Tuesday, May 08, 2007

VelociPete's Bicycle Maintenence Tips

Today's Tip: Quick and easy chainring cleaning

In today's maintenence tip, I'm going to tell you how to quickly clean the dirt and grime from your chainring.
1. Walk bike up to your children's bus stop and see them off on their way to school.
2. Swing right leg over bike as school bus pulls away. Listen for tell-tale ripping sound, indicating you've torn a seam in your pants.
3. Ride back into the driveway so you can change your pants before going to work.
4. Accidentally get your foot stuck in the clipless pedal.
5. Totter precariously, about to fall over because you can't put your foot down. Flail your arms a bit for the neighbors' entertainment.
6. At the last minute, regain your balance and plant your right foot. Here's the important part. As you plant your foot, make sure your calf scrapes the chainring. This will ensure that all the grime transfers from the chainring to your leg. And the blood will act as a lubricant and cleanser on the chainring.

That's it! Depending on how large your chainring and/or calf is, you may need to rotate your cranks partially and repeat the process. Try to get the cuts on your calf to overlap so you can get a totally bitchin' scar out of the deal.

Tomorrow's tip: How to diagnose early signs of lockjaw.

Date: May 8
Mileage: 20
Ride type/Bike: Commute/Schwinn
May mileage: 125
Year to date mileage: 1413

4 comments:

Smudgemo said...

Dude, you should drive more.

KM said...

Hey, could we make a class around this for our next maintenance series?

Frostbike said...

I'd pay $40 for that.

Reflector Collector said...

I've often thought that if I got a tattoo (which I've even MORE often thought I wouldn't) I'd get (or not) a tattoo of a chainring grease mark on my calf. If I decided for going full color, now I'm inspired to have some dripping blood added. (Or not)