Overhauling a Bicycle

A priceless excerpt from Jerome K Jerome's 1900 novel Three Men on the Bummel:

He said: "Have you overhauled it?"

I said: "I have not, nor is anyone else going to overhaul it. The

thing is now in working order, and it is going to remain in working

order till we start."

I have had experience of this "overhauling." There was a man at

Folkestone; I used to meet him on the Lees. He proposed one

evening we should go for a long bicycle ride together on the

following day, and I agreed. I got up early, for me; I made an

effort, and was pleased with myself. He came half an hour late: I

was waiting for him in the garden.

It was a lovely day. He said:-

"That's a good-looking machine of yours. How does it run?"

"Oh, like most of them!" I answered; "easily enough in the morning;

goes a little stiffly after lunch."

He caught hold of it by the front wheel and the fork and shook it

violently.

I said: "Don't do that; you'll hurt it."

I did not see why he should shake it; it had not done anything to

him. Besides, if it wanted shaking, I was the proper person to

shake it. I felt much as I should had he started whacking my dog.

He said: "This front wheel wobbles."

I said: "It doesn't if you don't wobble it." It didn't wobble, as

a matter of fact--nothing worth calling a wobble.

He said: "This is dangerous; have you got a screw-hammer?"

I ought to have been firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did

know something about the business. I went to the tool shed to see

what I could find. When I came back he was sitting on the ground

with the front wheel between his legs. He was playing with it,

twiddling it round between his fingers; the remnant of the machine

was lying on the gravel path beside him.

He said: "Something has happened to this front wheel of yours."

"It looks like it, doesn't it?" I answered. But he was the sort of

man that never understands satire.

He said: "It looks to me as if the bearings were all wrong."

I said: "Don't you trouble about it any more; you will make

yourself tired. Let us put it back and get off."

He said: "We may as well see what is the matter with it, now it is

out." He talked as though it had dropped out by accident.

Before I could stop him he had unscrewed something somewhere, and

out rolled all over the path some dozen or so little balls.

"Catch 'em!" he shouted; "catch 'em! We mustn't lose any of them."

He was quite excited about them.

We grovelled round for half an hour, and found sixteen. He said he

hoped we had got them all, because, if not, it would make a serious

difference to the machine. He said there was nothing you should be

more careful about in taking a bicycle to pieces than seeing you

did not lose any of the balls. He explained that you ought to

count them as you took them out, and see that exactly the same

number went back in each place. I promised, if ever I took a

bicycle to pieces I would remember his advice.

I put the balls for safety in my hat, and I put my hat upon the

doorstep. It was not a sensible thing to do, I admit. As a matter

of fact, it was a silly thing to do. I am not as a rule addle-

headed; his influence must have affected me.

He then said that while he was about it he would see to the chain

for me, and at once began taking off the gear-case. I did try to

persuade him from that. I told him what an experienced friend of

mine once said to me solemnly:-

"If anything goes wrong with your gear-case, sell the machine and

buy a new one; it comes cheaper."

He said: "People talk like that who understand nothing about

machines. Nothing is easier than taking off a gear-case."

I had to confess he was right. In less than five minutes he had

the gear-case in two pieces, lying on the path, and was grovelling

for screws. He said it was always a mystery to him the way screws

disappeared.

We were still looking for the screws when Ethelbertha came out.

She seemed surprised to find us there; she said she thought we had

started hours ago.

He said: "We shan't be long now. I'm just helping your husband to

overhaul this machine of his. It's a good machine; but they all

want going over occasionally."

Ethelbertha said: "If you want to wash yourselves when you have

done you might go into the back kitchen, if you don't mind; the

girls have just finished the bedrooms."

She told me that if she met Kate they would probably go for a sail;

but that in any case she would be back to lunch. I would have

given a sovereign to be going with her. I was getting heartily

sick of standing about watching this fool breaking up my bicycle.

Common sense continued to whisper to me: "Stop him, before he does

any more mischief. You have a right to protect your own property

from the ravages of a lunatic. Take him by the scruff of the neck,

and kick him out of the gate!"

But I am weak when it comes to hurting other people's feelings, and

I let him muddle on.

He gave up looking for the rest of the screws. He said screws had

a knack of turning up when you least expected them; and that now he

would see to the chain. He tightened it till it would not move;

next he loosened it until it was twice as loose as it was before.

Then he said we had better think about getting the front wheel back

into its place again.

I held the fork open, and he worried with the wheel. At the end of

ten minutes I suggested he should hold the forks, and that I should

handle the wheel; and we changed places. At the end of his first

minute he dropped the machine, and took a short walk round the

croquet lawn, with his hands pressed together between his thighs.

He explained as he walked that the thing to be careful about was to

avoid getting your fingers pinched between the forks and the spokes

of the wheel. I replied I was convinced, from my own experience,

that there was much truth in what he said. He wrapped himself up

in a couple of dusters, and we commenced again. At length we did

get the thing into position; and the moment it was in position he

burst out laughing.

I said: "What's the joke?"

He said: "Well, I am an ass!"

