Picture of the day
The bicycle on the last trip with the less-than-satisfactory Bontrager hardcase tires (since replaced by a pair of 28mm Vittoria Randonneur tires, which just barely fit into the 35mm fender wells,) when I paused at the brickyard on the east side of Gresham to try to figure out why the chain was beginning to go squeaky-squeaky on me.
The squeaky-squeaky was (temporarily) subdued by a liberal application of teflon chain lube, and the old tires are tucked away in a corner, waiting for me to find some use for a pair of gashed-up 25mm tires. And, look, you can’t really see just how filthy the pink handlebar tape is getting after a mere 1000km or so (every time I changed a flat on the old tires I came away with black chain and tire dust all over my hands, which cheerfully transferred itself onto the formerly bright pink tape. Sigh. When I replace the handlebars (the lhs horn is twisted in just a tiny bit from the right hook accident on Oahu 15 years back, and it might be nice to have a symmetric tiller once again) I’ll probably go for fashionably dirt-hiding black tape (with sparkly tassels on the ends of the handlebars, perhaps? That might be overkill, given that I appear to be the only person in Portland who’s married a Free Radical to a touring bicycle)) or how much mud has gotten caked inside the fenders during some of the wetter trips I’ve taken out on the line.
The funny thing was that this trip, even though it was quite cold, didn’t seem to be nearly as effing cold as the loop I took today, which was allegedly warmer, but which was really damp and felt really really cold, even though I was working hard enough to leave a trail of sweat all the way out and back.