The Wheelhouse Blog

Beautiful weather outside sometimes means that people are pushing to make their rides longer than normal. For a long time I used to come home after a big ride and enjoy a nice big bottle of “recovery drink.” There are dozens out there and, depending on who you talk to, the one they happen to be using is best. Choosing a recovery drink is highly personal, and you won’t really know which one is right for you until you’ve tried a few. Some agree with your chemistry, some don’t. It’s bad when a recovery drink makes you hurl. That puts a real damper on an otherwise fun ride.

Outside of all the science mumbo jumbo, recovery drinks simply deliver a dose of quickly absorbable carbohydrates and proteins. Some studies have shown that recovery drinks can be beneficial if taken within a half hour of the end of your ride. Fair enough. In a pinch, I’ll resort to a peanut-butter foldover sandwich and one of those small cartons of chocolate milk. I’ve found that combo to be most effective. Tasty, too.

But what do you do if you don’t want more sweet stuff? After all Gu, Shot Blox, Honey Stinger buttons, granola bars and all that stuff can get mighty tedious during a long ride, and the thought of another dose of sweetness after a ride can dampen your enthusiasm.

When this occurs, I’ve found another magic bullet to help recover: A delicious homemade reuben sandwich and an ice-cold beer. The trick is to finish preparing the reuben sandwich before that magic 30-minute window expires. This is relatively easy to accomplish if you’re as comfortable in a kitchen as you are on a bike. With practice, a good reuben like the one above can be made in about 15 minutes. Don’t forget to use Russian dressing! It kicks ass over Thousand Island.

It’s not a post-ride meal made for everyone, and I can imagine some people shrinking in horror at the thought.

“I can’t eat that kind of stuff because I ride,” is a familiar refrain among cyclists.

But, personally, I believe they’re looking at it the wrong way.

I ride so I can eat that kind of stuff!

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Big guy in a little jersey....

Well, I finally took the time to drag my ass away from the work bench so I could hoist it on the saddle of my bike and go for a spin. Thank goodness my bike shorts have an adjustable elastic waistband, otherwise I’d have been forced to shove my corpulent self into some Spandex to frighten and disturb the other bleary-eyed trail users coming out of hibernation.

Good God! What the hell happened to me? It had been just a few short weeks earlier that I was remarking to myself that I had managed to stay in pretty decent shape over the winter for once and hadn’t morphed into my traditional post-Christmas Jabba-the-Hut configuration. But I got knocked out by the flu, then Girl Scout cookie time hit hard and fast, I suddenly remembered how much I enjoy napping, and, before long, one thing led to another, and, well….

My bitchin’ jersey that fit so well when I tried it on after Christmas now clings tight to my torso, accentuating my Man Tits and forcing me to inhale deeply and hold it whenever I see anyone else on the trail. It’s hard to talk through a full breath of air, so if you notice that I’m quiet when you run across me, you’ll know why.

Not one to acknowledge my own weaknesses, we set out on an ambitious hour-and-a-half-long ride on the now nearly-dry trails in town. It’s always weird getting back on a mountain bike after the traditional winter break. The sag of full suspension and the unevenness of the trail make the brain lurch a little bit. It took about 45 minutes until I once again began to trust the mechanisms and components on a bike that help keep you rolling, upright and semi-comfortable. It wasn’t until then that I started to relax somewhat and let the bike do the driving.

This is different than road riding. My better half and I had taken a few spins on the old road bike during our winter hiatus, and that always seems like putting on a familiar pair of pants. To me, road bike riding one day is pretty much the same as it is the next. The only challenge there is the missing level of fitness during an off-season.

On the mountain bike, not only was I challenged by my extra girth and lack of fitness, but by a rusty lack of agility as well. Not only that, but juniper apparently has been awakened by the warm weather and is spitting out the pollen like the Fukushima Daiichi power plant continues to spit out neutrons and cesium isotopes. When we got to the end of North Mesa via the Kwage trail, an up-canyon wind buffeted me with juniper particles. My nose and eyes reacted with a histamine vengeance!

