20/04/2010 When is a Plate No Longer a Plate?

When its a bit of twisted metal that used to be part of a bike chain, that's when.

And here's the blog's first ever "regular maintenance is a good thing" posting.  Its not aimed at anyone in particular, lets just say that to utterly humiliate your biking mates, first you need a bike that's ridable!

Llandegla first evening ride for 2010.  Sunny but chilly. Some brave enough to be out in shorts, some not.  Dry, utterly dry, again.  About 2 weeks without any rain to notice.  So much for April showers then.

So let's talk about lube.  Hmmmm, nice.  Lube, lube, lube, then some more lube.  Lube before, lube after.  If you wash your bike, or its been a wet ride, get bike home, apply lube to chain.  If not ridden for a while, lube the chain.  When you've done a few miles, lube the chain.  If its a dry and dusty ride, lube the chain and preferably clean first.  Clean and re-lube your chain every 100 miles or so of off roading.  If you have the patience, have 3 chains available for your bike and rotate them every 250 miles or so with those off the bike being cleaned and stored in, you guessed it, heavily lubed condition.  Chain rotation means you can wear 3 chains down for every 1 set of chainwheels and cassette, making those major components last 3 times longer than wearing 1 set of components and chains at the same time (ask me, I might explain why).

So 15-20 minutes after being ready for the ride, S's bike had the damaged chain link removed, a couple of stiff links freed and lubed and the rear disk brake caliper re-aligned, so we could set off.  And I need to think about priority of spend - I have a really good chain tool in the garage and a cheaper one with the bike.  Given that conditions to fix a chain out on the trail are way harder than in the garage, perhaps the better tool should be with the bike?  One final word on chains (oh, maybe there will be more later, but that comes back to the humiliation bit) - I've had 2 Shimano chains snap on me (both on the MTB), but none of my SRAM chains have ever snapped (road and mountain) in 25 years of riding.  Now that might tell you something.  It might also mean Murphy's law will feature in the next posting/...

So the red was rough, hard, fast, dry and dusty. Great fun and soooo different to the wet and snowy conditions on the same route earlier in the year.  The weather can make the ride feel like you're in a completely different place.  There's a fair chunk of route roped off at the moment - from just below the first short black section, around to near Snowdon view.  I understand that there is much repair work going on and lots of smoothing of the damaged tracks.  Of course, only those that rode the closed section would know that...

Really pleased with the pace last night.  Did the route in 1hr 11mins which is a new PB.  The humiliating bit is finding that riding partner Stuart has completed the route (including leaving me behind on a number of the climbs) using only the middle ring at the front and the middle cog at the back, for the entire route.  Someone needs to buy the guy a fixie MTB!  Well done Stuart.