Oh no, spring is on the way

I realized this week, with some alarm, that the first Randonneurs Ontario Ottawa Chapter ride of the season, a 60 km populaire, is on March 18, three weeks away. In one sense this is good news: beginning of cycling season, herald of spring etc. On the other hand, during the winter the only cycling I do is commuting and the occasional errand, so I haven't ridden more than 15 or 20 km at once since about October. I've got to get out and do some longer rides in the next couple of weeks. Excellant descriptions of winter rides like this and this and this make me think I should get out more in the winter. I really hate the cold though. My hands get painfully cold and useless for doing anything very quickly. I'm ok commuting, wearing my giant thrummed mittens (I wear shells over mine), but I doubt I could fix a flat in real cold. On the other hand things are warming up now (although it's only -13 C this morning) and I really must get some miles in the legs.

Hey, I spun off a cog

This afternoon, as I was zipping along on the way to a meeting, I heard a sound from the rear hub and suddenly the cranks weren't turning. I wasn't consciously slowing down so I don't know what caused it to spin off at that moment. Luckily enough, the chain didn't jam and I coasted to a stop. This is the first time I've had a cog come off in the several years (4? 5? 6? I can't remember) I've been riding fixed. I have both front and back brakes and never skid, although I do a fair bit of speed control, more so in winter. I put the cog back on, a grimy business, given the shocking filthiness of my bike, and carried on. I've now tightened the cog up with a chain whip but I suppose in future I should keep a closer eye on how tight the cog and lock ring are. In other news, I replaced my very worn chainring several weeks ago. I didn't have a 42 tooth ring so I put on a 43 which has raised the gearing to about 69 inches (43 x 17). Initially my commute was noticeably more tiring with the new gearing but I seem to have adjusted. It still feels harder but doesn't really tire me out. It's a bit high for days when there's a headwind or there's snow on the ground but I think it should be ideal spring arrives and I take off the studded tire on the front.

When mudflaps turn (bad)

A curious thing happened a week or two ago (yes, if I'd written this the day it happened I could be a bit more precise about when that was but ...) I pulled the bike out of the garage to go to work and found that my front mudflap had frozen into an odd position, so that it was rubbing against the tire. It's a large mudflap made of rubber stairtread material, as described in Alex Wetmore's excellent instructions. I was worried that it would catch on the tire (a Nokian studded W106) and get dragged up under the fender. A couple of times this winter the cable tie holding the fender to the fork crown has broken. One morning, when there was a fair bit of snow on the ground snow jammed between the fender and tire, the cable tie broke and the fender pivoted forward stopping the wheel from turning rather suddenly. I was moving slowly when this happened so I didn't go flying off the bike but it was worrying. What's worse, I had to ride the last few blocks at little more than a walking pace, with the fender getting jammed several times before I reached work. I've been a bit worried about this happening again when I'm moving faster with Bad Consequences. I suspect I should replace the front fender with one that has the metal mounting bracket still in place and bolt it to the fork but I'm worried that I won't be able to get the fender as high. There isn't much tire clearance as it is (hence the snow jamming under the fender.) At any rate, I couldn't think of a way to straighten out the mudflap other than rooting around in the basement to find the heat gun and thawing it out. Worried about a repeat of the pivoting fender problem I resorted to taking the bus. This is the third time this winter I've taken the bus. The two previous occasions where when the temperature went down to -20, with a wind chill of -32 (a headwind, of course) and the day when I got a flat half way to work and took the bus the rest of the way (another -20 day, with the added problem of trying to be a work early to prepare for a presentation I was giving.) We've had very peculiar weather this winter, like many places, with unusually warm temperatures interspersed with the occasional day or two of cold. Things just seem to go wrong on the cold days.