Time to clean up this town

Before: Yuck - get that thing away from me!

Spring is transitioning rapidly into early summer. So why is the Bertrand still covered in spring wet-road sh1t remnants and the chain... Oh the chain! The chain has been absorbing dirt in the oil for months, and is frankly evil.

So we decided to perform an exorcism on the grease-monster living on the chain and give the bike a clean up. Because it gives us so much, and asks so little besides air in the tires and oil on the chain... but not too much oil, or things get nasty, and then you have perform a radical denastification.

So, we let things get nasty, and feeling the intense societal shame that you would expect, we got to work on our own radical denastification procedure.

We used a chain cleaner, some bio-clean juice, a bit of spray degreaser, some rags, old toothbrushes, and of course, some rubber gloves. Do not forget the rubber gloves. If you do forget, there are some great hand-cleaner products available at the hardware store that you should probably keep under the sink.

We also have a rear-wheel stand called a Loby Foot (newer version here but ours is older and simpler and looks a lot more like this Minoura stand) that makes the rotation of the drivetrain easier. It was a bit of a impulse purchase many years ago, but it gets constant use for keeping the bike standing up on its own (i.e. not leaning on something), and we have gotten a lot of excellent use from it. If you have bike-falloveritis, this is your answer.


After, the chain and cassette are shiny-bright (the paint and chrome are another story, but they were nice 21 years ago, and this is a working bike, not a baby)