Originally Posted by waterrockets
I guess I'm tainted because I could never afford service when I was young. I just bought one wrench at a time as needed. Now I've been maintaining my bikes and my friends' bikes for 16 years, so it seems pretty simple
I hear what you're saying. I've been messing with and working on bikes for a lot longer than that. My resume includes a couple of full time bike shop gigs. Not only am I constantly learning new things but I think that the rate of change (suspension and disc brakes for example) is greater than my learning curve. I think that I know less about some of the details of bikes today than I did 10 years ago.