(Cue creepy background music from an old Hitchcock thriller.)
Locked up outside of Weimer Hall is a mystery — an abandoned bicycle. I see it every single day that I'm on campus. I first noticed it because I have the exact same bike (one of the many in my fleet). It has been there for weeks and hasn't moved. It's just deteriorating. One day, someone attached pretty balloons to it. I thought maybe it was a nice surprise for the owner's birthday. But the bike still has not moved since the beginning of the semester — and neither have the balloons. The balloons have died and just hang there, barely even noticeable now, as the bike gets dirtier and moldier.
Did grey aliens from Planet X abduct the owner? Did he or she join a cult and abandon all worldly possessions? Does the owner have a sense of direction akin to mine and forget where he or she left the bicycle?
Sergio Gomez has a simpler and more realistic potential explanation. The 22-year-old manager of student government’s bicycle repair shop said that freshmen often neglect their bicycles during the first year here and then later, when they have more spread out classes, realize they actually need a bike.
The bike repair, located in The Outfitter on the ground floor of the Reitz-Union, offers free bicycle repair, maintenance and advice to UF students. Outside the door of the shop, a line of at least 15 students is typical. The shop employs 11 students.
The atmosphere inside the shop is somewhere between the Discovery Channel show “Monster Garage” and the ’90s film “Empire Records.” As loud indie music plays overhead, mechanics hurl mild, playful insults at each other in between asking for advice with the bikes they are working on.
“Most of us are engineering students — I think one guy is a Spanish major,” Gomez explains; he is a fourth year Mechanical Engineering student himself. “I used to have big ideas for what I would do in the industry, but now I might just open my own…bike shop.”
Most of the employees have some bicycle repair experience, but they are mostly learning as they go. They pool their knowledge, consult online how-to sites and sometimes, with extremely unusual problems or near-hopeless cases, they will even just employ a trial and error approach. Sometimes mistakes happen but the shop employees are honest with customers about it, and most customers are forgiving. The employees are honest with customers when they believe a problem or issue is beyond the shop’s abilities. Since the service is free, many customers will ask the shop to attempt to fix the problem anyway. Among the numerous seemingly impossible feats they have performed, they have managed hammer out and true a completely bent wheel before.
Of all student government’s services, the free bike repair is one of the students’ favorites. A tune-up with wheel truing would typically cost over $100 at a regular bike shop. Here it’s free! If parts are required, students can purchase them either from The Outfitter or from their own preferred retailer. (The shop employees can typically recommend the best or most economical retailer.)
Most of the work is done out of sheer love of working with bikes and helping people, and an artist-like fulfillment in the hands-on problem solving that often involves creativity and teamwork. The employees do not accept tips, but they do enjoy cookies and baked goods that they often receive from grateful customers for a job well done.
As for the mystery bike, it will likely end up in an abandoned property auction at the end of the semester, but by that time it will probably be too deteriorated to be useful.
