bikalism
It was bike to work day today. I bike to work almost every day anyway, but it's a happy occasion to see the bike room fuller than usual in the morning and go off to eat ice cream with coworkers in the evening. In anticipation of problems on the evening ride I brought along a wrench and a spare tube, under the advice that it's nicer to hand someone a tube than let them borrow a patch kit. Eventually fewer people than I'd have hoped showed up for the ride, but the ice cream at the end was excellent (pears in wine, mmmmm), and then something happened on the way home.

I had a flat. And only then I realized that didn't have a pump myself, nor any tire levers. Stupid! They were on my good bike which was stolen two weeks ago. I tried calling a friend who lived nearby, but couldn't reach him. But it's not so bad: I was only about a mile from home. But I no longer had another pump at home, I let another friend borrow the spare. Oh well, I remembered there were several bike shops on Ben Yehuda along the way, they'll let me use their stuff.

So I reached one such shop, where the proprietor was not very nice. He actually said he doesn't like this kind of imposition, though he did let me borrow tire levers. He got a bit nicer when I was done and offered to pay for the levers. The whole thing was actually a little humiliating, or I don't know, disappointing in a way. For a while I had a mind to buy an extra pair and immediately give them back to the guy there and tell them they were for the next people who come in stuck with a flat. But that's condescending and probably misunderstanding the real problem of small bike shops.

I came in with the expectation of willing helpfulness because I associate bikes with cheery freedom, but he probably makes a large portion of his income fixing flats, and it's easy for him to be taken advantage of. (I bet if someone starts asking for help in the middle of fixing a flat, he won't see a dime, or if someone damages the head of his air gun.) My intuition is that a shop that's friendly to bikers draws paying customers, but why should I presume to know his business better than he?

It's sad, though. I want to live in a world where people are generous to each other. Of course, in this ideal world, people will also be competent and not damage tools very often, and the risks of being generous would be lesser than in this. But I don't really know how to encourage this. The bike shop I always go to, who specialize in cheap-but-decent, always have an air hose out for passersby. Their canned response to the question "Can I fill up air?" is "you don't even have to ask!", but I can tell that their patience is worn thin and that for some kinds of service, they just can't afford to be comprehensive any more.

I'd been putting off buying replacement tools to the ones that were stolen but once I fix up my fixie I'll get them, and always ride with them, and if I'm not in a hurry and see someone who can use them, I will stop and help.