Free Bike maintenance Book now in Spanish

We live in an awesome world. This morning I opened my email to find a wonderful gift from one of my readers in Chile. Eugenio Valencia of San Felipe took the time to translate my free Ebook on bike maintenance into Spanish.Eugenio told me that he has cycled since he was 5 and that he has covered at least half of his country by bike since then.

Join me in thanking him for his great gift and all the best to you all for the festive season. Take note that the Spanish version is a bit big since it is a Word document. Anybody out there that could convert it to pdf would be greatly appreciated since I don't have the means to do so right now.

Update: Neil Massey, a reader from the US, provided me with a pdf copy which you can download now.

Free Bike Maintenance Book in Spanish .doc

Free Bike Maintenance Book in Spanish .pdf  (Thanks Neil )

Free Bike Maintenance Book in English

Gerry  :)

LINK TO FREE BIKE BOOK FIXED

It was reported by a reader that one of the links to my free bike maintenance book was defective. For some reason unknown to me, the file sharing site I was using deleted the file. I've uploaded the file again and also made the copy on dropbox.com publicly available. So with these two and the one on issuu.com that makes 3 copies available at all times.The odds that all 3 vanish in one fell swoop are pretty slim.

You can view or download the book from this post: http://www.howtofixbikes.ca/2009/02/free-bicycle-maintenance-book-its-here.html

Feel free to keep me posted on dead links or missing stuff anytime, it's truly appreciated.

Until next time, ride safe and Godspeed.

Thank you Crystal :)

Gerry

The mountain bike for the beginner

Here's a publication that I found on issuu.com that explains everything about riding a mountain bike off-road. It is a bit hard to read since it's all hand written but the information is top notch and to the point. Enjoy!

Get your own - Open publication

Until next time, ride safe and Godspeed.

Gerry :)

Free Bicycle Maintenance Book, IT'S HERE!

Well it's been a long time coming, but it's finally here. I thought that writing a book about bicycle maintenance would be a pinch since I knew my subject pretty well, how wrong I was! Putting something down in writing like that is much more intensive than I expected despite the fact that I've been publishing this blog for almost 3 years now.

I decided to forgo copying and pasting the blog outright and went ahead by starting with a blank page. New images were made as well for this document. 40 pages of bicycle how-to's and tips for the novice bike mechanic with keeping in mind that not everybody is comfortable with a bunch of technical bla bla.

Many thanks to my darling wife who is a magician with Word. She took my pile of crap and made something awesome out of it. I love you baby. :)

I hope you enjoy this book and find it useful. Download the pdf for free right now and feed on my experience. Yeah, you read it right, free! Print it, use it. You're only invited to make a donation of the amount of your choice.

View the book here

Get your own - Open publication

or

DOWNLOAD THE BOOK HERE

or

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

Wow! 3 000 downloads in 12 days, amazing! I'm glad to see that the book is being appreciated.

As always, comments are always welcomed.

Until next time, ride safe and Godspeed

Gerry :)

You can read some excerpts of the book here

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Once again another year is over and a new one begins. This blog is in its third year and the fun never stops. I plan on continuing to give you the best information about bikes in the matter that you are used to.

I was planning to use my holiday break to finish my bike maintenance book. I had figured that all that was left to do was the format to make it look nice...AAAAAAAAARGH! Somehow I got a brain fart somewhere and just realized that I have a few more things to do.

So, I will publicly commit myself to you, my readers, on getting this manual available online to you by February 15th 2009. Mark your calendars because I am usually pretty good with deadlines. This does not qualify has a New Years resolution, actually I have another post on this coming up in the nest few days, but an actual commitment to get my lazy butt in gear. It's fun being lazy but it gets boring fast and it's very counter productive.

I hope that all of you and your families have a prosperous, safe and happy 2009.

Until next time, ride safe and Godspeed.

Gerry :)

UPDATE ON THE BLOG AND OTHER THINGS

Well I'm approaching the second anniversary of this blog in a few days and I thought it would be cool to do a little recap and let all of you know what's coming up. When I started this website I had no clue what I was doing, well apart from fixing bikes of course. :) If I had, I would have done a few things differently, but i guess that's what life is for. After all, success is a lousy teacher. I must say however that I'm very happy with the way things are turning out. I've met a bunch of people on and off line, helped a few on the way, helped participate in the rebirth of more than a few bikes and had a great time doing it.

A big "thank you" to all of you, you've made this blog what it is and I think it is more than appropriate to adorn this post with the picture of a reader's bike. The one speed you see pictured is the pride and joy of Johann from South Africa and if you can believe it, he crossed a 100km desert with it. He's planning a 2300km cross country trip next year. Awesome ride Johann.

I know that how to articles have been slow to come lately, but don't despair. I have one around the corner about replacing a rim the easy way stemming from my current Rat Bike Build Off project. Answering emails, comments on the blog and giving time at the local community bike shop has also kept me very busy. A recent email has also prompted me to start something I have been putting on hold for too long, a book.

I was contacted by a publishing agent to write a book about bike repair. The deal never came to fruition and I decided to go about it myself. Wow, talk about a mine field when it comes to publishing a book! My day to day job is a cake walk compared to that.

So in the spirit of Wikinomics and this blog, I've decided to publish it myself and make it available through here. No middle man, so I'll be able to offer it for donations. Just like Radiohead did with their new album, you'll be able to download it and give whatever you want. A hard copy will also be available through Cafepress for a decent price. The writing is all done(no copy and paste, all fresh text) and I'll use some of my vacation time coming up in the next weeks to take the pictures. That's it, I've just committed myself, so keep posted.


Til next time, ride safe and Godspeed.

Gerry :)