Worse still, my body wanted badly to react to the pollen invasion with a long series of sneezes, but every time I’d puff up to the point of explosion, the little tickle at the end of my nose would subside and my allergy defense team would ratchet itself back down to Defcon 5. This cycle of non-sneezing continued to the point of deep frustration, and eventually we fled the end of the mesa back toward town. When we reached the stables, my body finally unleashed a single sneeze so violent that I was actually propelled an inch or so backward on my bike. That sneeze would have been rated at 20 megatons on the nuclear scale or magnitude 9.5 in earthquake power.

About a half mile from home, my exhaustion sensors kicked in and I went deathly quiet behind my riding partner. This was a defense mechanism to help me avoid weeping. Had I been conversant in that last stretch of trail, I would have broken down into a blubbering, blubbery mess of shameful lack of fitness and allergy misery. I had become the kind of pathetic, exhausted, snot-drenched animal that should be shot to prevent it from breeding and to put it out of its misery. Thank goodness no one out on the trails had one of those nail guns that they use on beef cattle at the end of the chute.

Nevertheless, the ride sure was fun!

I can’t wait to go again.

Counting today, there are probably two good days left to hit the trails before the next big snow dump hits. I urge people to take advantage of this period of warmth, because every day that passes off the bike is like a ticking time bomb.

On a related topic: Perhaps the only thing worse than being unfit on the first ride of the year is being unfit on the first ride of the year with a bike that’s not functioning properly. Call Little Jimmy’s Wheelhouse to make an appointment to get your bike in for a post-winter tuneup, drive train cleaning, or brake adjustment. Then, at least your bike will be in shaped when you finally decide to end your hibernation.

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Yep, so it was inevitable. Little Jimmy’s Wheelhouse now has a Facebook page, for whatever that’s worth.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry has a Facebook page these days. The way the business pundits talk about it, anyone who doesn’t have a Facebook page risks stopping the world from spinning—the social media equivalent of having a 2×4 shoved into your spokes on the trickiest portion of a gnarly descent. Well, that’s a mountain biking analogy anyway. I guess for road biking, not having a Facebook account would be like not shaving your legs when you go down hard on the pavement and you leave a quarter-mile flesh strap on the asphalt. Ouch!

No one wants that.

So I put up a Facebook page that hopefully won’t be just like everyone else’s, though The Gurus tell me that the nice thing about Facebook is that it provides every business entity with a common look and feel. Nice: Make your business stand out by making it look like every other business.

I won’t kid you and pretend that Little Jimmy’s Wheelhouse Facebook page will be a font of cleverness and nonstop enjoyment. Truth be told, Los Alamos’s newest and most conscientious bike repair and maintenance shop is a one man operation with a steady flow of customers. I’d rather be fixing your bike so it delivers a kick-ass ride than updating my Facebook page. So I’ll make you a deal. You go to the page and press the “Like” button or become a Fan, or do whatever it is that Facebook will have you do to make my page “unique,” and I will put some specials and things on the page every now and then.

You might see a post for 20 percent off a tuneup or an offer for a free patch kit included with your next service or repair, or maybe you’ll just stumble upon a post calling for any interested cyclists to gather for a group ride to some kind of destination, or an Après-ride backyard barbecue at our house. I’m limited only by my imagination, and as all of you who already know me know, I have a pretty wild imagination.

I’d mostly like to see everyone out there riding their bikes. Goodness knows gasoline prices are going to go through the roof this summer, so riding a bike will not only save you some money, but it’ll help keep your mind off of things like rising gasoline prices, shrinking Laboratory budgets and a nuclear Iran.

Feel free to use the Little Jimmy’s Wheelhouse Facebook page as a venue or forum to talk about a cool ride you took or to converse with people who share a common interest—bicycling.  Social media ought to be worth something. I hope you’ll come visit.

Keep on riding!

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Some jerk decided to ride a bike on the Walnut Trail on Feb. 24 when the day was nice and warm. The trail is actually under the snow to the right of the tracks, but as you can see, that fact didn't stop Jerk Face from riding off trail and creating a nice rut outside of the trail bed. Nice work, asshole!

It never fails this time of year. Some biking “fanatic” wakes up one morning, glances at him- or herself in the mirror, notices his burgeoning man tits or that her muffin top is spilling over the waistband of her underpants, and decides that they’re getting too fat to put off riding any longer. Nothing good can come from this.

