Invented bicycle gears is maybe a bit of a misdirection here. Go back far enough and bicycle gears on the rear were accomplished by having different sized cogs on each side of the rear wheel. You pulled them out, rotated them, put them back in, different gear.

He once lost a race because he couldn't get the wing nut off the rear axle, so he invented the quick release skewer. And eventually he said "oh this still kind of sucks" and invented the rear derailleur.

He also was an avid racing cyclist and got tired of people fucking around with the wine bottles for the winners, so he also invented the wing corkscrew to solve that problem.