10:30 am, Kitchener. A poofy-haired lime-green-Doof-shirted university student staggers through the door into Recycle Cycles, a volunteer-run bike-repair shop on the second floor of the Working Centre off Queen Street. The following exchange ensues:

Me: I'm going on a very long bike trip this summer, so I'd like to learn something about bike repair.
Staff: Okay - what do you want to learn, exactly?
Me: Well...I was thinking I would just take a bike apart and put it back together again.

One brief and lighthearted public shaming later (that only takes about 15 minutes, right?) I was kneeling beside an old run-down road bike with a handful of wrenches as Dave (who, it turns out, used to be a PhD candidate in CS (with research interests in AI and pattern recognition) before he quit to try his hand at the whole startup game) patiently explained the basics. In the course of four hours I removed the pedal arms, detached the pedals, dismantled the pedal axle assembly (ball bearings and all), replaced the cones, slotted the whole mess back together again, took apart the rear axle, replaced the back gears, reassembled the back tire into place again, tested and tuned the derailleur for proper shifting, and crimped end caps onto the gear cables. Things I still need to go over:

  • Cable replacement. While these do loosen over time, fraying is the main concern here.
  • Inner tube replacement. This is not technically difficult, but it still helps to have a few dry runs - improperly installed tubes can pinch and explode, thus ensuring hilarity for everyone except you.
  • Front fork repairs. A friend was biking along the sidewalk in Bronte when his front tire lodged in a crack, causing the entire bike to pitch forward into the ground with such force that the front fork shattered. (Side note: the impact cleft his helmet in twain.)
My bike repair goal for the term is simple: build a bike from scratch.

In short: this was an amazing experience. I've ranted many times before about the need for a more direct, social, and experiential model of education. Memorization is obsolete; we must transition to comprehension, application, synthesis. By itself, bike repair makes a passable exercise in spatial and mechanical reasoning. As part of a larger module, it could elicit any number of questions. Why are the parts designed this way? How could we make them more efficient? What advantages does cycling have over driving? What disadvantages? Why is cycling more prevalent in certain cities or countries? How do you make a bike-share program economically feasible and robust against petty theft? These in turn spark discussions on everything from industrial design to physics to politics to ecology to economics - all from a simple yet practical exercise.

Unfortunately, these sorts of practical exercises are usually confined to trade schools or mechanical engineering workshops, where they are delivered in a primarily utilitarian fashion. I think there is significant room for informal apprenticeship in modern education; it certainly plays well with the emergence of communities based around interest rather than geography. Any thoughts?