SKYLER CHUN
COPY EDITOR
Outside from students’ busy school schedules and extracurricular activities, many still find the time to take part in their own unique hobbies as well. For Moanalua High School senior Brenden Inoue, that hobby is working on bicycle and car mechanics.
Inoue started gaining an interest in cars from a very young age, as his father was a mechanic for exotic cars himself and was always surrounded by them.
“Even as a very young child I would always be awestruck when a nice classic car cruised by, or when someone in a high performance blasted past me,” Inoue said.
As Inoue got older and started studying cars more in depth, he started reading his dad’s books on the different systems within the car and how to fix them. He began to help his dad with costumer’s cars as well.
“Some of the best things I’ve done as far as working on cars are things such as swapping out an entire motor and transmission, helping to prepare Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s for the car show, and take apart an entire motor in one day,” explained Inoue. As his list of accomplishments grew, he later began to turn his attention towards bicycles as well.
As for bikes, Inoue learned pretty much on his own. He first started off knowing very little about the different parts of the bike and how they work, but by using his knowledge about cars, he was able to self-teach himself about bikes too.
“My main influences are my friends, Dane Hamada and Ezra Gines. They are very much responsible for allowing me to know as much as I do,” Inoue said.
Dane Hamada, a Moanalua High School class of 2018 graduate, described how their love of riding bikes started off their strong friendship. “I met Brenden at the bike rack around the middle of sophomore year and we just started talking about all kinds of bike-related things. After that, we just started riding everyday from the shopping center to school and hanging out,” Hamada explained.
“[My friends] always come to me with different techniques to fix something or new pieces of equipment I’ve never seen before. They have taught me a lot and still are today,” Inoue said.
“Just knowing how something works in a physical sense, rather than a theoretical sense, helps when designing new products as an engineer,” Inoue said. Recently, he has been talking to his dad more about how to get more power out of an engine and the different parts that are specific to certain cars.
But no matter how much Inoue already knows about cars, his curiosity pushes him to continue to learn more. Using what he already knows about the structure of automotives, bicycles and its appliances, Inoue hopes to become a mechanical engineer in the future.
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