The Magic Satchel

This weekend I decided it was time to chisel off the winter dirt and get my bike ready for spring.

I took everything I could off the bike and scrubbed for over two hours to get everything back to an acceptable level of clean. All winter I wanted to wash my bike (and I did take it through a car wash once or twice), but for the most part I had to just add more chain lube and keep riding because it was always too cold to really clean it.

Let me tell you something, a winters worth of grease, grime and salt are not kind to bike parts. not kind at all. I believe I may need to be replacing some parts at some point (rear derailleur in particular) but things are in surprisingly good shape after a season of neglect.

I did minor maintenance stuff like brakes (pad replacement, adjusted cables) changing from my winter tires (Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106 studded tires) to my summer tires (Specialized Nimbus), and cleaning the chain. everything was looking good, I did a minor test ride to check things out and I could stop, nothing fell apart, I was feeling good and looking forward to riding today.

Then it started to snow, and continued to snow. more snow is in the forecast, and I’ve got my next to no grip tires on.

The sidewalks appear to be mostly free of snow and ice, but all it takes is one patch and I’d tumble like a house of cards (and I’m still recovering from a fall about a month ago) and I know there are a number of places on my route that ice patches like to lurk long after the snow is gone.

Take a hike snow, it’s almost %@$# May!

/end rant

Anyway… I’m looking forward to using my newly tuned up bike, that is once old man winter goes on vacation for another 5 or 6 months.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 8:21 am and is filed under Alan, Cycling, Sports.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.