I ride my bike every day. I use it to get to work, to do the school run, to pick up and transport bikes, to pull my trailer and for bashing around in the woods at the weekends...I'm pretty reliant on it most days, because of this I try my best to keep it going. I clean it when its getting clogged up with mud, throw a bit of oil on the squeaky bits and adjust everything so that everything rolls as it should and stops me when I need it to. The other day when I was pedaling along (probably more distracted than I should have been) I got to thinking about some of the nearly new bikes I'd received which despite being not very old were very seized- how could it be in such a short space of time that they could become so unridable? Its with this thought in mind that I've decided to conduct a not very scientific experiment.
Over the next few (colder, greyer, wetter) months I'm going to leave my bike unattended in an almost sheltered spot in the garden. I'm going to see what happens, how long it takes and have a think about what might be done to prevent any of the problems that might occur. Usually when I stop using a bike for any length of time I'd usually give it a clean and oil before leaving it (and I'd probably store it inside!), but for this experiment I'm going to leave the bike as it is on my last day of riding it- as I suspect most people would when stopping riding for the winter
So this is the bike as it stands now, lets see how it looks in a few months time....
