Residents and visitors around Central Park Apartments at 21 Brooklyn Rd may have noticed a new presence on the ground floor.  Mechanical Tempest is Wellington’s community DIY bicycle workshop, operating in various locations around the city for over 20 years.  We are very excited to have found a new home with Te Toi Mahana and getting to know this community.  

Mechanical Tempest is an entirely volunteer-run organisation dedicated to helping give people access to tools and education to empower people to maintain and repair bicycles.  Our aim is to make sustainable transportation options like cycling more accessible.  All of our services are completely free, and we operate a regular roster of volunteer-led workshop hours, where you can get support with any bicycle-related question you might have.

Visiting the workshop and volunteering with us can be quite a rewarding experience.  One of our newer volunteers described his experience of becoming part of our collective in the story below.

Progress in reverse – Hadrian Slate

Soon after I decided be part of Mechanical Tempest, I received a letter from Nicole with a few questions, one of them: What level of bicycle mechanic experience do you have on your own opinion, 1 being zero experience, 5 being expert.  I wanted to put 5, because I thought I have ridden a bike more then forty years. Then I said myself – Come on man, there are people volunteering at Mechanical Tempest for a very long time, I should have some respect. Ok 4 then said one of my voices. 

A few months passed with me volunteering every Thursday shift except Christmas. So what level would I give myself now after I improved my skill? 

Well somewhere between 1.5 and 1.7 sounds right. Lol 

Somebody might say don’t be so hard on yourself you are working with the expert of Mechanical Tempest, Alan.  Comparing yourself to the best, everyone will feel miserable. For example, in a recent shift we have been working with a tool called ‘Vernier’.  Another name for this tool is ‘micrometer’,  but Alan insisted we call it ‘Vernier’.  For me, some English words very difficult to memorise because it is not my first language and I’m not in my twenties. So I came to Alan like casually a little dancing and said “Can I call sometimes the thing micrometer?”.  He said “No.”. Even after Damain explained to us that this caliper technically is not a Vernier because it does not have a Vernier scale on it. Who knows what that means.

End.