By Christopher Cudworth

When you’re a kid learning to fix your bike and you’re not a mechanical genius, there are bound to be a few mishaps. All those bolts and nuts holding your bike together are so, bolty and nutty, for starters. And if you don’t know what we mean by bolty and nutty, well then you probably actually know how to fix your bike. But you can read on for laughs.

Those of us who don’t know how to fix our bikes. Well, we putter and suffer.

So imagine this kid with a regular large framed bike with bogus uncool handlebars. He wants to stick a pair of Sting-Ray handlebars on his otherwise boring bike. Those of you with mechanical instincts already know there is something going wrong with this picture. The handlebars stick up way too far for a regular framed bike. It’s not going to work. Not really.

But a kid determined to have Sting-Ray handlebars does not consider this to be a mechanical impediment. He or she does not expect or allow reality to intervene in the decision-making.

Problem: The eagerness to see how it looks generally trumps all safety precautions. Like actually tightening the handlebars properly. If you are a mechanical genius, or even a person with a modicum of good sense, you can see where this is going.

So the old bike with the Sting-Ray handlebars is now ready to ride. Or so you think.

To give it a Super-Go now that the bike is looking so sporty with its extra-tall Sting Ray handlebars, the budding young mechanic pushes his bike way back from a short, sharp hill at the end of the yard, then jumps on and starts pedaling fiercely toward the hill in anticipation of a First Big Jump, Sting-Ray handlebars proudly held up at shoulder level.

In preparation for the big jump, the young rider gives a massive tug on the Sting-Ray handlebars to gain air time. Upon which said Sting-Ray handlebars immediately come loose at the headset and go swinging down toward the wheel while the young cyclist is still in what qualifies… as mid-air. It all ends in an ugly, sorry way, with young nuts striking the top bar and pantlegs getting tangled in the chain. It takes minutes to extricate limbs and clothing from the bike. And the pain, of course. Then comes the assessment: Is anything really hurt? No? Good God, at least you survived that mechanical mistake.

The bike lies there in a strangely twisted heap. The handlebars point down and the bike chain writhes in the grass like a dumb metal snake. This is a lesson not to be forgotten. Tighten your handlebars, dummy.

It doesn’t take a mechanical genius to learn that.  It’s surprising sometimes how easy it is to forget. To tighten things. Add air. Flip the brake mechanism. And so on.