Too Many Bikes n+1 vs n-1

My N-1 Struggle ≈ Why n+1 is not really the ideal number of bicycles you should own, and my journey towards moving more bikes on…

(…even if it means they go to scrap/recycling).

Being known as the “bike guy” around town is awesome but there is a dark side. Bicycles begin to follow you. This is great IF you can keep up with it. If not, you feel like a bicycle hoarder. So many cyclists (and guitar players, and car collectors) joke about n+1 being the route to happiness. Where n equals the number of bikes (guitars, Ferraris… etc ) you have, and +1 is the ideal number for you to own. While we can dismiss this tongue in cheek expression as dark humor shared to relieve guilt about new bike purchases, things can quickly get out of control even for the most well intentioned home bike mechanics.

My parents grew up indoctrinated in fears of the great depression (1929) and of course some of their habits and fears came to me. Those folks that survived that awful free-fall from prosperity to poverty were forever changed. They didn’t “hoard”, they “saved” from fear that the bottom would drop out again at any time. New research says that trauma (like instinct) can even be passed genetically from one generation to the next. Though the mechanism isn’t fully understood, I think I believe it.

As an adult in 2022, I struggle with those foundations I came from and those goals I want to grow towards. I don’t want my emotional state to be connected with how many or how few bikes I have. I believe the only bike you really need is the one you’re riding at any given moment.

I don’t want to burden my family (after I move on) with a boneyard full of possible bike builds. On the other hand, I also enjoy wrenching, saving bikes, and it makes me feel good to put bikes back out there. Just like anything else, it’s a fine line on the border between asepticism and excess; the middle way that’s the ticket.

Sometimes I find myself getting worried that I will run out of bikes to fix. Almost immediately, I end up seeing another on the side of the road. This LITERALLY happened one morning while I was cleaning out some old bike parts, the unhealthy fear of scarcity crossed my mind for just a moment, and within the hour on my way to the dump, two bicycles were laying out with the refuse on the snow shelf. I grabbed them, but realized even more deeply how unhealthy it is to hitch your emotions to “things” (even if they’re bikes).

There are bikes and bike parts you can’t even give away. I know, because people give them to me. It’s easier for some folks to give parts to others (like me), because they themselves can’t scrap them. For a while I’d take them. I was the Ellis Island for old bikes and parts. Some of them you could put 2 hours and $40 of parts into and have yourself a nice $25 bike. Even then the only people who’d buy it are those that didn’t have $25, and would take it for free.

Just like the realization that there is probably enough food in the world (considering all the food waste and stored excess), but that the problem of feeding everyone is more one of distribution and inequality, I realized there are probably enough bikes in the world for anyone who wants one. Ask any bike co-op. Most have plenty of bicycles, but perhaps not enough of those that are particularly desirable. Even if you don’t count the substandard bicycles flooded into the world by mass market retailers that are barely and sometimes not even fit for purpose, I think there are enough bicycles in the world right now to give at least one to anyone of the 8 billion people who wants one.

The problem is where they are and who currently “owns” them.

Millions of modern, ridable bicycles are sitting in piles slowly decomposing from failed bike share schemes from around the world. Greed and regulations keeping them from flowing freely out into use. Millions more are in property lockers recovered by law enforcement but unreturned. Millions more are rescued from the waste-stream by thousands of people like me being held aside, needing only a few hours of TLC and a few parts to return them into use. But like crusty deposits gradually restricting a cycling free flow of materials, accumulated bicycles can reach a tipping point where they clog, block, and overwhelm wherever they end up.

For a long time I heard (normal) voices in my head any time I went to throw an unwanted frame or parts away to recycling. These thoughts would make a case for saving the bike. I would hear a whole lecture on the potential value of that frame, the journey that frame had taken from the crumbs of a long dead star to the formed frame before me, intoning massive guilt if I were to end its journey by putting it into a scrap tip. I would be frozen in my tracks by these internal deliberations, and the detritus of parts, wheels, and frames would start to clog the workspace.

These weren’t things that were desirable or easily sold either. One frame in particular is a huge vintage steel viscount frame that has gone through a half dozen folks like me, each one unwilling to end the “story of the frame”, but no one wanting to ride it. So many Huret derailleurs, so many stem shifters, so many kickstands, Shimano altus brakes with broken plastic bits, narrow 3 speed fenders, narrow 70’s drop bars, and tons of other parts that are ubiquitous because no one wants them unless they are both pristine and rare examples.

Even when I would finally convince myself that no one needs or wants these parts anymore, anywhere… a voice whispers, “What about for art projects?” and I am again frozen. I imagine a robot skeleton made of bike parts. I think of a possible butterfly sculpture for next years Bicycles on Main event using those two old police bike frames. The torrent of thoughts is exhausting. Eventually I corral things back into perspective.

With some meditation, visualization, support from my family, rewatching a lot of Tidy Up with Marie Kondo, and doing the hard emotional baby steps of decluttering, I brought two recycle bins full of old parts to the transfer station. I reorientated my whole stagnant workshop and purged constipated piles of parts so that I could “breathe” again as a bike mechanic, and work could FLOW through my doors.

I realized that the bike that was in one work-stand was there for 4 months and the other for 2. I pushed through the two month bike and got it ready to donate, using the empty stand to do the same to two more. With 3 bikes out of the way, and momentum building, I painted my tool walls a fresh color, removed some cluttering decals that no longer made me smile, and freshened up the cats lounging bins.

So while some people joke about n+1 being the root to their happiness, I know that for me, n-1 is my path forward.