My shop may look like the patio of a mobile home but there is more here than meets the eye.

Consider these attributes of my shop.

• The floor. The advantage here is that most of what falls off of a bike during repair can be disposed of by sweeping it into the cracks between the patio blocks. Larger detritus can be simply swept into the yard which is mostly sand and highly absorbant to junk.

• The wall. Having only one wall in my shop makes it very easy to move bikes in and out. It also allows the Gulf breeze to waft through making air conditioning unnecessary. Lighting is au naturale by day. There are very few cloudy days in the winter in Florida. Lighting at night is by motion sensing lamps which stay on as long as I keep moving or just wave my arms.

• The orange tree. When I get thirsty or hungry I can pick an orange. I picked it clean by early April this year. The problem is that visitors and customers can also pick my oranges.

• Access to the necessary. My shop has two doors into the house. The most important is the rear door which provides quick access to the bathroom.

• Cooking facility. That black object at the rear is my barbecue grill which allows me to cook supper without stopping work/play.

The bikes in the photo are my red Centurion Iron Man. Just behind it is my Miami Sun tricycle, and in the background my big Raleigh GP on the repair stand. In the right foreground is one of my ladies Hercules. The group is composed of a mixte frame 12 speed Schwinn Traveler, a 12 speed Motobecane, a 3 speed Raleigh Sports, a 3 speed/1 speed, flip/flop fixed gear 193? Hercules, a ladies 3 speed Huffy Bay Pointe we call Pinky Tuscadero, and Ol' Boomer, my custom built Nexus 7 speed cruiser.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my Florida bicycle shop. I welcome your comments.