Each week I commute to work on my “Amsterdam” bike that was bought used last fall from a bike rental station in Millennium Park.  I also use my dad’s twelve-year-old Saturn for weekly trips to the grocery store, out-of-town excursion, etc.  While for many reasons I prefer riding my bike to my car, I’m not yet in a position to completely forgo the use of a personal automobile.  So, though I limit the use of my car, I have two pre-owned vehicles that I maintain.  In the past month, this has meant taking my car to the shop after a break in the exhaust pipe, and bringing my bike to the shop a couple times for broken spokes.

For the car, a broken exhaust pipe meant that every time I ran the car it was as if I had no muffler, so the car was incredibly loud and embarrassing to drive around town, and in no condition to get me back to Muskegon for a weekend trip.  Getting it fixed meant that I had to leave work early to get to a trusted mechanic before they closed, and leaving the car overnight while the problem was diagnosed.  A call came the next morning with a quote of somewhere near $600; I diverted the information to my dad, who knows more about the car than I do and was able to have them fix the most immediate problem for almost half of that.  The car runs quieter now than it has before, but the other $300 worth of issues are still lurking in the undercarriage threatening further problems down the line.

For my bike, broken spokes meant a wobbly back wheel that could become dangerous to ride on for too extended periods of time.  I was able to ride it to work, though I did avoid the prospect for a few days, and getting it fixed involved a quick trip to a trusted shop a few blocks from where I work, being able to explain the problem and understand what was needed myself, and picking it up about an hour and $20 later.  I recently had a third spoke replaced this month, which could mean the rear rim is bent out of shape and that I might be needing to get the wheel re-built, a service that will cost around $150 and will completely fix the issue.  It’s worth noting, though, that by riding my bike to work instead of taking the ‘el’, that $150 will be payed for by savings in two months’ time.

Now I realize that this comparison is not completely fair – I don’t use my bike to ride back to Muskegon for the weekend, for example, and a car is a much more complex machine that will require more specialized knowledge to understand and fix – but then doesn’t that bring about the question of how complex a tool we need for any particular task?  I guess in the end I’m presenting this post as evidence of the benefits of using a simpler tool (the bike) for a simple task (traveling four-and-a-half miles) and saving the more complex tool, which requires more extensive repairs after the wear-and-tear of use, (the car) for use only when that tool is really needed.