What it's like to be a bike mechanic

I got asked the other day what I do for a living and I told them I do homework and go to school. But I also work as a bicycle mechanic sometimes too. So I'm going to share a little bit about what I actually do as a bike mechanic.

I started working there two summers ago, and mainly during summers. The shop opens at 10 and usually everyone gets there about 9:45 because they had just gotten back from a ride and need to shower and do whatever before we open. But I won't focus on them as much.
So most mornings, I make sure everything looks good, normal stuff. Sometimes someone will be making coffee or if the Tour de France is on, we'll be watching that. What I do besides being a mechanic is everything else and everything no one else wants to do. I've done just about everything there is to do in a bike shop environment (except clean the bathrooms, I'm not into that). Some days I'll just be stocking things for a large part of the day and talking to customers about Lance Armstrong, assuming I know what he's up to recently because they can't relate bicycles to anything else. Or some days I'll be on a lunch run on a bike, those are always fun. One of the weirdest things I've had to deal with though is during my summer working there, a woman had walked in with a bike, completely painted white and asked if I could fix it up. She looked like a student at UT and was probably the most desperate person I've ever seen in my life. It was one of those 'ghost bikes' you see on the side of the road with some flowers and a picture of the person that had died. She brought in a ghost bike. I really didn't know what to do. I stood there staring at the bike, unsure of what to tell the woman. It's pretty much like someone giving you a smelly body bag and asking if you can clean it for them. Not saying she killed the guy, but same concept.

"Do you think you can fix this? I need to get around."

On other days, I'll be changing the lightbulbs in the most hard to reach places, testing out bikes, re-arranging anything that can be re-arranged, once to the point of renovating the entire bike shop.

A lot of the time it gets boring, except for Saturdays and Sundays, those days are crazy. People will come in with bikes, wheels, children, dogs, questions, wanting to rent bikes, wanting to know what Lance Armstrong is up to these days, wanting to know if they can do this on their bike, wanting to know how much this will cost, asking if we sell bikes here, and the thing I hate most, asking if they can speak to someone else.

I usually get that a lot, almost every day I'm working there "Is there someone else I can talk to about this?" or "Wait, do you work here?" or hesitating to trust me with their bike.

Yes, I do work here and no, there is no one else you can talk to.
But it's not that bad, I've actually had someone say they prefer having me work on their bike when they bring it in, now that's cool.

I didn't touch on everything, but there's a little bit about what I do as a bike mechanic. 

Is being a local such a bad thing?

As I was walking in Whole Foods today buying organic organics in the organic section, I noticed a man who was wearing a shirt that read "I AM A LOCAL" in bold letters and then had a clothing company's name in Austin along the bottom of the shirt. And I guess it's something to be proud of, but the way it was worn by that guy made it look like everyone else would say something like "Yeah, so what?". Or how everyone else encourages others not to move here with the most pretentious intentions. But it's really not such a bad thing. So many people come to Austin and what are you going to do about it? Get over it. Austin is no longer a secret. Because of all this, being a local isn't really a big deal.There's at least 700,000 people who are just like any other local in Austin. It's almost the same as saying you're a local in New York City; it doesn't entitle you to anything at all.

They're not even locals yet.

And it's so hard to not be a local when you are a local and other "locals" are doing things that actual  locals have been doing forever. That's when you spot a fake local.

Fake local: (Noun) - Someone who claims to be a local to a city when they've only been living for less than ten-ish years, or has the newest area code, or cannot pronounce street names correctly, or is a student living in a city only for school.

And for being an adult, and voting and stuff now, I still don't think I'm really a local. And you know what else, no one is really a local. For it to be true, you can only really call yourself a local in the final seconds before your death. Only then can people recognize it and spot a true local. It's like saying you're on the distinguished plan in high school, but still on the recommended plan until the very last day when a counselor will decide whether or not that student meets the requirements for being on the distinguished plan. Same deal.

So the next time someone calls themselves a local, you'll know that they're faking it.