Bio -

 

Having a dad who was into motorbikes and cars was a good influence, as I was always playing with spanners and all kinds of tools and mechanical parts when I was young.

I say that if you enjoyed Lego and moved onto Mechano as a kid, there's a chance mechanics is also in your skill-set. My journey with bike mechanics was at the age of 10, after getting a racing bike for my birthday.

I enjoyed looking after my bike, it was fun and interesting and as I grew up in a small village with miles of fields between things, cycling was a constant pastime. It also meant that if I didn’t learn to look after it, I would have to walk everywhere.

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In my 30's, I came across this quote that, "If you find a job you enjoy, you’ll never have to work again." - this was intriguing and became my focus for some years.

I was very much into philosophy and theology, a love of nature, art, ancient cultures and at that time, long distance walking. So this learning to follow my heart as this teaching philosophy instructed, I thought maybe an artist or therapist was the role I needed to pursue.

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However, life's a bit more mysterious than the mind wants to believe and one day on returning from a long distance walk along the Ridgeway Path (a path to check out for both cyclists and walkers alike), I came across a pile of old thrown away bicycle bits left by some bins. It was close to home and so seeing at least one good bicycle among all the random parts, I took these home and started fixing up a new bike for myself. This soon had me exchanging my rucksack for panniers and then getting into some long distance bike rides.

 

After many years of cars and camper-vans, this new bike got me back into my old hobby of maintaining and modifying bikes. I noted that when I was working on a bike, time seemed to stop, I was at peace with the world and it was more like a meditation.

Then one day I met up with a guy selling parts on Gumtree, who had a load of retro bikes he wanted restoring for a project of his. I got onboard and started to restore all these bikes for him, with me, slowly being morphed into a bicycle mechanic. One thing led to another and opportunities started coming my way. ​It was quite an unexpected profession, though on reflection, of a cyclic nature ;)

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​Our best suited job, could actually be a skill we possessed from childhood.... so remember to keep playing and do the things you love and look out for things that put you in a zone or groove, and check to see if there's a way to share or exchange that with others... you never know what might happen :)

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