Saturday, November 29, 2008

Winter



The past 2 months' Saturday morning mountain bike rides have been very autumnal. Clear skies, crispy cold to start and then warming as the hours pass.

This morning was the first proper winter ride - grey, relentlessly cold and loads of mud. Bursts of mud-traversing-horsepower pushed through summer softened bikes led to a large number of "mechanicals" including a major one after a fall (by luck rather than skill - this was not me).

For the cognoscenti a wrenched handlebar crushed the top of the fork steerer - this meant that the spacers had to be moved above the stem so that it was gripping lower down on what was left of round steerer tube. Getting the spacers off past the squished tube involved comedy application of nature's hammer - being a large lump of wood.

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The derailleur hidden in the mud above is the last bit of XT equipment on my bike. It knows that there is an XTR replacement sitting waiting for it to fail - because of this it keeps on working - happily shuffling the chain side to side under the most dire of circumstances.

The boots, by the way, are Specialized Defrosters. Warm and dry - I recommend them.

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