It was the first thing he had said that made me respect him. I

asked him what had led him to the discovery.

He said: "We've forgotten the balls!"

I looked for my hat; it was lying topsy-turvy in the middle of the

path, and Ethelbertha's favourite hound was swallowing the balls as

fast as he could pick them up.

"He will kill himself," said Ebbson--I have never met him since

that day, thank the Lord; but I think his name was Ebbson--"they

are solid steel."

I said: "I am not troubling about the dog. He has had a bootlace

and a packet of needles already this week. Nature's the best

guide; puppies seem to require this kind of stimulant. What I am

thinking about is my bicycle."

He was of a cheerful disposition. He said: "Well, we must put

back all we can find, and trust to Providence."

We found eleven. We fixed six on one side and five on the other,

and half an hour later the wheel was in its place again. It need

hardly be added that it really did wobble now; a child might have

noticed it. Ebbson said it would do for the present. He appeared

to be getting a bit tired himself. If I had let him, he would, I

believe, at this point have gone home. I was determined now,

however, that he should stop and finish; I had abandoned all

thoughts of a ride. My pride in the machine he had killed. My

only interest lay now in seeing him scratch and bump and pinch

himself. I revived his drooping spirits with a glass of beer and

some judicious praise. I said:

"Watching you do this is of real use to me. It is not only your

skill and dexterity that fascinates me, it is your cheery

confidence in yourself, your inexplicable hopefulness, that does me

good."

Thus encouraged, he set to work to refix the gear-case. He stood

the bicycle against the house, and worked from the off side. Then

he stood it against a tree, and worked from the near side. Then I

held it for him, while he lay on the ground with his head between

the wheels, and worked at it from below, and dropped oil upon

himself. Then he took it away from me, and doubled himself across

it like a pack-saddle, till he lost his balance and slid over on to

his head. Three times he said:

"Thank Heaven, that's right at last!"

And twice he said:

"No, I'm damned if it is after all!"

What he said the third time I try to forget.

Then he lost his temper and tried bullying the thing. The bicycle,

I was glad to see, showed spirit; and the subsequent proceedings

degenerated into little else than a rough-and-tumble fight between

him and the machine. One moment the bicycle would be on the gravel

path, and he on top of it; the next, the position would be

reversed--he on the gravel path, the bicycle on him. Now he would

be standing flushed with victory, the bicycle firmly fixed between

his legs. But his triumph would be short-lived. By a sudden,

quick movement it would free itself, and, turning upon him, hit him

sharply over the head with one of its handles.

At a quarter to one, dirty and dishevelled, cut and breeding, he

said: "I think that will do;" and rose and wiped his brow.

The bicycle looked as if it also had had enough of it. Which had

received most punishment it would have been difficult to say. I

took him into the back kitchen, where, so far as was possible

without soda and proper tools, he cleaned himself, and sent him

home.

The bicycle I put into a cab and took round to the nearest

repairing shop. The foreman of the works came up and looked at it.

"What do you want me to do with that?" said he.

"I want you," I said, "so far as is possible, to restore it."

"It's a bit far gone," said he; "but I'll do my best."

He did his best, which came to two pounds ten. But it was never

the same machine again; and at the end of the season I left it in

an agent's hands to sell. I wished to deceive nobody; I instructed

the man to advertise it as a last year's machine. The agent

advised me not to mention any date. He said:

"In this business it isn't a question of what is true and what

isn't; it's a question of what you can get people to believe. Now,

between you and me, it don't look like a last year's machine; so

far as looks are concerned, it might be a ten-year old. We'll say

nothing about date; we'll just get what we can."

I left the matter to him, and he got me five pounds, which he said

was more than he had expected.

There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can

"overhaul" it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure

that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the

best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and the

wind; the state of the roads troubles him not. Give him a screw-

hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down

upon, and he is happy for the day. He has to put up with certain

disadvantages, of course; there is no joy without alloy. He

himself always looks like a tinker, and his machine always suggests

the idea that, having stolen it, he has tried to disguise it; but

as he rarely gets beyond the first milestone with it, this,

perhaps, does not much matter. The mistake some people make is in

thinking they can get both forms of sport out of the same machine.

This is impossible; no machine will stand the double strain. You

must make up your mind whether you are going to be an "overhauler"

or a rider. Personally, I prefer to ride, therefore I take care to

have near me nothing that can tempt me to overhaul. When anything

happens to my machine I wheel it to the nearest repairing shop. If

I am too far from the town or village to walk, I sit by the

roadside and wait till a cart comes along. My chief danger, I

always find, is from the wandering overhauler. The sight of a

broken-down machine is to the overhauler as a wayside corpse to a

crow; he swoops down upon it with a friendly yell of triumph. At

first I used to try politeness. I would say:

"It is nothing; don't you trouble. You ride on, and enjoy

yourself, I beg it of you as a favour; please go away."

Experience has taught me, however, that courtesy is of no use in

such an extremity. Now I say:

"You go away and leave the thing alone, or I will knock your silly

head off."

And if you look determined, and have a good stout cudgel in your

hand, you can generally drive him off.