![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Frozen tight
8 February 2021 09:30 pmI set of to market to get some emergency vegetables (the greengrocery delivery was cancelled again) -- or at least I tried!
I discovered that I simply couldn't turn the key in my bike lock; I've heard of the locks on car doors being frozen, but I'd never encountered this particular problem before. Fortunately a squirt of penetrating oil managed to melt matters a little. When I finally got the lock open I found chunks of ice falling out of it, and a large piece of ice dropped out of my saddle cover.
I eventually set off about fifteen minutes later than intended, and worried about getting back before dark as it was already pretty overcast (at 2.30pm!) Since I was going cautiously, it took me a while to notice that nothing whatsoever happened when I tried to change up a gear -- first of all I thought the gear change lever had also frozen up and managed to wiggle it loose, but while it then clicked into all its accustomed positions, the gears didn't actually engage. I was stuck in first gear for the foreseeable future.
( a frozen rabbit )
Total distance covered: eleven and a half miles at an average speed of around seven or eight miles per hour. I hope the gear hub does unfreeze without any further issues once the thaw starts, otherwise my horizons are likely to be even more limited than they have been to date. There is no local market, but there is a greengrocer's stall, if it's still running in this weather (he, too, may have decided the likely level of custom versus the discomfort is simply not worth it).
Total odometer reading now 2427.8; another four hundred miles since last July and seven hundred under lockdown. Goodness knows what my foot mileage has been...
I discovered that I simply couldn't turn the key in my bike lock; I've heard of the locks on car doors being frozen, but I'd never encountered this particular problem before. Fortunately a squirt of penetrating oil managed to melt matters a little. When I finally got the lock open I found chunks of ice falling out of it, and a large piece of ice dropped out of my saddle cover.
I eventually set off about fifteen minutes later than intended, and worried about getting back before dark as it was already pretty overcast (at 2.30pm!) Since I was going cautiously, it took me a while to notice that nothing whatsoever happened when I tried to change up a gear -- first of all I thought the gear change lever had also frozen up and managed to wiggle it loose, but while it then clicked into all its accustomed positions, the gears didn't actually engage. I was stuck in first gear for the foreseeable future.
( a frozen rabbit )
Total distance covered: eleven and a half miles at an average speed of around seven or eight miles per hour. I hope the gear hub does unfreeze without any further issues once the thaw starts, otherwise my horizons are likely to be even more limited than they have been to date. There is no local market, but there is a greengrocer's stall, if it's still running in this weather (he, too, may have decided the likely level of custom versus the discomfort is simply not worth it).
Total odometer reading now 2427.8; another four hundred miles since last July and seven hundred under lockdown. Goodness knows what my foot mileage has been...
