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Weekends are amazing!

My job is brilliant because we can finish up after lunch on a Fri and the weekend therefore feels longer. Usually, especially in the winter, I will find myself either on Fri or Sat afternoon cleaning the week’s muck off the bike. I’ve got this down to a fine art now so can do a quick clean in 15 mins or a more in depth deep clean in an hour.

It’s good to keep the bike in smooth working order for many reasons. For example:

  1. Clean components last longer, therefore it costs lest to maintain;
  2. It gets rid of some annoying creaks, rattles and squeaks;
  3. Sometimes you will spot something more serious when cleaning that would otherwise go unseen;
  4. Salt is deadly for a bike so get it off ASAP;
  5. Clean bikes just look better!!!
Cleaning Chores

I’ll do a post some time later on cleaning tips, but for this week I just gave it a quick once over with some bike cleaner and sprayed a coat of protection film over it. The drive-train (chain/cassette/chainset) were looking fine as I just put them on a week ago so I just left them for this week.

I also took out the rear brake cable that has been giving scary problems (freezing in the cold mornings). Thankfully I managed to fit a new one without any real issues, although there was a dark slimy gunge that came out of the outer sheath when the new cable went in. This might be partly to blame for the freezing: time will tell. Using advice from the comments on my previous post (Freezing my b****s) I oiled the cable before inserting and squirted a generous amount of GT-85 into the outer cable beforehand.

The forecast is for a very cold 2 weeks ahead so I will know whether this has been successful or not pretty soon…

Spending so long on the bike each day is great as I can eat pretty much whatever I want. However, it’s important to make sure that I eat enough through the day so as not to run out of energy half way. It’s always good to have plenty of supplies at the start of the week, so I was delighted to smell this cake on Sun afternoon:

Coffe and cake in one!!!

It’s going to be a good week! 🙂

[Check out my new page on The Route]

CycleCommute.CC
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Comments (2)

  1. CycleCommute.CC

    Reply

    Made it to work on Mon morning and the brake didn’t freeze. Lowest temperature was -3.5C so it might not have been cold enough to happen yet.

    Annoyingly, it’s one commute into the week and already been blasted at twice by passing vehicles. Leaving at 6am with fairly quiet roads too 🙁

  2. bill

    Reply

    Cake! Now that’s something I can REALLY get on board with 😀
    (Less so with cleaning the bike)

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