This year, there were 116 bicycles up for bid, and to look at them all, lined up in a dirt lot at the far west end of campus, it was easy to see why they were abandoned. Inspecting the rows, it was hard to find any that could be ridden off the lot. Several were missing wheels. Eleven were missing seats. And yet, as always, nearly all of them would be sold.
Steven Keyes was one of the first to replenish the crummy bicycle population on campus when he bought a very beat-up women’s bicycle in a lavender color that matched some blotches in his hair. There were 200 people in the crowd and he was the only one who bid on it. He got it for $5; he may have overpaid.
“This is a terrific bike,’’ he said as he stopped to inspect it, quickly realizing the brakes did not work.
Keyes admitted he didn’t know anything about fixing bikes, but he is a freshman mechanical engineering student.
“How hard can it be?’’ he asked.
This is the great do-it-yourself spirit that is part of the MIT tradition. And this is the exact thought process that makes the day of the annual bike auction the worst day of the year at Cambridge Bicycle, just up the street, because people who fix bikes for a living know that some problems should be left unsolved.
Last year, a mechanic quit rather than spend another day doing triage like a battlefield medic, telling the students - including the many looking for cheap parts - to put the bikes out of their misery.
“We need to break hearts,’’ said Ryan Stanis, a mechanic, as the first customers trickled in from the auction. In the first hour, he had already turned away three.
“Sorry,’’ he told them. “There’s a dumpster out back.’’
It is hard for some of the customers to take; one person snapped at him for not being able to get a rusted crank to turn.
“He yelled at me to try WD-40, as if I hadn’t thought of WD-40,’’ Stanis said, shaking his head.
