Anyone who’s read my previous posts will know I love my bike. Recently though, it’s become apparent it seriously needs a service. Conveniently, my local shopping centre’s bike store has a half price service deal at the moment, so I rang them on Friday to see if I could drop it in. Inconveniently, I couldn’t find a time when I could leave it there overnight and pick it up again before I needed to ride it to work. I’d pretty much resigned myself to riding with heaps of noise, and dodgy brakes, but this morning I thought about what needed to be done and knew I could do it myself. I just really didn’t want to.

But I got a huge bucket of soapy water, a couple of old towels and started cleaning it. The last time I had it serviced, the guy in the bike shop told me 80% of services are usually cleaning, so I scrubbed ’til it sparkled, and damn it looked good. The dodgy brakes were because of severely worn pads, so I replaced them, then got a tub of grease (and couldn’t help thinking about Groundskeeper Willie from the Simpsons saying “grease me up, woman”) and covered my chain with goo. Finally I chopped off the foam on the handlebars, which was held on with rubber bands, and put on new handle covers.

When I rode into work this afternoon, it could have been on a brand new bike. Silent. Speedy. Clean. I deliberately took a route with a big hill, just so I could fang up it. And fang I did. I can’t believe the difference, and am almost hanging out to ride in again tomorrow morning.

Quel tragique!

Today I’m loving: yeah, it’s my bike, okay