[analog31]

For me, being self sufficient for maintenance dramatically alters my cycling experience. Taking my bike to a mechanic would involve loading it into a car and driving it somewhere, waiting, and repeating the process when the work is done.

Naturally, it can take time to get parts, so if something is actually broken, then the bike is out of commission for a while. But a minor benefit of poor urban planning is that I've got space for a spare bike or two, or three, plus a bucket of spares that I've collected over the years from trashed bikes. ;-)

Also, doing the work at home means that there's less of an impediment to keeping the bike in good adjustment more or less continually, so parts don't come loose and start to deteriorate. Major repairs become less frequent. More or less weekly, I go down into the garage and check all of the bikes in the family fleet. The effort is practically trivial. I also involve the kids in this work, whenever possible.

With an eye towards doing my own maintenance, I choose my battles when I get a new (or more likely, used) bike. I prefer parts that are likely to be reliable, and that are straightforward to adjust without a proliferation of special tools.

[jdietrich]

Basic maintenance is an essential cycling skill. Bikes are lightweight machines by necessity, so they can't be over-engineered for reliability. Bikes will inevitably break down on a fairly regular basis.

Fortunately, they're also boneheadedly simple machines to fix. You can learn to change an inner tube, align a derailleur, adjust a brake caliper and true a wheel in about an hour. If you have those skills, you can do 90% of your own repairs. You'll have an infinitely better cycling experience, because you won't end up stranded at the side of the road because of something that could be fixed in two minutes.

[analog31]

Indeed, and it's also a necessary skill if people are going to buy bikes online. I think it's pretty likely that a bike receives its initial adjustment and testing after it's assembled by the recipient. And I've read about quality lapses such as bearings with little or no lubrication, and insufficiently tensioned wheels.