Maintenance
Bicycle maintenance always falls in and out of favor for me. The same can be said for maintaining my body. Since my back was acting up again this weekend, it was time.
Listening to my body always presents a challenge for me. I can acknowledge how I’m feeling but run into a lot of internal conflict because I still feel obligated to keep up with my normal routine. So am I reallyyyyy listening to my body? I guess I am but then ignore what it has to say anyway.
But this Sunday, rather than feeling guilty for not being out riding, I took the opportunity to still make it a day about my bikes since right now, cycling is my main outlet. Both bicycles have been LONG overdue for a cleaning and while I ALWAYS get compliments on my matching purple cycling shoes and handlebar tape, the time had come for a tape refresh - for aesthetic reasons, but also because the foam had collapsed on the flats of my handlebars.
I set up shop in my living room and got to work with cleaning. No matter how much I clean my chain, cassette, and jockey wheels, they never actually GET clean. I was doing an organized ride through Massachusetts with a few friends last summer. One of them is on a professional cycling team and offered to change a flat for me since he could do it in about 1/10th of the time it would take me. In the process, he commented about how dirty my chain was. I HAD JUST CLEANED IT TO PREPARE FOR THIS RIDE A FEW DAYS EARLIER. This time, I had a renewed level of determination and felt bolstered by my support team, Beatrice and Ralph.
Ignore what appears to be a general mess and litter boxes - it’s all part of the process.
While cleaning my cassette, I thought it would be a good time to make my second attempt at removing the plastic pie plate, perhaps better known by the term, “dork disc”. If I’m trying to be cool, I can’t have a dork disc on my bike! Just kidding, my real reason for removing it this time was to be better able to clean my cassette. I was really determined to get into every nook and cranny, and spent time scraping out all of the dirt and gunk built up between the cogs.
Next, I started making adjustments to my shifter reach. Earlier this year, I started to notice how difficult it was for me to reach these levers when I was doing a lot of descending on some steep hills and had to feather my brakes a lot. I found this tutorial video on adjusting the Shimano Sora shifters that are on my road bike. It was easy enough and I got a little more practice adjusting my brake pads by lengthening the actual cable and by using the barrel adjusters. I didn’t take any pictures during this because by this point, I was working on these items for longer than I’d like to admit/longer than it should probably have taken me.
Then came the handlebar tape! WHICH ALSO TOOK ME AT LEAST THREE TRIES. I’ll show you the left drop bar for now because it is neater and the bar end plug is actually in properly. I can’t say I was as successful on the right drop - the tape isn’t evenly spaced in one section and I didn’t leave enough tape at the start so I had trouble getting the end plug in. Nothing electrical tape can’t temporarily fix, right? I need a better solution.
I never got around to cleaning the Pack Rat…
The next day, it was time to take the bike out for a spin, both to see how my back felt and to make sure my bike would stay together after my own attempts at working on it.
MAN, this handlebar tape gave me a new lease on life! I was riding around Prospect Park, admiring my handy work and my bike’s new look.
I rode for about ten miles before heading over to Gold Star Beer Counter for a celebratory beer.
When I was riding through the park, I had heard someone shout my name. I thought it might have been Claudia, but I wasn’t certain.
It was in fact Claudia!
I went back home to take care of some things the rest of the day but it wound up being so nice out that I wanted to go for another ride later that night. This new tape has some magical powers.
I rode around my neighborhood, narrowly avoiding the shooting that happened in Brower Park that evening. Despite that incident, it was a beautiful night and it felt good to be out on my bike twice in one day.
When I got home, I received a judgmental look from Martin. How did this happen to my saddle?!
On top of that, I looked down to see this:
Guess all that scrubbing didn’t pay off anyway…
