Wow, what a fantastic group of answers! I'm just fascinated by all this. As someone who has never been particularly mechanicially inclined, I'm really learning a ton. I grew up in a family with a divorced mom who didn't do mechanical things (so either we hired someone, or things fell apart -- mostly the latter), and a dad who is a professional woodworker. My dad is so good at this stuff that he never really taught me, if that makes sense. And as a girl, I think it was just assumed I wouldn't get into it. So gears are a new world. But as I get older, I find that things I never wanted or needed anyone to teach me have become interesting to me. And my boyfriend is the kind of guy who really isn't mechanical himself, so I can't rely on him to just do things, the way my ex-husband did, and he also encourages me to explore doing things for myself. So here I am, learning how to shift a bike! Cool.

I intend to get down-and-dirty when repairing the Shogun I bought earlier. That will be a great way to "see" the things I can't visualize just reading stuff. But I love to learn by reading, then doing. I find that half-way through the doing, things suddenly seem familiar from the reading, and I get it.

And Zaphod, I totally agree. I'm all about doing things correctly, and learning everything I can about form and function so I really understand why something works. I may ignore half of what I learn, but I want to know it step-by-step. My students love to skip right to the hard stuff and then wonder why they can't achieve greatness. I'm co-teaching a class right now (I'm teaching half the kids and another teacher is doing the same class with the other half) and I'm constantly up against this, as the other teacher wants to rush them through fifty things poorly, and I want them to do five things really well. In the end, I bet we all get there, but of course I prefer my way . And I don't think that's off-topic. We're here because we want to learn, and we are often attracted to vintage things because of the sense that what's lasted this long has an inherent value because it's been done right.