Road Cycling - park tool school class?

has anyone taken the Park Tool School classes. i want to learn some bike maintenance and am quite frustrated that no one will help me.
is the class worth it? :(

I was talking to Calvin Jones (Technical Editor at ParkTool & forum member) about the School. It sounds great if you are new to bicycle maintence, but dont expect too much advanced information. He also mentioned that Park Tool is coming out with a at home type bicycle maintance book in the near future, I was able to buy a park tool school manual off ebay for $30, a great reference!

I say go for it, I have not yet gone localy, but it sounds worthwhile.

Spinner1,

I believe that Koffee_Brown is signed up to take the
park tool school thingie. You might want to ask her about
it, I think she spent quite alot of time researching it.

Marty

Originally posted by spinner1
has anyone taken the Park Tool School classes. i want to learn some bike maintenance and am quite frustrated that no one will help me.
is the class worth it? :( The Zinn books are only $20 or less apiece, and the pictures are great even for the illiterate.www.parktool.com and Sheldon Browns stuff at www.harriscyclery.com are also full of good free stuff.

Hi Spinner-

I spent considerable time talking with the Chicago area Park Tool rep, and he was great! Here in Chicago, the guy (Christopher) told me they'd be teaching an extensive class (or 6 classes for 2-3 hour slot per week). Afterwards, if you wanted to gain a greater knowledge of the bike, you could come work in his workshop where he repairs bikes for kids and teens. He said that people who did that had an intimate knowledge of bikes, and usually went on to become bike mechanics. I was impressed.

I plan on taking his class coming up in a month and dedicating the time to learning all the ins and outs of bike maintenance. He promised me that at the end of the classes, I'd be able to do any repairs on my bike that needed to be done, as well as do preventative maintenance on my bike. I believe him.

He's also a good guy- I believe we are going to work together on a project he's working on for underprivileged, minority kids who excel in school, yet they don't have the opportunities that other kids from higher income families. As he told me about his program, I volunteered to help him with the business aspects. We're supposed to be hooking up sometime in the next few weeks on that. I'll keep people appraised. I'm excited to end up becoming part of something that really can do something positive for people who deserve a chance- I can't believe all this came from a simple phone call with an enquiry about when he was going to have his free bike maintenance class that was being run by the City of Chicago. What luck!

I think you should call your local Park Tools guy and just find out what they will teach you, and see what they can do if you still don't get it after you finish taking the classes. This is the second Park Tools rep I've contacted, and they are pretty helpful and friendly.

Good luck.

Koffee

Wow Koffee that sounds like a great course to do. Do they have that sort of thing in other cities, or am I forced to come to Chicago?

I attended a Park Tool School at an LBS last year. It had a definite curriculum as outlined by Park Tools and it included the Park manual.

The result of the school was that I am now able to build and maintain all of our family bikes. In the last year I have purchased and successfully built seven framesets. My wife and I are long distance riders and I keep care of the bikes while on the road too.

The Park Tool school can be given by any bike shop. The shop has to have enough interest by the riders to put one on.

While books and manuals are wonderful, there is no substitute for hands-on experience. The Park Tool School is very hands-on.

thank you Koffee! one question though. how did you go about contacting the local park tool guy? i live in portland, oregon and assume i would call the lbs to find out who their rep is?

Hey Spinner!

I think it was Catfish who recommended that I go to http://www.parktool.com/ and when I did, I surfed around the page until I found the list of participating dealers. When you click on that, it gives all the Park Tool dealers by state and breaks it down by city for each state too.

Spire-

You're more than welcome to come on down and take the course here, or you can contact the Park Tools dealer in your own:

city:Quebec
Cycle Outaouais
438 Rue Principale
Gatineau
J8T 4H6
Phone 819-568-4871

Parvelo
55 Girouard
Victoriaville
G6P 5T2
Phone 819-357-4101

The web site has all the info about Park Tools and gives handy tips too, if anyone is interested in reading up on bike maintenance.

Koffee

thanks koffee, i will take a look.

Koffee-

reviving this thread to see if you did the Park Tool school, and what you thought of it. Was it worth it?

Surprisingly, there are NO Bay Area LBSs (except Santa Rosa and San Jose - a little far from Oakland/East Bay) participating, from the Park Tool website.

My wife wants to take a class, too, so we can probably try to talk one of our local LBSs into participating if we can't find another equivalent class through other sources, if the Park school is worth it.

I did not do it- yet. Dude is way too relaxed for me- I called him to ask about openings, and he said there weren't any, but he could call me when there was. He keeps forgetting to call. I would have had to call him weekly to ask, and I keep forgetting to call him to see. So it's like this vicious circle, but I'm sure at some point, we'll get our acts together and I'll be able to take his class. He is really great, though, and I think it would definitely be a useful class.

Koffee

Thanks, Koffee.

Does anyone know of any other bike mechanic classes in the Bay Area that I should check out?

I took the Park Tool classes (held on 2 consecutive Sunday nights) last September at Free-Flite Bicycles in Atlanta.
There were 6 people in the class. It was designed for people with little or no bike maintenance experience, so I learned a little in the first class and a lot more in the second class.
There was a lot of hands on training in both classes. You work on your own bike, not a store bike. One of the class members got a new (free) chain (his was in really bad shape) during that part of the class and I got a new (free) rear derailleur cable (only 2 strands left :eek: ) when we did brake and deraulleur cables.
The class cost $100 but it was fun and very informative.
I felt that the store manager (former racer and team mechanic) and service manager were better informed than the folks at the shop where I bought my bike, so I'll probably be taking it to them for major repairs or anything I can't do.

*sigh*

Well, I spoke with Park Tool dude- he said that they'll be running the next session of classes starting March 17th. Classes will be every Wed and Fri night for 3 weeks from 6:30pm- 8:30pm. I am considering it, but damn! That's late in the evening, and it's like on the northside, so I'll be riding in the winter evening, and that's not my strong suit either. :-/ I'm considering it, but at the same time-uugh. That's a lot of sacrifice for me- my two favorite free nights will be gone. :(

Koffee