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wickens and soderstrom no.6 bike polish
okay, for the first time since 2010 i failed to capture each and every one of those 500 festive kilometres. i was doing ok by christmas day, having nabbed 97km on christmas eve and augmenting that with a further forty while everyone opened their presents from santa. but then storm connor arrived overnight monday, featuring wind speeds that would potentially have had me using each and every muscle to remain upright. i am a firm believer that cycling ought to be enjoyable for the most part and monday had all the hallmarks of being otherwise.
however, in a serious effort to bring all up to par, ready to continue from a position of superiority, i undertook a more strenuous than expecetd 102km on tuesday, making my running total only a few kilometres shy of where i ought to be.
assuming you're still awake and still reading, the need to play my rather fetching drumset at a friend's wedding on wednesday eve placed an insurmountable obstacle in my way. though the average gig lasts between two and three hours, that discounts the inevitable packing of the drumset into a vehicle, unloading it at the other end, setting it up in its designated floorspace and making a few passing attempts at a soundcheck which always takes a lot longer than it really ought to. add all this together and there is precious little time left for any meaningful cycling.
not willing to subject myself to another 100 kilometres plus day on thursday, purely on the basis that i had once more to carry out the percussive ritual on friday, i opted to aim for a more conservative 300 kilometres, a distance that was completed at debbie's by lunchtime yesterday.
you, of course, will have breezed through all five hundred of those little blighters and celebrated with the dance of the victor and a large glass of san pellegrino at last night's hogmanay celebrations. now that day has dawned, it's time to take a peek inside the bike shed and take note of the dishevelment that has been visited upon the velocipede of choice. if your location is anything like the agricultural environment that surrounds yours truly, there will probably be the equivalent of an entire field plastered round the bottom bracket and the underside of the downtube.
on the basis that each year's resolutions ought surely to include the ideal of commencing as we mean to continue, drag that bicycle kicking and screaming from its repose and give it a good scrub. and when that's all done, chain degreased, dried and lubed, it's time to make it all shine. i well know that of which i speak, for i did precisely that on wednesday morn prior to percussive activity and believe me, that wickens and soderstrom bike polish restored the original lustre like you would not believe and without resort to elbow grease that might conceivably interfere with the evening's paradiddles.
though the bottle offers no advice as to how the pale pink polish ought best to be applied, i removed the aerosol cap from a companion bottle of w&s bke cleaner and sprayed the nooks and crannies of both the specialized crux and the colnago master. a poignant note at this point is perhaps to pop a cloth over the saddle if you wish to avoid embarrassing squeaky noises from your posterior on the following day's ride. after this spray-tan emulation, 'tis but a simple matter of polishing the living daylights out of it.
boy does it shine.
sunday 1 january 2017
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