Having a dad who was into mechanics is a good influence, but I recall getting into bike mechanics around the age of 10, after getting a racing bike for my birthday. Looking after my bike was fun and interesting, but I grew up in a small village with miles of fields between things and so it also meant that if I didn’t learn to look after it, I would have to walk.

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Later in life, I came across this quote that, "If you find a job you enjoy, you’ll never have to work again." and so this became my focus for some years. I was very much into philosophy, theology, nature, art; those kinds of things and loved long distance walking.

On a return trip from one said walk, I came across some old thrown away bicycles. I could see at least one good bicycle among all the parts and so took them home and got to fixing up a new bike. This led to exchanging my rucksack for panniers and doing some long distance riding.

 

This journey got me back into my old hobby of maintaining and modifying my bike and noted that when I was working on my bike, time seemed to stop and it was more like a meditation than any work.

Not long after, I met a guy selling parts on Gumtree, who had a load of retro bikes he wanted help restoring for a project of his. This grew into a friendship and I slowly found myself being transformed into a bicycle mechanic. It was quite an unexpected proffession, though on reflection, of a cyclic nature  ;-)