The sun’s out, the trails are just starting to clear of snow and ice, so the biking “fanatic” grabs the old mountain bike and starts slogging along the trails, through the mud, riding off trail because it’s too muddy, and then abandoning ship entirely and pointing the bike overland back toward home because the mud is just so stupid thick that riding is impossible. Nevertheless, the damage to the trails is already done and the rest of us have to put up with the ruts until late July and, even worse, with the consequent trail widening and erosion for the rest of our lives.

Of course, the “fanatics” out there rationalize their behavior with the old “hikers-do just-as-much-damage” line, or with weak arguments that ruts are actually somehow good for the trails and that studies have shown that riding in the mud is no worse than riding when it’s dry.

Bullshit! Riding in the mud is just plain selfish and wrong. Stop doing it!

I know this to be true because I have witnessed the gradual widening and degradation of the really nice trail we have near our home. We walk it twice a day, generally without fail. When we first moved in, the trail was very narrow—six to nine inches wide in the areas of sweetest singletrack. Now some of those areas are 18 to 24 inches wide and there are parts of the trail that have been widened to 3 feet in some areas where people consistently detour around the wet areas. There was a time not too long ago when the old Perimeter trail was pretty narrow. Now huge swaths have been closed off and re-routed because of damage. Deer and Coyote don’t widen trails. Human beings widen trails. That’s because we are a bad animal for the most part. Being selfish and opportunistic is part of our nature. We can’t help it. Being assholes is part of our genetic makeup.

Last summer some new kid with flaming red hair and a face like a parasitic worm was regularly abusing the local trails on the big, fancy downhill bike that his daddy had bought him, taking every corner wide and going off trail whenever he was riding too fast to stay inside the lines. His aggressive riding was carving farther and farther into the grass, so we started taking action by choking down the trail in key sections. The red-headed rat retaliated by tossing all of our repairs back into the woods. We reiterated our position against wider trails by putting everything back. Eventually Fluke-Boy, as he came to be known to us, started riding in control and our little stretch of neighborhood singletrack stayed single despite last year’s horrific drought conditions. I’m dreading the thaw, however, because I know Fluke-Boy will be back with a vengeance, carving huge ruts in the trail with his knobby downhill tires and general disregard for anything other than his own speed. Hopefully he has no friends—or at least friends with bikes….

There was a time several years ago when I believed mountain bikes should be allowed in Wilderness areas. I don’t believe that anymore, not by any stretch of the imagination, mostly because every spring I see the deep ruts and widening trails in non-wilderness areas. Sadly, cyclists are their own worst enemies. For every 10 cyclists who follow the rules, there is one who doesn’t. They leave the ruts in the trails, they run the stop signs, they run down hikers or weave in and out of traffic. They are lousy ambassadors for our sport. I have been them sometimes. I’m as guilty as everyone else.

Unfortunately it’s the bad moments that are the most memorable to those outside the fold of cycling.

After deciding that the trail was just too muddy and snowy, and that riding alongside the trail was no longer an option, the "Fanatic" apparently rode through the woods off trail to get back to a road. Nice.

If bikes are allowed in Wilderness areas, we will no doubt see the gradual wholesale destruction of wilderness areas by poorly behaved cyclists. I no longer believe bikes belong…everywhere. I think they should be allowed in a lot of places, but we need bikes in wilderness like we need more ticks with Lyme Disease. Quite frankly, I hope there are lots of places where bikes will never be allowed to go. This belief has helped erode my previous support for IMBA—mostly because of IMBA’s hardline stance that bikes should be allowed in wilderness areas. While I understand that IMBA’s position makes them appear heroic to mountain bike riders and helps maintain a constant stream of membership funding, I also understand now that IMBA’s position is short-sighted, based on the Pollyanna-ish belief that cyclists can be counted on to do the right thing if we would only wish hard enough that it were so.

It’s a nice sentiment, but it, too, is bullshit. The only thing you can count on is that some cyclist is going to think that he or she deserves to ride no matter the conditions or season, so they will be out messing up the wilderness while asserting “their rights.”

While I’m certain my ramblings here may cost me some business from the handful of I’ll-Ride-Whenever-and-Wherever-I-Want militant assholes out there on bikes, truth be told, I’d rather have sweet, narrow singletrack and unspoiled wilderness areas than business from militant assholes anyway, thank you very much.

