Our middle son needed a new scooter but had been hanging on to his mini-micro he outgrew 18 months ago because he loved it. We’d suggested a bunch of new ones but didn’t get any uptake. I found an old broken Mongoose sticking out of a ditch on an evening lockdown walk. The front wheel had fallen off, the headset was jammed and the paint was very badly scratched and dinged. I fished it out and showed it to Will; he wasn’t very impressed. We talked about how we could fix it up, custom paint jobs, new handlebar colours, and he got a bit more involved. We went to Halfords and chose primer and a colour scheme from the rattle can rack, then the skate shop for bar grips and new deck tape. After showing him how to unbolt parts things got moving . . . He spent an afternoon scratching the old tape and stickers off and we sanded off the dings and rust together.
I wish I’d remembered to take a before picture as it was quite a state. I spent an evening cleaning and repacking the headset, the bearings were fine. We took it on holiday and spent another evening doing a paint design on paper and masking it up. He got really involved, then ran out of patience with the sanding and Bridget did have to ask “who’s project is this?” at one point. But he got interested again when the paint came out and had a go and we finished it up, put it all back together and now he has an awesome renewed custom scooter!
This was a great little project, Will has a £150 scooter for £25 in paint and spares. He learnt the value of repairing something over and above just buying something new, and how to do that. We saved something going in to landfill that had a perfectly good usable life ahead, we cleaned up junk from our local area, we got creative, and most importantly we got to do something cool together and not just argue over home schooling. There is a revolution in consumption about to hit us like a steam train. If we want nice things, we will have to do it ourselves a lot more in the future, and that will be just fine.