Broadway Bicycle School in Cambridge, MA
As a schoolboy I tinkered with bikes, and as a middle aged man I’ve continued my amateurish fiddling. My cheque book is now considerably larger so I can mess around with more bikes and buy bits and pieces for them, but I’ve never had any formal training as a bicycle mechanic and generally just use my experience as an engineer and some common sense to work things out. This works fine most of the time, but I’ve wanted to build my own wheels for a while now and to do that I thought that I should get some real training. So I looked for a suitable course and found that the “Broadway Bicycle School” in Cambridge offered one. There were two drawbacks though, a pre-requisite was their “Advanced Mechanic” course which also had a pre-requiste of the “Basic Mechanic” course. Well a little learning never hurt so I decided to take both courses to gain admittance to the inner sanctum of wheel building.
The Broadway Bicycle School is a full service bike shop in a quaint and cozy store with wheels hanging from the ceiling, a creaky wooden floor, an excellent collection of old chainrings and just enough space for a few bike stands. Get eight bikes and their owners in there along with an instructor and the space becomes even more intimate. But that’s really what this shop/school is all about. It’s friendly and a great place for the bike geek or interested newbie. It’s owned by the employees and they set out to not only fix and sell bikes, but also to teach people how to maintain them. For a small fee they even let you use the shop and it’s tools to work on your own bike. It’s definitely not a store for the lycra clad carbon riding racer, but it’s perfect for the city rider who loves their bike.
I’ve now completed two of five evening classes in the basic course and I can highly recommend them for both a complete novice and for someone who has a little knowledge, but wants to see how to do things properly. Our instructor, Kate, was bright, cheery and knowledgeable and took us through fixing a puncture in the first class with lots of show and tell and then we were set loose on our own bikes. For the second class we got to adjust a cup and cone hub and learned about headsets. I found this useful as it’s been a while since I adjusted an old style hub as I now buy hubs with sealed bearings. Next week it’s brakes………….
