30 Days of Biking - Bike switching

I rode the same bike year-round when I started commuting, come rain, slush, snow, salt, and all the other gross stuff that messes up a bike in Minnesota. I would go through a few chains a Winter and usually burn through a set of brake pads, rust through a fender bolt, and cause other sundry damage. This isn't Iron Man, this is just grubby streets takin' it out on the machine. I finally figured out that having a separate Winter bike would allow me to spread out the wear and give me time to get the main bike in shape for next season.

This year, my Winter maintenance took much longer on the Bianchi since it is 6 years old and there were quite a few things that needed cleaning and replacement. Here is an odd picture I took last year showing, in part, how chewed up the bar tape was getting on my handlebars. (The bike is standing still but I took this to show how my wireless bike computer would go haywire near this particular building on my ride.)

So, this year the Bianchi got: new front derailleur shift cable, brake pads, and miscellaneous bolts (not chainring, although I noticed later it could use a new set). The bike got a thorough cleaning. 

And...drum roll...new bar tape.

A few of these projects were new for me so certainly the next time I go through this I will be faster.

A quick job will be to hit the Brook's seat with proofide. You can see where the seat got banged up on a bike-car incident last year downtown. The proofide doesn't seem to take out the gouges...oops.