The tool in the picture is a chain breaker. It’s used to “break” a link in your bicycle chain so you can remove the chain and repair it or clean it or replace it and then put the chain back on the bicycle and reconnect the link.
I was thinking about this chain breaker and the various master links that I have in my tool kit because the YouTuber and cyclist American Hobo recently suffered from a broken chain in Indonesia. And it occurred to me that I have never broken a chain. In fact, if I ever did break a chain, I would probably be relatively close to a bicycle shop, and I would just wheel my bicycle over there and get an expert to do the work.
Yet, I’ve been carrying this somewhat heavy tool and the spare parts in my tool kit for nearly 30 years. And I’ve never had to use it. Not once. So that got me thinking about whether in the modern world, one needs to be so concerned with emergency repairs and having your own tools for every scenario. Obviously, it’s nice to know how to do these things and be self-sufficient. And in a true emergency when you are far away in a very remote area, it could be a life-saver to be able to fix your own bicycle chain.
But perhaps you should be realistic and ask yourself if you would ever actually be in that situation. Who among us truly goes so far into remote areas that you have to be 100% self sufficient? We might imagine we are going to and we think we are these grand adventurers. But few of us ever live up to that romantic image.
Let’s say you are cycling around Malaysia and your chain breaks, and you DON’T have your own chain breaker, would you be in big, big trouble? Probably not. It would be inconvenient, but not a big emergency. I don’t think the American Hobo had a chain breaker with him, and he managed to do some YouTube tutorial video research and found a way to simply put the chain back together enough to at least keep cycling. And when he gets to the next town with a bicycle shop, he will have them repair his chain properly, or he will just buy a new chain. Crisis averted, and he didn’t have to carry a heavy chain breaker for 30 years just for this one situation. Like me.