Base Camp Journal
(06/03/25)
Because of the year and country I'm living in now, each month has to begin with whether or not my monthly check came through, regardless of what blather counts as news or government announcements - it's infuriating...
Anyway, I spent the weekend buying groceries and the other few items to finish cleaning and tuning up the bike. A glance at the archives reminded me that this month marks a year since moving to my Nob Hill apartment/tiny ass room...
I picked up the car wax, shop towels and microfiber polishing cloth. I already had the rubber gloves, scrubby, aluminum foil and dish soap. The foil replaces steel wool pads to take any rust off the spokes...
Instead of doing this quickly, I'm gonna have to take the wheels off and remove the freewheel to do a proper clean and wax job that'll take a few hours on each one, from rim to hub. To be thorough, I'll also use rubbing alcohol to clean the braking surfaces of the rims as well as the rim brakes. Once that's all done I'll wax and polish the frame...
The 5th Floor view from one of the Hospital buildings where I have a Diabetes Group meeting, looking West over Portrero St., The Mission District, Noe Valley, and Twin Peaks. Once a month on a Monday, I touch base with my team and compare notes on my progress...
Anyway, I'm working on the June 6th episode of the show now and will do the wheels on the weekend...
(06/07/25)
Ok, Satuday morning I lazed around watching a bunch of cat videos and "Andor" analysis pieces, then got to work around Noon...
Instead of breaking out the service rack, I took off the wheels for ease of use...
Covering the rear sprockets and the spoke protector - see, they don't look that bad...
Warm soapy water for scrubbing...
after cleaning the wheels, only a cosmetic layer of surface rust remained on the spokes...
The rear wheel only had a few that looked like this. a couple rounds with WD-40, elbow grease and balled up aluminum foil took care of them...
The front wheel looked a bit worse, but it was still cosmetic...
Applying the liquid wax and wiping it off didn't really make much of a difference, but it was five hours later when I finished, so I put off waxing the frame until Sunday...
(06/08/25)
Ok, Sunday was more lazing around and grocery shopping, then roughly half an hour spent waxing and polishing the bike frame. It's kinda anti-climactic cause you can't really see any difference inside. we didn't even get much sun through the window to see any shine. Anyway, just in case I got any wax on the wheel rims, I'll wipe them with rubbing alcohol before going on my next ride, but the bike is clean and ready for summer...
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