I got given a second hand bike the other day, thought it just needed some air in the tyres but turns out the back inner tube was fucked, by the end of the day I’d basically completely disassembled the thing and put it back together (including fucking Kmart selling me a tube that had a fucking hole in it). My hands were covered in grease, and the bike was back in excellent order, rode so much better.

I basically only changed a tyre, but I was out in the yard in the afternoon sun, some music playing, and at the end of the day I had something to show for what I did. Can’t recommend it enough.

  • cummunist [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Fixing stuff is incredibly satisfying. The culture of repairing broken stuff is something that's being directly taken away from us by capitalism; nowadays it's often way faster and easier to buy something new instead of fixing it. Companies go out of their way to make their stuff harder to repair by a non professional. This for me is one of the signs of the degeneration of capitalism; the fact that companies need to make their products more and more encapsulated, less and less practical to use due to design restrictions that are here only to preserve the margin of profit of the corporation shows that this economic system has nothing to offer anymore.