Why you should always go to bike co-ops
We often pop to bike shops to ask for small favor - a question, advice, some screws, tightening here and there. We normally go to a community bike shops and so far we always had great experience there. |For example in Portland a guy spent half an hour or more adjusting the breaks with Raul and checking other stuff and when we wanted to pay he said 'it's OK., you are on a long trip, save your money'. Recently in Santa Cruz we spent like 4 hours working on our bikes in the local bike co-op and for all the time spent, some small parts and help (lots of help!) we were charged $5 only!
Today, a day before living US, we realized that Marta's head set wobbles, so we popped to the nearest bike shop; 5 min, and the head set was tightened - they asked us for $10!!!!
Support bike co-ops!
just to give some other perspective to your experience, I have had a lot of small owner operated bike shops do work on my bike for free. Even one of the larger bike shops.
ReplyDelete:) Alex (hikerbiker)
good for you Alex! However we still want to encourage everybody to support community bike stores - as they are called overseas or bike charities- as we used to call them in UK (which are not neceissarily bike co-op - our mistake!). We think the idea behind them is great!
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