For those of you out there worrying about your muffin tops and man tits, this is a great time of year to find some kind of cross-training activity that will keep you fit and complement your riding later on in the spring when it’s warm and dry. It’s also a great time of year to bring your bike in for some deferred or basic maintenance needs. Riding season hasn’t started yet, but it will soon. Don’t be caught with flat tires or a groaning drive train on the first good day of riding. Check out the Service Menu at Little Jimmy’s Wheelhouse and make an appointment today.

Just don’t bring your bike in muddy.

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Riding the Elite parabolic rollers is never dull

Uh oh! Looks like global climate change hasn’t polluted Punxsutawney Phil’s prognosticatory prowess. Earlier this week the groundhog predicted six more weeks of winter, even though the weather for the past few weeks had made it appear as if we were in for an early spring. The dump of snow we just got has sure made it feel like winter returned. Get ready to settle in folks.

An ugly case of the flu and the liberal use of road salt on sloppy roads caused me to cancel this weekend’s road ride as I struggle to shed 20 pounds of winter fat and regain some semblance of bike fitness by the equinox. Like most of you, I hate to lose all the gains I made during the previous year of riding. A dose of fitness during the first rides of the year sure feels good and makes the season so much more fun!

Not to worry. We’ve discovered the miracles of roller riding—contraptions that allow you to ride stages of the Tour de France in your head as you sweat out gallons of giblet gravy in your garage. Roller riding takes some getting used to. Some of it is mental, some of it physical. The mental game is a simple matter of channeling your boredom into pleasant daydreaming or repetitive mantras of song verses sung over and over again in your head. It’s a lot like swimming!  And almost as wet.  Riding in place doesn’t create a headwind and corporeal secretions do not evaporate as readily. If you’ve ever wondered why hydration is important, then a half-hour on the rollers will be a good learning experience. I spare myself and our neighborhood the horror of me singing one ever-repeated verse of “The Neutron Dance” off key and at the top of my lungs by riding in front of a boombox that plays a variety of happy music.

The act of riding rollers themselves is a good learning experience. If you have a sloppy, noisy riding style like mine, the cruel mistress called rollers will help you fix your riding style toot-sweet! Small changes in position can lead to big changes on the bike when you’re balanced on the unforgiving triad of cylinders. Truth be told, though, it’s kind of fun! Freaky at first, but fun.

After a couple of sessions I was able to calm my ridiculous style down to the point where I could ride smooth and fear-free on the rollers. Until you get tired, anyway. And then it all goes to hell. Not to worry, weaving usually tells me when I’ve hit the correct jumping off point. Zing! Workout’s over! A real-world ride last weekend on pavement showed me real-world gains in style and fitness that I had gained by riding on rollers.

While rollers differ from the relative comfort, tedium and boredom of trainers, they do force you to be an active participant. On a trainer, you’re just an engine—an unconnected pair of meat pistons grinding away on the pedals until the timer goes off or until Good Morning America hands itself off to The View.

Elite Ritmo trainer

Worried about your winter fitness?  There’s still plenty of time to benefit from six weeks of roller workouts. Little Jimmy’s Wheelhouse can get a roller or trainer to you in less than the time it would take to get it from Amazon, and at competitive prices to boot!

The only thing that feels better than getting back on the bike after a long break is buying local.

Don’t let six more weeks of winter turn you into a groundhog-shaped bag of goo that will curse your bicycle when the sun shines bright and strong and the world is green and new.

Keep on riding!

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Purchasing a new bike is often an overwhelming and daunting experience for many people. So many choices in frames, geometries, components, colors and styles leads to sensory overload, particularly for people who aren’t bicycling “junkies.” For many people, buying  a bike boils down simply to cost. Can I afford it? Does it seem to fit me? Great! I’ll take it!

Bing, bang, boom, and the customer walks out the door with a lighter wallet, a new bicycle and miles of carefree riding ahead. Hopefully.

But what happens when all that newness wears off and it comes time for routine maintenance, or perhaps replacement of parts or components after a nasty crash? What then?

Well, if you’ve happened to buy a brand of bike that can only be sold or serviced by an “Authorized Dealer,” you may be in for a long, frustrating ride—in your car, not on your bike.

