finishing

Hearing the Rice Krispie noises of others' spiked winter tyres is the best prompt for fitting one's own, but the knackered handlebars delayed me slightly. Falling off on a patch of ice on normal tyres is a more urgent prompt, best not ignored, so I worked from the kitchen today and brought everything inside to get the last bits done during breaks and lunch. Despite having to swap the cassette between the back wheels and having to fix a broken spoke before swapping the cassette and having to change the position of spacers on brake pads and move mudguards and so on and so on I think it's still just about slightly less painful than just swapping the tyres, particularly when I put anti-puncture tape braces inside the belt of Marathons. I've only put the old bar tape roughly back on until I snag out the positions of the shifters and brake levers (and also to see if it's maybe time to replace the somewhat cracked and damaged bar-end shifters) and will probably be adding a bit of Sugru to slightly improve the grip, as last month's day-off-big-rides highlighted that the singlespeed's handlebar arrangements were slightly more comfortable than the geared bike's.