 Try to fix your own bike before taking it to the shop

Sometimes you get annoyed to death with your bike not breaking or changing gears perfectly as you would like, and the people at the bike shop never do the job well enough.

The problem with bike shops is that the employees are already swamped with work, and they don't get paid any extra for doing more work.

As a result, paradoxically, they are often happier, and respect you more if you are trying to get them to help you to fix your own bike!

Also, for the same reason, they don't have the time to go for a quick test ride after a fix to ensure that the bug was actually fixed.

So they ignore things that would obviously be huge ridability benefits (although they might not be obvious to newbie customers), for which customers would gladly pay more money for.

But you start to learn how to do stuff yourself and it feel amazing when you finally get there (after infinite trial and error).

Ciro dreams of a bike shop that actually calls you for the appointment and then teaches you how to fix the thing.

So the best strategy is to have a backup bicycle, and when your main one breaks, you just try to to the fix yourself. That means:

Then, if you fail to do the fix, that is OK, just take it to the bike shop, with the piece you've bought, and ask them to do it for you. At least this way you did not waste a golden opportunity to learn!