punkypossum said:This is exactly why I want to go on a maintenance course - to give me the confidence of doing it myself! I'm one of those people that needs to be shown how to do stuff, really struggle with picking it up from books, so till I have properly learnt how to do it, unfortunatley I will continue in my overreliance on bike shops....
hmmm... well, can't argue with that.
Where i'm coming from is that, for me, fxing a bike is usually so simple that it makes me, if not angry, at least hot-headed, the way bike shops peddle the term "full service", latching on to people's propensity to believe that 'cos it's necessary on a car, it's necessary to get your bike "serviced" by a professional aswell.
to be honest if you're going on a long organised bike ride to holland with lots of other people then it may be a good opportunity to pick things up - don't expect them to all be expert mechanics and you the numpty. There may well be situations where somebody's got a mechanical problem and doesn't know what to do, and has got to the stage where they would far rather somebody 'had a go' at fixing it than not, even if they don't know what they're doing, in a chance they'll get it right, you may get a chance to muck in. Alternatively somebody might know exactly what to do and you can watch them, discuss it with them or help them, so try and make the most of such incidences if they crop up. hopefully they won't - but you never know....