questions about wrench and bike fit school

[silver]

I am interested in attending wrench and bike fit schools. Does anyone know anything about them? Names? places? reputations?

[BeeLady]

I might go to one of those too -- it would be quite helpful!

[DebW]

Learn to wrench at UBI (www.bikeschool.com). I just attended the Professional Repair class. See the Northwest thread.

[PscyclePath]

I am interested in attending wrench and bike fit schools. Does anyone know anything about them? Names? places? reputations?

Silver:

Check with some of your local LBSes to see if they'll host one of the Park Tool courses somewhere in your neighborhood. This is a reall good foundation course for the stuff we have to cover in both Road I and Road II.

The local Lewis & Clark adventurist store here in Little Rock offers a bike maintenance course on Monday evenings once a month or so, but this is pretty much the same as the Road I content. A lot of LBSes do this ona routine basis. Me, I started by pestering the heck out of a couple friends over at the LBS and watching over their shoulder, and starting to put a tool set together. Prep for the LCI course last year made me get serious about this in fear that that's what they would make me practice teach (instead, I did "Clothing & Equipment")... I'd still like to do one of the BBI or UBI courses one of these days, right now I'm lobbying for one of the LBSes to at least bring the Park Tool folks back to town.

The good, professional schools for wrenching are Barnett Bicycle Institute in Colorado Springs, CO, and the United Bicycle Institute in Ashland, OR. These offer multi-week training & certification for professional bike wrenches.

My LCI trainer had several certificates from Barnett, and spoke very highly of them; and one of the ladies in the Maintenance forum downstairs just finished the UBI course, and appears to be very happy with it...

IMBA has a program they call the "Mountain Bike Patrol," which combines cycling and trail advocacy with first aid certification and basic bike repair. This might be something to look into as well, depending on the mix of roadies and MTBers in your community...

Tom

[madscot13]

thanks for the heads up on barnett!

[silver]

My local bike shop is not a resource for these types of things.

I am looking into going in depth. I am looking at UBI and BBI. I also want to attend some fit courses. I've looked at SICI but it's SOOOOOO expensive. Looks like I'll go the way of FitKit and train myself from their materials. Then do a maintenance course at UBI or BBI.

thanks for the reply