Keep on moving, don't stop (like the hands of time)

I just fixed my bike at the EBC shop, and I highly recommend it!

It costs $5 per hour of shop time, and the friendly volunteers will help you out and tell you everything you need to know.  They have piles of new and used parts for cheap, as well as used bikes.

Even with the right tools (which I don't have), I wouldn't have been able to fix my bike on my own.  A bottom bracket cup was so bent that it sheared half of the threads right off, and stripped the threads on the bike frame.  They helped me cut new threads into the frame, which I didn't even think was possible.

Beware, it might take more time than you think (it took me 2 hours for a job I was expecting to take 40 minutes), especially if you don't know what you're doing.  It cost me $10 for shop time and $10 for a sealed bottom bracket.  At a commercial bike shop, they would have charged me $80 for the labor to replace the bracket (which would include a general tune-up), and maybe $30 for the part.  I'm not sure they would even do the machining of the bike frame, but if they did I'm sure it would cost extra.

On the down side, it took more time and physical effort than I expected.  Also, the shop got busy and the volunteers were scarce, but they managed to help me as much as I needed.  It's cheaper than buying your own tools, easier than trying to figure it out yourself, more satisfying than having someone else do it, and of course much much cheaper than a bike store.  I feel like I'm riding a new bike!  A+++++++ highly recommended!

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I could do an entire blog about cheapness just on the topic of my bike.  It's about 23 years old now.  It's a BRC, which I've come to pronounce "brick", because it's as heavy and solid as one.  Once each year for 3 years now I've gone shopping for a new (lighter, more comfortable) bike, and each time I fail to find a perfect bike for the right price, and instead just keep riding the old one for another year.

This is the second time I've replaced the bottom bracket.  Both times, I destroyed a ball-bearing cage inside, but continued to ride for months, with bits of metal inside the bracket grinding metal, like Ripley when she blew the APC's transaxle.

Really, the only interesting story about that bike was the time I broke the chain riding out of Hawrelak park during Heritage Days.  There were so many busses on the road that I just left the chain where it was, in the middle of the street.  Later in the week I went to buy a new chain, and found out that it's best to replace a chain and the gears at the same time, because they wear down together and a new one of either won't work as well as the old.  I didn't want to buy new gears.  So I went back to Hawrelak park to look for the chain.  I found it in the road, buried in the tar of a repaired crack, having been ground into the pavement by who knows how many busses.  I dug it out of the road, washed the tar out with gasoline, took the broken link out of the chain, and put it back on the bike.  I'm still using it, years later.