Bicycle!: A Repair & Maintenance Manifesto

At their finest hours, bikes exist on a level above mere machines, and there’s no reason the joy should end when the ride is over.

Bicycle!, written by a working bicycle mechanic, covers -everything you need to know to feed and care for your own swank, two-wheeled ride. This book cuts through the obtuse techno-speak and delivers maintenance clarity with a touch of humor and radicalism while categorically denying mechanics’ supposed dreariness. Bicycle! is about encouraging society to learn for themselves how to make their bikes work, not because they have to, but because they want to.

With detailed descriptions of all maintenance tasks and repair situations, clearly illustrated with photographs and drawings, this guide will serve the need for a serious rider’s manual. Professional bicycle workers—messengers, mechanics, pedicab drivers—as well as bicycle commuters have been waiting for this book.

Sam Tracy writes about bikes from a practiced Midwestern perspective. He began producing the ’zine Biker Pride at some point in the early 1990s, after being fired from the college newspaper for violating its objectivity rules, and this project was later broadened just enough to become the urban cycling-focused Multiplier ’zine. Having biked through the last 15 snowy winters in Minneapolis, including five as a messenger, Tracy is currently enjoying the warmer weather while wrenching on bikes in San Francisco.