Bike clinic offers tune-up tips

| The State News MSU Bikes Service Center marketing and sales coordinator Tim Potter, left, of Okemos, helps electrical engineering freshman Andrew Temme clean and replace a chain on Temme's mountain bike in the canoe rental facility under Bessey Hall. Potter began offering a series of bicycle maintenance classes through the MSU's Evening College.

Tim Potter has a simple piece of advice to all bike riders on campus: "Always keep your (bike) chain lubed."

Potter, the marketing and sales coordinator for the MSU Bikes Service Center, put on a basic bicycle tune-up clinic Saturday.

The session is the first in a spring series. In addition, Potter will teach basic bicycle maintenance classes through MSU's Evening College.

"You want to lube your chain and the other parts on a weekly basis depending on how much riding you do," Potter said, adding that riders should take their bicycles in once or twice a year for a tune-up.

"You'd be surprised how many people come in here and find that their front or rear wheel is about to fall off."

Steve Conatser, of Melvindale, was one of the two attendees at the clinic. Although he doesn't do much bicycling yet, he describes himself as "a fledging 50-year-old hoping to learn more about biking."

Electrical engineering freshman Andrew Temme brought his Magma bicycle in to fix the breaks and replace the chain. Temme inherited the bicycle from his sister, a 2004 graduate, and says the only problem he experiences with it is basic wear given that it is old.

"I ride it pretty much everywhere," Temme said, adding that the farthest he rides to class is from his Holmes Hall dorm room to the Engineering Building. "It's a lot quicker — instead of a 15-minute walk, it's a 7-minute bike ride."

Lenny Provencher, a 1980 MSU graduate and a former MSU's Cycling Club member, also came to the clinic. Throughout the session, Provencher — who says he rides a couple thousand miles each year — offered tips to the two bicyclists to help them in the future.

"I used to ride my bike everywhere on campus, and the chain on my bike would look like that," said Provencher, pointing to the rusted chain on Temme's bike.

His do-it-yourself tips?

"Take an empty two-liter bottle filled with solvent, shake it up and pour over the chain to help get the rust off," Provencher said.

In back of the shop, located in the old canoe rental facility next to Bessey Hall, dozens of bikes line the floor.

Tools are neatly aligned on pegs on a wall above a bench covered in instruments and lubricants. Rims and tires hang from hooks, and the walls are plastered with cycling and biking posters.

In addition to the bicycles brought in by students and other customers, the shop also fixes bikes for MSU police and prepares "green bikes." These bikes are impounded by campus police at the end of the semester and brought back to the shop where they are fixed up, given a coat of green paint and made available for rental. Potter says these bikes used to be painted blue and then eventually yellow, but objection from the MSU Alumni Association resulted in all future bikes being painted green.

Potter said during the winter months, the shop — which employs five students part-time — usually fixes about 20 bikes a week.

"It went well," said Potter of Saturday's clinic. He hopes to offer it on a more frequent basis, eventually including classes on bike safety, how to set up bikes for commuting and wheel repair. "Learning this stuff saves you money, so you don't always have to take it in."

For more information, visit bikes.msu.edu/classes.html.