winterize your bike

Imagine my surprise when I saw a short article with this title in our local paper. 

"How cool!" I thought, "The city is encouraging people to ride their bikes through the winter." 

Heh, heh. Not quite, as it turns out. What the city is doing is encouraging people to record the details of their bikes (serial number, make and model, colour, etc.) -- presumably before putting them away for the winter. This, they tell us, may prove useful should your bicycle ever be stolen. Well, no doubt this is true. I wish I had heeded this advice before Bonnie Blue, my beautiful step-through bike, was stolen. And I have indeed done this for all my other bikes.

But... this is not what comes to my mind when I think about winterizing my bike. I mean, really, when we talk about winterizing cars, what are we saying? We're referring to getting them ready to drive on winter roads. 

Why not bikes, too? 

a glimpse of my commute last winter

Last winter, on all but the coldest days, I commuted to work on Clyde, my old but beloved winter riding companion. Click here for a typical ride from west-end Edmonton to downtown.

After bidding goodbye to the last of the snow last winter, I confess that in my enthusiasm to ride my "real" bikes, I simply put Clyde in the bike storage area and sort of forgot about him. But last weekend, it suddenly dawned on me that the fair weather would not last forever and that in a few short weeks, I would once again want to ride my bike in the snow. So I rolled Clyde out, cleaned the chain and other grubby parts, applied some lube and changed the hand grips and saddle, both of which were sadly worn and downright ugly. 

And last Friday I took him down to our local bike shop for some fine tuning that is beyond my capabilities. The shifting needed some work, and I wasn't sure what else might be wrong. 

Once again, the guys at the bike shop were great. As I rolled the ancient clunker into the shop, I was half-afraid they would laugh at me for even thinking this bike could be of use. But not at all. In fact, they said it was in decent shape, especially for a winter bike, adding that in the early 1990s, when this bike was made, Raleigh still turned out good quality products. The parts were intended to last, and as a result, the mechanic recommended replacing only one $15 part. Other than that, he adjusted the shifting, tightened a hub and changed a cable, all for less than $40. I bought a front and rear light and I was good to go. As I rode the bike home, I tested out the gears and all looks good. I am almost -- that is only almost -- looking forward to the snow.