The very first time my Burning Man RV-mate went to ride his bike, after just having purchased it the day before, the tire went flat.
He didn’t even get one pedal in when he sat on the bike and watched the rim sink into the ground.
Seeing this, my first reaction was to recommend he take it to one of the bike camps and have them fix it—stemming from the same learned helplessness I mentioned yesterday.
But, he had a much different, “This is no big deal” and “It’ll only take five minutes” type of attitude that had him already gathering supplies before I could even finish my thought about which camp to take it to.
…And it was maybe a total of fifteen minutes later when he was riding off on his completely repaired bike, well before any of the bike camps would’ve been able to do anything about it.
Watching him do this and working with my other campmate on fixing her bike gave me a confidence in not only working with bikes, but as I mentioned yesterday, in trusting myself and my own problem-solving skills.
…Skills I realized grow not only with formal teaching, but with experimentation and time invested—something I knew cranially but knew better viscerally after getting down and dirty and actually having done it myself.
Because at the end of the week, on the biggest night of Burning Man—the night of the man burn—as I hopped on my bike to join the camp squad going, guess who got a flat tire?
That’s right.
…And guess who fixed it in about 20 minutes and still made it in time?
That’s right.