We recently published a blog by Young Volunteer Callum [click here if you missed it] as part of a series where our YVs spend a regular Saturday session “shadowing” a Club Official, and getting taste of what it’s like being a volunteer in that role.
In this issue, Slipstreamer & BC Young Volunteer Seth Kanaris, tells us a little bit about what it’s like being a Club Mechanic…
Now where is that flat…
“On Saturday the 21st March, I decided to earn some hours as a Young Volunteer by being a Mechanic for a Saturday morning. After just about surviving Dave’s early performance session, I arrived at the Mechanic’s Hut after all the bikes had been dished out, and asked Jeff what I could do to help – without any hesitation, he instantly gave me a puncture to fix!
After spending about half an hour trying to find said puncture to no avail, I came to the conclusion that there was none and it had just been deflated! After putting the bike back on the wheel, which looked like it hadn’t been touched in months (which would explain a lot!), I sorted out another puncture on a little 20” wheeled mountain bike. I would say that for that one, the biggest challenge was more getting the wheel off the bike, as it had a metal mech protector thing which was a beast to get off! Well once I did manage to get it off and extract the tube, I went to the toilets to search for the puncture and guess what? There wasn’t one!
Meet Your Friendly Club Mechanics
So after discovering that there was no puncture, I put the tube back in the wheel, the wheel back on the bike, and came to the conclusion that either I am really bad at finding punctures, it was a miniscule puncture that would have been nearly impossible to find, or Jeff had simply deflated a perfectly fine tube and was just being horrible! 🙂
Anyway, throughout the rest of the morning (between eating bacon rolls without the bacon, discovering how easy manuals are to loop on baby bikes, helping out Jeff and the Crew with things that looked like they needed help with, and humiliating myself on Tim’s scooter), I actually learnt how different being a mechanic is from the perception, i.e. which is just that it consists of handing out bikes, fixing mechanicals, and eating bacon.
In fact, it actually involves hard work, because whilst repairing a puncture or indexing gears might take only a few minutes, when you have well over 110 members each session to cater for, it’s not so simple. So in conclusion, respect the Mechanics!”
Watch this space for more posts from our Young Volunteers…