The check before you ride
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The check before you ride
Air, brakes, chain, quick, check.
1The lever nobody looked at
A rider swings a leg over and reaches for the bars. The front quick-release lever is standing open. Their foot is already on the pedal.
Everything about that is ordinary except one thing, and catching it takes about four seconds if you look in a fixed order every time.
2It has a name and the order never changes
It is the ABC Quick Check, it comes from the national cycling organization that trains adults, and they say plainly that it applies to electric-assist bikes as well as ordinary ones.
A is air.
B is brakes.
C is chain and cranks.
Quick is quick releases.
Check is a slow test roll before you go anywhere real.
The name and the fixed order are the point. Every riding program in the world has one of these, because a list you do in the same order every time is a list you notice a gap in. A list done from memory in any order is a list you skip the end of.
3What each letter actually passes on
A — pinch both tires. Firm, and pumped to what the sidewall says.
B — squeeze both levers. Neither may touch the grip, and the pads must have something left.
C — lift the back wheel, turn the pedals forward, chain running smoothly, cranks tight.
Quick — every lever closed: front wheel, back wheel, seat post.
Check is the one people leave out, and it is a ride. Roll a few yards at walking pace and use both brakes before you go anywhere with anybody else on it. The classroom version of this check marks you on doing the whole sequence yourself, before riding.
4Build the check
Eight shuffled cards: air, brakes, chain and cranks, quick releases, roll and brake, battery, lights, lock. Drag them into the order you would actually do them. The finished order is shown when you are done, with the reason each one sits where it does.
There is no trick in this one. Do it once and the order stops being a list you have to remember.
5The rear lever comes almost to the grip.
Pick one.
Yes, and this is what the whole check is for. Finding a fault in the drive costs you a ride. Finding the same fault at the bottom of a hill costs you considerably more, and a soft lever is one of the cheapest things on the machine to put right.
Not on something this heavy. One working brake is a plan that holds until the moment it has to be a good plan, and a fault does not repair itself on the way to somewhere with tools. The whole point of running the check before the wheels move is that the answer can be no.
6The three an e-bike adds, after Check
Battery — charged for the ride you are actually doing, latched into its cradle, and looked at. The fire service says to inspect it routinely for cracking, bulging or leaking, and this is when.
Lights — on the machine and working, not at home on a desk.
Lock — with you, before you leave.
The battery one gets skipped most and matters twice. Running out halfway is how a rider ends up pushing the whole machine home in the dark. The other reason is the next lesson.
7Five words, in order
Say it out loud while your hands are on the machine
Air, brakes, chain, quick, check.
Saying it while you do it stops you losing your place halfway through. In a month you will not need the words, and you will still be doing it in the same order.
8Which of these belong in the check?
Pick every one that is right, then press Check.
Find all 4.
Four checks, about ninety seconds, before every ride.
Two of those are a service, not a check. You are not taking wheels off in the drive.
9Open, and closed
Only one of those is holding the wheel in, and it is the flat one. This is the check that takes a quarter of a second and gets skipped anyway.
10Before you leave this page
Run the whole check out loud, in order.
Run the whole thing on your own machine now, out loud and in order, with somebody watching: air, brakes, chain, quick, check, then battery, lights, lock. The standard is the whole sequence, on your own, before you ride. Time it once so you know what it actually costs you.