…..998, 999, 1000 – hallelujah!! That's 1000 bicycles patched up, flashed up and back in full working order. A break pad here, a new tyre there.
Those 1000 bikes also meant 10 years of tinkering and pottering in Lex Spencer's ‘Cranky Old Bastard's Shed' in Maungatapu. Lex is a man born to be busy, he loves bikes passionately and has time on his hands.
And it's also meant a tidy money-spinner for the Waipuna Hospice, which flicked on Lex's handiwork at their charity shops. At 1000 bikes – they all add up.
Beryl's fault!
'It's Beryl's fault,” says Lex. Beryl is Lex's wife. He had some little bikes from his days with the Kids Can Ride programme. 'I would slap on a new break pad or pump up a tyre, so a kid could ride safely to school.”
Beryl offered the little bikes to the hospice shop. She reassured them they were good to go because her husband had seen to it personally. And he knows his bikes, he knows his seat posts from his cranksets and spokes. 'But they said they would probably prefer to have her husband instead.”
That's when Lex started fixing bikes for charity – one in just under every two days for the last decade. The reason he knows is because he's chalked up his progress on a blackboard in his shed – for example, 63 in 2014, 98 in 2016, 218 in 2022 etc. And number 1000 is coming off the production line as we speak. He delightfully understates it. 'Mmmm – spose it's something to be proud of.”
And there's no indication he will stop. 'I could stop tomorrow if I wanted. But I don't have to.”
This is a man with one shed chocka to the rafters and beyond with bicycles and bicycle bits, another shed full of bicycles, another room with half a dozen bicycles, including a Tour de France Paris road bike – a most unusual looking machine – and a property dotted with garden art he's made from bicycle bits.
Not obsessive!
'No, no, I wouldn't say I was obsessive,” says the 84-banging-on-85-year-old, fresh in from a 40km romp with his cycling mates. He appeared mildly offended at the suggestion. 'And I have also got my vege garden, and my daughter's vege garden.”
Back in ‘The Crazy Old Bastard's Shed' there are helmets, wheels, handlebars, tyres and tubes and other bike stuff. 'I never have to go to the shop if I'm looking for a bit.” He'll always have a replacement. He just has to find it, or cannibalise it.
And the boxes and drawers – all carefully categorised so he knows exactly where his clamps, ball bearings, gear cables, brake parts, wheel hubs and axles and derailleurs are.
This is a man who cycled 160km around Mount Egmont as an 18-year-old and became a NZ junior time trial champion before a work back injury forced him off the bike and into country cricket. 'Hairy pitches. You never knew if the ball was going to break your toe or knock your head off.”
There was a lull, a big one, a 50-year one between bikes. Then he slowly rekindled his bike interest at 68 and rode half a dozen times around Lake Taupo, also about 160km. 'It stays with you.” Seems so.
One day someone referred to him as a 'bike mechanic”. Lex wouldn't be so pretentious or irresponsible to lay claim to that title. 'I'm not a bike mechanic. I am self-taught. I am more a Mr Fixit.”
And a ‘Mr Fixit' doing selfless and noble work in his cluttered-but-ordered shed in Maungatapu.