The bike doctor makes house calls...

For the past three years, I've seen that van, always parked by a house in my neighborhood, with that unique paint job that proclaimed: “Flying Sprocket, mobile bicycle repairs”. I never thought much about it, until two things happened.

First a friend of mine, who is also a neighbor, told me to try this service and then, this past Saturday, as we were on our way to another early-morning mountain-bike ride, a terrible noise came out of nowhere around my back wheel and I couldn't quite figure what it was. A rider descending in the opposite direction stopped and offered to help me; he looked briefly at my bike, pulled his Allen-wrench off his pocket, loosen a few screws and told me “your brake pads are gone.” I had just encountered the “Flying Sprocket Doc...” 

I returned home and the first thing I did was to set up an appointment with the man for the following Monday. At 2 pm yesterday, Troy Michaud showed up in his van and took the time to take care of my bike. He just didn't work solely on the back brakes, but the front ones as well, changed a paper-thin rear disk brake rotor too and some cables that were frayed.

The job was done on the spot, by my house and to perfection! Troy also shares the same last name as my brother in law, Jean Marc Michaud, back in France, but knows a lot more about bikes than my relative will ever do. Troy Michaud used to be a road bike racer before becoming a mechanic and that wonderful family-bike doctor now makes house-calls for a living...