I recently had the pleasure of doing maintenance on a gentleman’s bike, when we ran into an issue of trying to find a couple of very small replacement parts for the bike. It was an older bike and the owner had done a great job keeping his prize in great condition. He brought it to me after he had lost confidence in his usual mechanic. I put the bike into great working condition—nearly perfect shape, except for a couple of small cable-holders that had become casualties of time and lots of miles. I was able to come up with a solution for my customer’s cable routing, but I sought to go the extra mile and procure the proper parts from the original manufacturer so his nearly good-as-new bike would be truly good-as-new.

My contact with the original company was short and frustrating. Because I was not an “Authorized Dealer” the company refused outright to send me the parts. Hey, that’s a great deal if you’re the Authorized Dealer, but it ain’t so great if you’re a working person with family obligations and precious little time to load up your bike and drive to Santa Fe and back so they could order the parts, install them, and return a week later to claim your bike. From a customer’s point of view, where’s the value in that?

I tried to explain to the manufacturer that such an arrangement would require my customer to drive a minimum of 70 miles for a couple of $3 parts, but it made no difference. He could only get service from an “Authorized Dealer.”

It’s something to think about when purchasing a bicycle: Will your brand of bike make you a slave to an out-of-town bicycle shop that you don’t necessarily want to choose for regular repair and maintenance? Do you have the resources, time and inclination to load up your bike and haul it over to the next town? Will you feel comfortable doing that should you need parts or warranty work?

I recently had a customer come to me with a relatively new bike that needed a simple fix. Because the bike was new, I realized that servicing it might void the warranty, so I sent the customer to the Authorized Dealer, located in Albuquerque. The Authorized Dealer charged the customer a pretty penny in labor costs to do the warranty work. But apparently unlike a lot of Authorized Dealers, I figure if you purchased a component or a bicycle that’s under warranty, it shouldn’t cost you anything to have it fixed under warranty. Yeah, this philosophy admittedly sucks for me because the company doesn’t compensate me for my time or labor. But I look at it in terms of customer service and in terms of forming valuable partnerships with equipment and component manufacturers and marketing people.

(Nevertheless, beware of unscrupulous shops who are not Authorized Dealers who will gladly take money from you to void your warranty! Know the terms and conditions of your bicycle’s warranty. If you’re not sure, call the company. A drive to Albuquerque is better than an apology and a smirk should you find that your broken frame is no longer under warranty after being serviced by an unethical guy with a wrench.)

Recently an enthusiastic rider showed up with a defective Avid brake that should have been under warranty. A quick call to the company and I was able to get the customer an upgraded matching pair of brakes! He was back on his bike with the latest-greatest in no time and at no charge. I made nothing out of the deal other than a possible future customer and hopefully some goodwill from Avid. In my mind, that’s the way it should be, though my accountant might not necessarily agree because it’s not so great for the bottom line.

Fair enough, but here’s what I think should be my bottom line: I’m not exclusive about providing good customer service; I offer it to everyone. If you’re not getting that right now out of your bike shop or bike brand, you’ve probably got some thinking to do.

Keep on riding!

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First off, I don’t know what the hell happened to my blog, but I was doing some updates to my website and all of a sudden the blog disappeared. When it came back, all the photos were messed up. So now everything is really, really, really big (like that beer below—it’s now the size of a six pack!) or really, really, really tiny, like how my wiener gets after a cold day in Spandex. Uh-oh, someone’s gonna get mad about that one! But I digress.

Yup, it’s cold out there, which means White Mesa is a great place to do some riding again. Here’s a pic of me and some skilled rider going up the seep on the way back. We had a blast that day and it was so much fun to ride with someone we hadn’t ridden with in a long time. He was the Prodigal Son of riding as a matter of fact. We rejoiced upon his return.

It’s cold and damp out there, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still get some riding in. Layers or warmer places like White Mesa are just the ticket. I particularly enjoy getting out these days because I’m a big sweaty guy. I tend to stay drier this time of year, ‘specially with a nice thin Smartwool underlayer.

I read another guy’s blog and saw that he was getting out and doing some Psycho-cross cyclocross. That’s fun too!

So don’t despair about engorged photos or shrunken wieners, get out there and ride!

