It's been a bit age-dependent for me. When I was younger, I was all-in for DIY projects around the house, doing my own tiling, light-duty carpentering, painting, plumbing... but now firmly in middle-age, I'm sort of *actively* not interested in those things. Maybe you could chalk it up to somewhat more disposable income now as opposed to when I was a grad student, but I really don't think that's it. I've started to resent things that take up *time*. Even if I'm not using the temporal savings to do other work or "useful" things, my valuation of time is way higher now to use for little side interests, relaxation, reading... whatever. Last year we were going to paint our bedroom/bathroom, but realized it was realistically a 3-weekend project between going for supplies, prep, painting, cleanup. Nope. Happy to pay for a professional to do it in a 1.5 days while we could do other things, even if it put a wrinkle in the budget.
Much like your friends, I'm a little surprised that an experimental physicist who has showed an interest in stuff moving (I seem to recall old blog posts where you've captured motion of falling balls or sliding kids and compared that to predictions) wouldn't be into tinkering with mechanical stuff like a bicycle. The basic tools are less expensive than the baseball equipment, at least.
If I had something I wanted to do that required me to tinker with the bike-- say, I wanted to blog about the physics of gears and chains and whatnot-- I would happily lose DAYS to dicking around with the mechanics of it. What I generally want from the bike, though, is to burn some calories moving at mildly unsafe speeds, and I only have a limited time I can carve out for that-- an hour or so per day, maybe a bit more on weekends depending on the baseball schedule. I'm not interested enough in the mechanism per se to want to spend my limited exercise time on recalibrating the derailleurs.
I get that -- I have a friend who used to be a software developer and he wanted nothing to do with designing or putting together PCs...I was only a student/hobbyist but I love all that stuff and am frequently the go-to for friends to build or purchase PCs. It's like the time itself is fun, rather than something like fixing the car where I'd rather pay someone else to do it (which is also definitely faster) -- I'm by no means a mechanic but I can change the oil or put a new window switch in, I just feel that it's work and my time is worth more to me than the money I'd pay someone else.
(That said I am a hobbyist photographer and I do geek out about gear a bit, not to the point of 4-digit lenses though and my DSLR is about ten years old)
I'm with you on the bike. I sometimes try to fix stuff I am not familiar with but it usually ends up taking way more time than it is worth.
Still burns me up that the tune-up is like 1/3 the cost of the bike.
The obvious solution to that is to get a more expensive bike!
It's been a bit age-dependent for me. When I was younger, I was all-in for DIY projects around the house, doing my own tiling, light-duty carpentering, painting, plumbing... but now firmly in middle-age, I'm sort of *actively* not interested in those things. Maybe you could chalk it up to somewhat more disposable income now as opposed to when I was a grad student, but I really don't think that's it. I've started to resent things that take up *time*. Even if I'm not using the temporal savings to do other work or "useful" things, my valuation of time is way higher now to use for little side interests, relaxation, reading... whatever. Last year we were going to paint our bedroom/bathroom, but realized it was realistically a 3-weekend project between going for supplies, prep, painting, cleanup. Nope. Happy to pay for a professional to do it in a 1.5 days while we could do other things, even if it put a wrinkle in the budget.
Much like your friends, I'm a little surprised that an experimental physicist who has showed an interest in stuff moving (I seem to recall old blog posts where you've captured motion of falling balls or sliding kids and compared that to predictions) wouldn't be into tinkering with mechanical stuff like a bicycle. The basic tools are less expensive than the baseball equipment, at least.
If I had something I wanted to do that required me to tinker with the bike-- say, I wanted to blog about the physics of gears and chains and whatnot-- I would happily lose DAYS to dicking around with the mechanics of it. What I generally want from the bike, though, is to burn some calories moving at mildly unsafe speeds, and I only have a limited time I can carve out for that-- an hour or so per day, maybe a bit more on weekends depending on the baseball schedule. I'm not interested enough in the mechanism per se to want to spend my limited exercise time on recalibrating the derailleurs.
I look forward to the post about gears and chains! :-)
I get that -- I have a friend who used to be a software developer and he wanted nothing to do with designing or putting together PCs...I was only a student/hobbyist but I love all that stuff and am frequently the go-to for friends to build or purchase PCs. It's like the time itself is fun, rather than something like fixing the car where I'd rather pay someone else to do it (which is also definitely faster) -- I'm by no means a mechanic but I can change the oil or put a new window switch in, I just feel that it's work and my time is worth more to me than the money I'd pay someone else.
(That said I am a hobbyist photographer and I do geek out about gear a bit, not to the point of 4-digit lenses though and my DSLR is about ten years old)