Maintenance day

Cleaned up the sprogette's new bike; mostly some surface rust on the wheels, and I cleaned the chain and pumped up the tyres. Other than that, it was good to go, so next week she'll be able to get out on it - Monday's supposed to be nice weather.

Cleaned the mountain bike after riding it in the crappy weather on Thursday and then again yesterday. The chain is getting near the end of its life, next time I clean it I'll put a new one on.

Cleaned the road bike, all it really needed doing was a chain cleaning. I figured out an interesting new way to get more of the gunk out of it; wash in a chain cleaner as normal (first wash hot clean water, second wash chain cleaner, then two washes of hot clean water), dry it off, then spray the chain slowly with WD40 while holding the chain underneath with a rag to catch overspray. Once the whole chain has been coated with WD40, run it through the WD40-soaked rag. