Rack and roll

About five months Before Blip, I had to do an unplanned oil change on Fidra the day before motoring down the M6 (for the Gryphon concert that never was), and given that she'd got new oil only the year before, I ended up with about four litres of actually quite serviceable stuff that I put back in a container to use for, I don't know, random oily stuff.  The last wee while I've tried dribbling it on my bike chains instead of using whatever bottles are on my shelf.  I can now confirm that the lubricative properties of lightly used 5W30 are, not unsprisingly, very good, as are its weatherproofing properties, as indeed is its propensity to gradually gunge up something terrible.

And so it was that I spent this morning washing two bikes, getting all the dried mud off one bike and all the accumulated proto-winter salty, leafy, downpoury grime off my blue bike, and then giving its chain a jolly good bath in degreaser.

Yesterday's trip to the bike recycling place turned up this front pannier rack.  Quite honestly it looks rough as hell.  I actually had a very lovely Tubus front rack before, but I sold it to my friend Alice a couple of years ago because I'd only used it a few times and had finally decided that I didn't need it anymore.  Then of course LNER went and invented new trains that grudgingly carry only four bicycles, in two incredibly cramped dangly cubicles that are completely out of bounds to my lovely laid back touring bicycle with the tall handlebars and wide seat.  Last summer I managed to get it onboard a CrossCountry train which similarly has dangly bike spaces but which are marginally better, but the XC trains aren't as frequent down the East Coast main line.  This is why I have been experimenting the heck out of my blue bike recently in case I need to return it to ye olde tyme four-panniers-camping-trip touring mode for next summer.

Given that my 'new' pannier rack is all scratched up and a bit bent it cost about the same as a cup of coffee.  It'll look right at home when partnered with my rear pannier rack.  It took a bit of bodging and invention to fit because – as I found out when I got home and dug around on the internet for some photos – it was actually designed for suspension forks, using rather nasty hose clips to attach, instead of the normal four mounting points on forks.  I only had to make one jig for accurate centre drilling of some plastic* rod and I was in business.  The thing has yet to carry any panniers, but next year is young.

* acetal (aka fancy engineering plastic)