To be honest, I’m fucking sick of it.
I’ve been unable to wear my homemade overshoes since getting my roadbike as they are too baggy and catch in the chainring (they were ok on when I used them on my fixed gear as that had a chain guard). And so this year I’ve been putting up with wet feet, but it’s getting too cold now to put up with wet feet for hour long rides. I had hoped I could get some goretex boot liners this month, but no such luck, so I was forced to revisit the overshoes. I’ve basically cut them down into just two big triangles of material, gathered the material at the apex of the triangle so it fits over the toes of my shoe and then the other ends of the triangle I can tie behind my heel. This seems to work. I’m expecting them to be more like splash covers and useful for puddles, etc, as in a downpour the water could still run down my leg and into my shoe, but they should still help a lot.
Tightened up the headsets on both bikes this weekend. I knew the winter bike one needed tightening, but hadn’t even noticed the road bike one was loose. I’d tried to tighten up the winter one recently and stripped the thread in the stem in the process. It didn’t make any difference either, all that happened was the star washer slipped up the head tube. I suspected the reason for this was that the bottom headset spacer had corroded in place and stuck itself on the head tube and thus tightening the headset bolt was just pulling the star washer up rather than pushing this down. Anyway, I managed to hammer and chisel, and ultimately saw this spacer off (because I’d got fed up with the slow progress of hammering and chiselling, but before realising that I would still need to use it - so it is now back on; fortunately by sawing it I’d just turned it into a “c-clip” rather than destroying it completely). Anyway, finally managed to tighten the headset up (slightly over-tighten actually and now it won’t slack off - grrr!) and also managed to find a bolt and nut from the youngest’s old toddler bed that fits through the knackered threaded hole on the stem which I could use to replace that bolt.
One of my lights has become fogged over the year with moisture getting on the inside of the lens, so it no longer puts out as a good a beam as it used to. This is probably a combination of the appalling weather they go through and the use and abuse (dropped) they get as torches at home (and so the fittings/seals were a bit “loose”). In an effort to see if I could take it apart to clean it (I couldn’t) I misplaced the washer that helps give the battery compartment a snug fit (as well as keeping the water out - kind of). Very annoying. So I’ve made a replacement one (of sorts) by cutting a ring out of one of the old rubber gloves we use for mucking out.