Tag: 30daysofbiking

April 25th – Riding in the rain when the weather is warm isn’t that bad – once you’re wet, you’re wet and with waterproofs, that takes a good while. But after a week at work, when you’re tired, the light is poor and the traffic relentless, you just want to get home, have a shower, put something fresh on and have a decent cup of tea. 

These bike cam stills give a flavour of the journey. Like riding at night, it’s mentally very demanding, as there’s more stuff that you have to mentally process, and the traffic tends to be mad.

I was glad, If I’m honest, to get home.

April 25th – A dreadful commuting day, really, and not a great one at work, if I’m honest. I returned home late afternoon in a rainstorm. The rain was warm, though, and what wind there was seemed to be behind me. Coming from central Walsall after picking up some shopping, I crossed the Arboretum Junction, and whilst waiting at the lights, noticed the surface water problem here was getting worse. In heavy rain, the asphalt here doesn’t seem to shed water, and a 3-4mm  covering develops over the entire junction. I’ve never seen any road do this before, and must be a peculiarity of the surfacing.

It’s bad enough of a bicycle. Feel sure someone is going to aquaplane across here one day…

April 24th – It’s not often I cover matters of religious division here on 365daysofbiking, but there’s a time and place for everything. I’ve mentioned before that I prefer a gearhub to derailleur gears; low maintenance, reliable, bombproof. Gearhubs, hub gears or IGHs are a divisive thing – I use an Alfine by Shimano; it offers 11 gears at a 404% range, and works like a charm. The disadvantage is it concentrates a lot of weight at the rear of the bike, and life can get really challenging if they fail.

People get very energised about hub gears, and about the oil one should lubricate them with. Allow me to explain…

Last week I had trouble with my gears not engaging correctly. Often with Alfine units – which run in an oil bath – the slipping indicates that the oil in the hub needs a change, and this one hadn’t been done for about 3,000 miles. As it happened, I was wrong; the adjuster mechanism had slipped slightly when I’d last fitted the wheel and resetting it’s position solved the problem, but not before I’d drained the oil and changed it a couple of times for thin stuff.

The standard oil Shimano recommend is thick. The procedure is to remove a small plug on the hub, screw in a length of pipe which attaches to a syringe, and ‘suck out’ the old oil. I generally leave it overnight to drain. I then clean the syringe with alcohol, suck up 25ml of clean oil, and squirt that into the hub. Because this one hadn’t been done for ages, I used a thin oil, and then reinserted the plug, a rode the bike for a while. I then drained the thin oil the same way. I repeated the process until the oil coming backout was reasonably clean.

Rather than use Shimano oil, which is expensive and goes thick in winter, I decided to use oil by another hub-gear manufacturer; Rohlhoff. Rohlhoff hubs contain more plastic parts than Shimano, so their oil should be OK. It’s thinner, but seems like good stuff.

The Rohlhoff oil also comes with a ‘cleaning oil’, so tonight’s job was to drain the hub once more, and pump in 25ml of cleaning oil. I will ride the bike tomorrow, and then drain it again, before finally pumping in the new oil.

Sounds like a parlarver, but it’s easy, really. I love the hub gears, and sometimes, you have to demonstrate you care.

Say it with oil. 

I bet this has made the purists tut their disapproval…

April 24th – Commuting in spring is a joy. Sod the traffic, taking 10 minutes extra and hopping on the canal, or taking a backway rather than the main road provides all manner of rewards. From the beautiful deep pink blossom in Shelfield, to my first set of mallard ducklings at Bentley Bridge, to the guerrilla seeded cowslips on the bank of Clayhanger Bridge the ride is full of contrasts: colour, life and sound.

Gorgeous.

April 23rd – First time my deer magnet has been switched on for weeks. Just over Jockey Meadows, 200 metres or so from the site of the flytipping in the last post, two red deer hinds. One older than the other, both wathced me nervously from right at the bottom of the field, near the brook. These are very long-range photos, so apologies for the poor quality. 

Both ladies were in the moult, so looked a bit threadbare, but otherwise appeared healthy enough. I think they’re part of a larger herd that loafs in the scrub there.

Nice to see them, and a sign as to why we need to look after our vital green spaces like Jockey Meadows and work against the kind of environmental damage caused by the flytipping shown in the previous post.

April 23rd – Spinning home from work, I noticed fresh flytipping in the gateway again at the Shelfield end of Jockey Meadows on Green Lane. A mixture of what looks like building and domestic refuse, it seems to be the usual ‘pull up and shove it off the back of a wagon’ job; unless the culprits have left anything incriminating, or were witnessed, it’s sadly very unlikely they’ll be caught.

People make excuses for this behaviour, saying stuff like ‘If the refuse tips were free for commercial vehicles it wouldn’t happen’ – it would. If you’re prepared to flytip, you aren’t going to go halfway across the borough to an approved tip. The morons who do this do so because it’s easy, relatively risk free, and because, without a doubt, they’re filthy scum with no pride in their environment or concern for others.

It makes me sad and angry.

April 22nd – Using a bike rack, you’re doing it wrong (and making it difficult for anyone else to do so, too).

Photo taken through the train window whilst stopped at Butlers Lane this morning, hence poor quality, sorry.

Come on you dozy wazzock, it ain’t rocket science, is it?

April 21st – Not a bad bank holiday, all-in-all. It started grey, but by the time I got out at 2pm the weather was brighter and warmer than it had been for days. It was hazy, and the sun was breaking through occasionally. I headed out to Harlaston again – but this time, I went by a direct route, and at Clifton Campville, headed to Lullington and Coton in the Elms. From there to Rosliston, then back along the Trent and Tame to Lichfield and home.

The north-easterly was a grim wind to head out into, and it was quite a battle, but it was nice to have it behind me on my return. 

Note that the cherry blossom in Whittington – the top picture – is a good two weeks earlier than a similar picture I have from May 4th, 2010. It certainly has been an early spring this year.