Watch this excellent short video interview by Andrew David Watson with Adam Cramer of Liberty Vintage Motorcycles in Fishtown, Philadelphia. It's a great piece of art, and also comes with many compelling messages. One of them is the value of knowing how to use tools. Knowing how to fix and build things. I am reminded of this so many times every day at home and at work and while I'm traveling.
It's perhaps the most valuable skill — knowing how to build and fix things. For example, yesterday I interviewed a young woman from New Zealand who is traveling the world on a 250cc motorcycle. Danielle Murdock is her name. She found a bike, modified it for travel, and learned how to fix it. She is fearless traveling alone through places like Russia, East Timor, Australia, Africa, India. She spends less time worrying about breakdowns and more time using her instincts to navigate her way through foreign cultures. She is competent, experimental, and joyful.
I learned how to fix things because my dad was raised on a farm and became an engineer, and my mom is an artist and craftswoman. We always had projects — art, homebuilding, mechanical. Therefore, I am comfortable with just sitting down and figuring things out whether it's plumbing or carpentry or engines. I can kill a chicken, skin a rabbit, shoot a rifle, catch a fish, build a fire, identify some edible plants. It has made me fearless. Or less fearful, at least.
That's the value of learning how to build and fix things.
Knowing how the build and fix things is an extremely valuable skill though manufacturers these days seem to go out of their way to make things non-repairable. Either by their own staff or their customers. I was raised with that mindset and tried to get it pounded into my own children. One is now almost always working on some sort of project.
Excellent post…
Another excellent post. I’m a hands-on self wrencher (I have my GL1800A tore apart doing winter maintenance. Like the film and the previous poster, I can and have built and fixed things.
I, too, am a builder and fixer. My Gold Wing is apart for winter maintenance and I learned to fix things by doing it from an early age.
How did you learn to fix things? Did your parents teach you or did you come to it later?
Parents, relatives and a real interest in taking things apart to see how they worked as far back as I can remember (and, I’m told even further back than that)….
Kill a chicken? I thought you were a vegetarian.
Being able to fix things is basically just knowing how to use the tools. I never learned much from my dad, but had a strong interest, and friends similarly inclined. Most people have the ability to fix and invent. That women don’t do it as much as men gets back to an earlier blog about cultural bias, but it can be very empowering for them.
As for the R word, yeah, you don’t hear that one much anymore. But people today are too easily offended. Thank God you aren’t like that.
I know how to kill a chicken. Have killed a chicken. Might again someday 🙂
Thanks Steve!
I started with my dad, but he wasn’t what you’d call a great teacher. Mostly, I sat in the car and pumped the brakes. I always wanted to know what it meant and what I was actually doing. (Knowledge is obviously not a requisite of compliance)
To anyone looking for more value in work, you need to check out “Shop Class as Soulcraft.” It starts thick, but it’s worth it, very worth it.
Brady
Behind Bars – Motorcycles and Life
http://www.behindbarsmotorcycle.com/