Wednesday, July 16, 2014

The Cobbler’s Children


The old saying goes, “The cobbler’s children have no shoes.”  Way back in history, back in the days of the guilds and villages, shoes were made for people by individual craftsmen, cobblers, who also repaired shoes and boots.  A busy and successful cobbler had a lot to do.  There were shoes tto be made for customers, leather to be purchased, tools to be mended, repair work that had to be done immediately, an apprentice or two to be trained and supervised, a lot of things.  The idea behind the old saying is that a busy and prosperous merchant could find himself without the time to take care of his own needs and those of his family.  In fact, often if a new pair of shoes was nearing completion, ones that were intended for the family, they would be purchased by a needy and demanding customer.

Those days are long gone.  Shoes are made in factories in Asia.  They make a lot of them.  There is very little left of custom craft in the world.  Small local bike shops are a large part of the custom craft that remains.  I work in one such shop, and I am often in something akin to the old cobbler’s situation.  I do enjoy working on my customer’s bikes.  Summer is our busiest time, and we are usually flooded with repair work, tune-ups, and modifications.  We also have to build a lot of bikes for sale.  To that list add, we support a lot of bike rides, do charity work, do fittings, give classes and training sessions.  What with all of that, I sometimes get caught a bit short in supporting my own stable.  (There’s your cobbler’s children.)

So, it was with a great deal of pleasure that I managed to sneak in an hour’s work on two of my rigs.  I got the super supple racing tires off of my Giant Defy and replaced them with the new, high longevity, high durability training tires.  (I’m saving the racing tires for something special.)  I also managed to do a complete brake job on my tourist. 

I’ll be especially interested in the tires on the Defy.  They are directional, and front and rear specific.  While I’ve had that sort of thing on mountain bikes, I’ve never had anything like that on a road bike before.  Should be interesting

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