Right. Well, I’m not your guy for any clean bike questions. I really shouldn’t pay any attention to what color my bike(s) are because once I ride them they will be CR21 colored. Grin. Same with my bags. So I’ll ignore the clean bike questions. My drive train gets dirty, it dries, dirt falls off or sticks and I keep riding. I’ve not found a fender system that allows for actually keeping me and the bike dry AND safe debris clearence with knobbies. Since I ride knoobies, no fenders. Which leaves the clothing equation, to which my startling answer is ... wait for it ... boiled wool socks and ventile gaters. Let ‘um dry, dust them off, ride them again and again untill even I can’t stand them and they get washed, which I’m not sure has ever happened with the gaters, but likely has with the socks. Once a year whether they need it or not. Grin.
1. Keeping feet and shins and stays and bb area dry and clean: what do you all do? Photos? I don’t. Photos would look like a wet muddy road oozed onto my shoes up to my knees. 2. Buildup under fenders that rubs tire (Big Ones; the tread is nominal only); snow did not jam or severely retard tire, but it did rub. Granted there is only a cm or so between top of tire and bottom of fender, but I wonder if some fenders and setups work better than others. I gave up on fenders, so not much help here. Sorry. 3. The slush built up on the cassette, causing the chain to skip -- had at one point to put chain on 27 (big) that stands proud of next smaller. Ideas? Patrick, I expect that fixed or ss free is best in such conditions -- right? Yes. A huge benifit of ss/fixed is no derailure gum/freeze up and when I’m stuck in one gear it’s because I was daft enough to start out that way. Grin. 4. Disc brakes: the pads either swell with wet or, more likely, when wet pick up grit; no jamming, but certainly light rubbing. Backpedal. Of course this only helps if you were knuckleheaded enough to ride fixed. My experience with rim disk brakes is grit in the pads is nearly a non-issue (which astonishes me given the grit that ends up up there) and in 99% of conditions within 1-2 tire revolutions the rim is clear/dry enough to provide more stopping power than the cars on the same roads as me, disconcerting as that is! Grin. 5. SPD mech clogs: can't get feet in, and when you do, can't release. Platform pedals and HoldFast straps are a beautiful thing. 6. How well do hub gears, the ordinary ones, don't mean Rohloff, do in freezing temps and wet snow? >From what I’ve read, they do well untill enough wet gets into the shifting >bits and freezes. From the sounds of it, that’s not an ABQ problem. Grin. A few other notes: smooth icy patches are only navicable via studded tires. All other tires are rubbish on smooth ice. Textured ice and snowpack: knobbies are brilliant. It often happens that going through Woodland Park I have to ride the sidewalks and MUPS through town because the roads are trecherious with ice. My Compass knobbies and Racing Ralphs have fairly widely spaced knobs, so shed snow/mud fairly quickly, and what ends up on me is minimal (except for the afore mentioned mud, which is largly synonymous with slush). Sorry I’m not more help. With abandon, Patrick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
