Over 20 years of owning a bike shop has left Steve with hundreds of entertaining tales. In this eBook he tries to capture some the great moments in this collection of 57 real-life stories. Steve’s prose will leave you laughing and sometimes shaking your head in disbelief. The 127-page eBook is in PDF format and can be easily read using the free Adobe Reader. The price is in Australian Dollars (AUD).
Here’s an excerpt from the tale “The Customer From Hell”:
Up close the bike is far worse than at 30 feet. If its age is correct it probably cost 50 bucks new and has depreciated at a constant rate of 100 percent annually since. And it is dry. The bike screams ‘degreaser’ at me. The chain is so dry it is not even rusty; it is shiny. I think again; this bloke cleans his bike with degreaser, the paint work looks dull and dry and he explains to me that the thingy bit (rear derailleur) doesn’t move over as far as it used to ( I think, “Yep, degreaser has flushed the bushings out.”) but that he didn’t use those gears anyway.
I ask if the inch (2.5 centimetres) of play in his cranks worries him. Oh no, not since the oscillation of the chain ring wore away that other thingamajig (front derailleur). “What about the head bearings?” I ask, because they are very tight and notchy. Oh no problem there he replies. It’s handy to have a détente click for straight ahead and one either side for turning into corners. If he has to do a U-turn he just turns the bars two clicks to the appropriate side. I agree that this is a handy feature.
Another excerpt can be found here…
The paperback version is available here!