmith 14gauge butted spokes, but I don’t think the components, or the beer I was drinking, were the source of the notion I was about to entertain! I was struck by the similarities between building a wheel and building a life. A wheel has, if you count all the nipples, spokes, rim and hub, somewhere between forty and eighty components that would prefer not to be bound in states of great tension with each other and be required to work as a single-minded entity.  Then, they are expected to run true for long years over ruts and holes, loaded with a rider in all kinds of weather and circumstances. How similar to a life, I thought. All our lives have competing interests and obligations, not just the big stuff like our marriage, children, careers and health, but also the small stuff like remembering to pay bills, keep food in the house, get the laundry done, and find time to sit, relax and finish a book. Our lives have competing forces pulling against each other and we are expected to keep all those tensions in balance and produce a harmonious whole that allows us to live well.

How like a wheel.

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