February 2024

Manufacture Berthoud Cycles
Texte : Jean-Acier DANÈS

At the Manufacture, February is a month of paradox

    At the Manufacture, February is a month of paradox - it's the wintertime, surprisingly long and compacted into these short, fast-moving days. Between two cold snaps, we find ourselves riding along windy roads, flooded like rice paddies because the rain never stops pouring down. The landscapes are drowsy. The trees are mired in water-logged clay. It's dark early, cold in the morning and icy at night, but a somehow a cheerfulness can pierce through the clouds and lifts the spirits.

   Every now and then a bend in the road or a forest of moss lights up with great beauty. Is a month with fewer days than usual even more enjoyable? February looks fast like a rocket ship, yet it lingers on every evening when you spend your evenings cleaning off the salt and removing dirt or grime from your bike. There's time off with the children's holidays (you must accommodate everything), there's the sticky cold on long legs and shoes full of mud drops, and there's still the red hands and gloves sticking out of pockets.

    At the Manufacture, February is a training ground and a month of maneuver. We prepare, we tune up, we re-oil, whether we've had a few weeks off the bike and put it in the garage or not. Soon the horizon opens towards spring, and the light floods into the workshop. The same light that is reflected on the mudguards and steel tubes, heralding the arrival of beautiful machines and happy owners. As February rolls around, it's a month of obstacles that we tackle one by one, without refusing. Because to create is to solve!

   - Yes, there are obstacles like a machine that causes jams, a production problem, an innovation, or some form of bureaucracy that create challenge. But the joy of this month is that it provides a window in the year's checkerboard for wintering the boat. So as night falls, because it's raining icy curtains, the sailor maintains his fittings and prepares his ship and his hangar for the return to the water. The rain slows down and the land dries out. Inside and out, a thousand things to brighten up everyday life.

balade à vélo en forêt

Photo credits: © Philippe Marguet

    On the internet, for example, I've discovered with interest (which is becoming a fad) the existence of the #toolboxwars phenomenon: a keyword that allows streams of photos of ingenious assortments to scroll across social networks, giving a quick overview of good ideas for mobile workshops. For most of the time, these kits or cases are those of professional mechanics, those who prepare and adjust cyclists' bikes as precisely as possible. Above all, they are a competition of good ideas, celebrated on the workbench or on the road. Tips and hacks abound in each image that I zoom in on: there, a dentist's surgical curette is used to maintain bearings. Here, a screwdriver containing the right size bits for adjusting mechanical derailleurs or a good reference of hose cutters, made in Europe, is perfectly suited to go through hydraulic brake hoses as if they were nothing.

    Even more than highlighting just how demanding our modern bicycles have become, the neatly arranged layouts of these mechanical trunks encourage the amateur cyclist that lives in me to equip himself better, to become more rigorous and to learn new techniques. What would happen if we stopped stripping or rounding screw heads with the wrong drivers or spanners? If we used the right ratchet, the right torque wrench that we still haven't bought, the right pliers to tighten a nut, unscrew a cassette or open a chain? What if we decided to repair certain tools, like a leaky pump, rather than trying to 'make them work' for another season? The conclusion to be drawn from these few hundred images is true to the adage: few tools are enough to change a world, but they must be of good quality to make life beautiful. So, little by little, week after week, I'm taking advantage of a set of flat or hexagonal keys, a pressure gauge that means I can stop guessing tyre pressure, a screwdriver with the right shape, and so on. Is it growing up? Is it becoming a maniac? Is it about making life easier and making the most of what you've got? In any case, it also allows me to part with certain tools, to donate them to friends who are just starting out their journey as home mechanics, to start new conversations and to develop new techniques.

    February is (finally) drawing to a close and the Cycling Classics are on the horizon. Each year, these races with their inimitable cachet evoke a chapter in the mythology of cycling, a new tableau in the history of the gladiators of the road. They also offer plans for the summer: how about exploring the Strade Bianche on your own? How about starting at home and climbing to the top of the Grammont Geraardsbergen wall before treating yourself to a Belgian drink?

    Creating means solving problems, but it also means imagining the future. Technical obstacles, the outlawing of an old machine, mechanical or management problems can surprisingly open up a joyous moment afterwards, a kind of gap where you find yourself considering the beauty of what you have and what you can do. Maintaining a Berthoud saddle with a Torx No. 20 key that doesn't scratch anything is the simple pleasure of a great, stainless-steel luxury. Year after year, these small gestures herald radiant roads, dancing attacks in the Cols and moments of camaraderie on the bike, despite all the worries and burden of the world around us.

paysage vue par un cycliste

Photo credits: © Philippe Marguet

"I try to read, jumping from country hedge to hedge, the glare of the clouds in the distance in the sky and its demarcation with the brown land. Will the road in the distance be flooded? Will the pass be closed? Absolutely silent roads, but rocking, rocking and lulling legs and calves on fire with the hum of tyres on rain-soaked asphalt. Everywhere, clay, peat, soaked compost, the appearance of a pond and a river emerging heavy from its bed, dragging itself out and beyond the ditches, everywhere diagonal drops of water like sand ripples. Clear skies: springtime soon, in about twenty days' time (as if it were a magic button to actuate the sunny days).

Belgian waffles in the handlebar canvas bag (the little pocket is just the right size to hold vergeoise waffles in a food safe pouch). Inspiration from Flanders, from the South, from a hot dish. The desire to prepare well this year, to take the time to do things properly so as to enjoy the miles to the full. Asceticism. Fitness. The basic kilometres, the background to the outings, the hope of more daytime moments, and also the return of socialising when it used to be too cold to have an aperitif outside sitting against the bike, or because my favourite bakery-shop hadn't put the lovely little table behind its window that I so often linger at on nice days. Last week of the month: reading and working on the photos of the Manufacture, the article appears in the French issue of Cyclist Magazine. Bronze and gilded light, hyperactive clouds".

paysage vue par un cycliste

Photo credits: © Philippe Marguet

All the best in preparing your workshops! See you here next month.

Jean-Acier DANÈS, author of Bicyclettres (Seuil).

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