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Sometimes after a good day of work or a very nice bike ride you happen to run across a beer that just hits the spot somehow. This particular beverage is made in Bend, Oregon, by the folks at Deschutes Brewery. Green Lakes Organic Ale was tasty and refreshing. Oh, and it is organic, for those of you out there who think such things are important. There are a lot of nice, unexplored beers out there, just like there are a lot of decent, unexplored trails and roads. If you keep looking, sometimes you happen to venture upon a good one, just like that new branch of trail that hugs the south rim of Pueblo Canyon and avoids the double track between the old Orange Street sewer plant and the former Peggy Sue Bridge. Check it out if you haven’t already.

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I had to use a four-foot “cheater bar” to remove a grotesquely over-torqued drive-side bottom bracket cup. Seriously. Four feet! It was ridiculous that someone had been so sadistically heavy handed that they had tightened a bicycle part to the extent that it required such insane and dangerous leverage. It made me angry. Thank goodness the cup was removed without damage to the bicycle or the mechanic. And miracle of miracles, the threads were mostly in good shape and hadn’t been stripped out via violent cross-threading, which was my original suspicion about why the cup was so tight to begin with.

I am an advocate of following torque specs and standard tool choices. In this case, I found myself backed into the corner of mechanical improvisation after forces of more than 800 inch-pounds—more than double the recommended torque specs for even the tightest standard bottom bracket cups out there—failed to move the fused part. A two-day bath in penetrating oil had no effect, and even a kludged arrangement that allowed me to literally stand on the wrench handle with my full 230 pound girth and jump up and down could not loosen the stubborn cup. (To all my physics friends, please calculate the forces from that stupid little dance move, will you please?)

The nervous bike owner was resigned to the possibility of “destructive removal,” an often unsuccessful last-resort that can salvage a frame from a trip to the salvage yard. But in such cases, even if a part can be removed with unorthodox tools, there lies a very real possibility of grave damage to the bicycle. Fortunately, this did not happen. Although the bottom bracket shell had been damaged by the original installer, the bike can and will be saved. I will update you on the finished machine later on.

Coincidentally, I ran into someone who told me that the same person who had tried to fuse the cup into the shell had grabbed hold of their Shimano Ultegra brakes and used his grimy fingers to bend the brake pads into a toed-in configuration. Holy Rim Rattles, Batman! What kind of bat-shit crazy wrenching is that? Bending brakes? Seriously? I guess it never occurred to the guy that engineers design things to be a certain way for a reason. They usually don’t prescribe ad-hoc contortion with a “finger driver” as an accepted practice in their technical manuals. There is a simple, prescribed method for toeing in brakes that doesn’t include bending them. Park Tool has an excellent site that explains this and other maintenance procedures in depth.

For those of you who don’t know any better, let me lay out a simple rule—a rule that is perhaps so patently obvious that it could be called common sense. Ready for it? Here goes: In general, there is essentially nothing on a built-out and functioning modern bicycle that requires or warrants bending with bare hands, altering with hammer blows, warping with extreme heat, altering wholesale with a file or hacksaw, dousing with automotive maintenance products or industrial chemicals, or tightening or untightening with a four-foot cheater bar, in general. There are lots of shade-tree mechanics, bicycle enthusiasts and even recognized wrenchers out there who employ such tactics as if they were as common as sparrows. Usually if some unorthodox tool is attempting such a thing, it means that the person is using a part that was not designed for the bicycle it is being placed on or that the person doesn’t know what the hell he or she is doing. There are exceptions, of course, but this should be taken as a general rule of thumb.

If, in fact, you are told by some unorthodox tool that your bicycle merits such treatment, ask, before you authorize the action, ask the person to explain precisely and completely why they are planning to attempt such a thing, and then seek a second opinion (preferably from a qualified mechanic, a thoughtful person or someone who is not, in fact, just plain old bat-shit crazy). If the unorthodox tool who is proposing to alter your bicycle with an unorthodox tool cannot adequately explain why they are planning to do what they plan to do, and why such a thing cannot be accomplished with conventional tools or unaltered OEM parts, grab your bike from them and run like hell! If the explanation seems somewhat plausible, seek a second opinion nevertheless. Missing a day of riding to get another opinion is better than surrendering your bike for potential ruination. Seriously, seek a second opinion. You owe it to yourself and your bike.

