Wednesday, November 14, 2007

girls and the art of bike maintenance...



I'm a girl. I'm also an engineer (well, I have a Ph.D. in engineering, but I'm not sure academics count as actual engineers....that is a debatable one), and I sometimes pretend to be a bike racer. I like the fact that when random people meet me for the first time, I am not easily stereotyped. That makes things somehow more fun! Although I didn't know a thing about bike maintenance just a couple years ago (I could change the tires on my mountain bike but that was as far as things went), I have eventually managed to figure out the way most things work on a bike (at least the simple stuff...). And this seems to have made me the go-to-girl for simple bike issues. This weekend, I was called from inactive duty to install a garmin for my friend. This was a pretty simple thing to do, install one cadence/speed sensor and mount the thing on the bike...and make sure it worked...but she felt the need to document it with photos, and so I feel obligated to post one on the old blog... Maybe if my day job falls through, I can (in her words) "get a job with Dave (my 'real' bike mechanic) doing housecalls for the needy and incompetent?"

Maybe I'm just nervous about the discussion scheduled for later today (sans me...) having to do with my possible promotion...and am pondering other career options. Just kidding, of course, as I have a pretty good gig going here, and I'm one of those people who actually likes what I do at least some of the time...so I shouldn't complain.

:-)

Ciao!!

2 comments:

Steve Weixel said...

I assume that's Olivia's bike...

dr-nitro said...

Bike stand. I mean, if you do change careers moving to the lucrative field of bike mechanics, then you'll need some of the tools for the trade. If you do stick with the academy, you might still want one. I have no idea how I ever got by without one for so long.