I still use a desktop computer for some of my computing needs. The computer shows me pictures “From This Day”. I like to click on it and see what I was doing on this day in past years. I specially enjoy pictures from the winter months. The computer has several thousand pictures that I’ve taken over the years. Mostly pictures of my bikes in beautiful surroundings. Here is a sample of what popped up yesterday for the date of January 21st.
Enjoy.
I can’t remember how long I’ve been attending this New Year’s Day Ride. I reckon I started going around 2004 or 2005. I’ve gone every year since, with one exception. I missed 2009 because I was recovering from surgery for a shattered humerus bone in my right arm. The ride dates back 35 or 40 years. Originally being a road ride. This year they added the option of a road ride or a fat tire ride on the local mtb trails due to the growing popularity of fat tire bikes. Since I spent the previous two days on my fatbike and was feeling the efforts, I opted for the traditional road ride.
Velo Duluth is a bicycling club that has gone mostly dormant. I still pay my membership fee every year. It gets me an in-store 15% discount off parts purchased at Twin Ports Cyclery. This years ride attracted a modest group of around 12 or 14 riders. The temperature was a balmy 30F degrees. Unusually high. I started the ride with a small group of six. The plan was to head towards Canal Park and then out to Park Point. A nice 15 mile round trip. I ended up bailing on the group in Canal Park and heading home. My gut hasn’t felt right since the middle of last week. I was enjoying being out on the bike, but needed to be setting my own pace.
I was joking with Susan the day before. I was mentioning I was going to the ride. These days it is often the only group ride I do all year long. As an introvert, I joked, I try to get that group ride thing checked off the list on the first day of the year. Then I can say I’ve done my group ride for the year. It helps lower my social anxiety for the next 364 days.
It was a beautiful day to be out on a bike. Sunshine and “warm” temps. The street conditions were exactly what my A-train Super Commuter was designed for. Lots of sloppy slush, salt and sand with patches of ice.
The side streets are mostly covered in an inch of ice from the Christmas Day rain/snow/sleet storm. On top of the ice is a nasty mixture sand, salt, and slush. The A-train’s belt drive, Rohloff IGH hub, disc brakes, and stainless steel frame are impervious to this bicycle-eating concoction. It’s a dream to ride in these conditions.
Happy New Year to all the reader’s of this blog.
Rohloff Internally Geared Hubs run in an oil bath. The only regular maintenance that needs to be done is to change the hub oil every 3,000 miles or once a year. If you ride in harsh and/or wet conditions you should stick to that schedule, or you can change it more frequently. Since our winters last almost 7 months, I make a point to change the oil in the Spring time regardless of the number of miles since the last change.
The first step is to remove the oil drain screw and add cleaning oil to the hub with a syringe.
Then you need to circulate the cleaning oil in the hub to loosen old oil. You can do this by turning the cranks with the bike in a bike stand for 5 minutes. Or you can simply take it for a ride. Given we were having one of the most glorious Spring days of the year so far, it was a no brainer. I took it for a ride.
After circulating the cleaning oil, you need to drain all of the old SPEEDHUB oil and cleaning oil you added. You achieve this by threading in the oil change tube and letting it drain overnight.
The oil is black in color. This means it was definitely time to change the hub oil. Grey colored oil is good. Black is not so good. The hub is so tightly sealed it is quite difficult to get the oil to drain since air needs to displace the draining oil. Air needs to get in through the oil change tube. I think it would be good to have two drain holes. One to drain the oil and the other one on the opposite side of the hub to let air in. Then you wouldn’t have to let it drain all night. It would come out all at once.
Tomorrow I’ll add new SPEEDHUB oil with the syringe and oil change tube, replace the oil drain screw and the job will be done. This is so much easier than doing maintenance on Shimano Nexus or Alfine hubs. I’ve done both. It requires totally dismantling the hub and pulling all the “guts” out of the hub shell. It’s not bad once you’ve done it a few times. But simply changing the hub oil on a Rohloff is incredibly easy in comparison. You don’t even need to remove the wheel from the bike. I don’t miss the Shimano IGH days.
four season cycling 