A wise person and I were talking the other day and the wise person said, “you know, the thing I love about bicycles is that they create so much joy and most everything on them can be fixed, and if they are well taken care of, they’ll last a long, long time.”

As long as they’re kept away from unorthodox tools.

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When I was a little kid my dad used to take me to those wax museums that created “lifelike” renditions of famous celebrities or Medieval reprobates being punished on the rack or with the Cat O’ Nine Tails. Those places were usually always slightly cool and damp and dimly lit. They were little chambers of horrors, not so much because of the content, but because of the craftsmanship. A closeup look at each exhibit revealed a set that was about as good as what you see at a community theater production giving refuge to a waxwork figure that was just a step above a department store mannequin. One year I carved a Jimmy Durante apple head that looked about as good as the Prince Henry VIII and Liberace figurines that we had paid $12 to view at the tourist trap wax museums.

So what does this have to do with bikes, you might ask? Well, the other day a customer brought in a bike for a tuneup. It was a nice bike, well taken care of it seemed. When I began to disassemble the machine, however, I noticed that the frame, components, the wheels—nearly everything—was speckled (or spackled, more like it) with a whitish, waxy film. The stuff was everywhere and extremely difficult to clean off. It had seeped into every nook and cranny around the drivetrain, into derailleur pivots, into the bottom bracket, into cable housing. Most alarming, the stuff had permeated the pivots in the customer’s brake calipers, so that each time the brake lever was pulled, the brakes would grab the rim, and then slowly, ever so slowly, retract , leaving the brake pads to drag along the rim for a moment or so. The caliper springs had become totally coated in white goo, so much in fact that when the levers were operated, the springs slogged slowly back and forth like your feet do in one of those dreams when the monster is chasing you and the landscape becomes a field of thick pudding. It took a long time to clean the brake calipers sufficiently to restore optimum performance.

So what was it that had slimed this poor customer’s bike? It was liberal application of one of those wax-based chain lubes. You know the ones. They are out there, touting their effectiveness for all bike applications. The makers of those lubes create bottles that allow the user to spray a fine thin stream of lubricant all along a chain that’s being pedaled forward or backward. I’ve seen people pour huge amounts of this White Horror onto their chains as they backpedal merrily away, eventually stopping and leaving the chain to drip dry. I’ve seen the beginnings of wax stalactites forming on the underside of a chain—a sight as horrible to witness as any torture chamber depicted in the Royal London Wax Museum.

Oh, of course, the wax-lube manufacturers will tell you that this story is melodramatic and does not represent “responsible” use of their product. Perhaps, but perhaps not. I will tell you that a long time ago I used to use those wax lubes myself. I used to pride myself on being able to douse my chain at the trailhead and ride all day. And then I started to see the residue that was left behind—boogery globs of off-white mung, speckled with dirt and debris like a Béchamel sauce that had been subjected to a black pepper tragedy. Oh sure, the wax lube bound up all the contaminants, but when it came time to get rid of the stuff: well, now, how do you wipe away oobleck, Bartholomew?

I guess the bottom line is that if you insist on sticking with the wax junk that’s sticking to every movable part on your bicycle, then please, oh please—for my sake, for the sake of every bike mechanic living in the free world, and for the sake of everything that is good and holy—please apply the stuff responsibly and sparingly. Do not hose down your chain with a high-pressure stream of spooge and then let it set like donut glaze. Instead, use little drops on the key parts of your chain (the rollers) and then wipe off the excess.

Or you could use a quality non-wax lubricant specially formulated for your bike like Boeshield T-9 (yes, I know, it has wax, but it’s not obnoxious about it; plus it was developed by Boeing aircraft, which was quite a thing before the ugly drug sting scandal hit the news) or ProLink. You can get a nice bottle of either type from Little Jimmy’s Wheelhouse for about 10 bucks. That’ll hold you for a season or so, unless you’re a riding maniac, which means you’ll just have to buy more!  A good lube only needs to be applied every few rides or so, when your chain begins to feel dry or starts making noises like a weasel with emphysema.

Next time you’re thinking about hosing down your bike with wax, why not peddle on over to your nearest House of Wax instead and see what horrors await. You’ll enjoy the ride home even that much more!

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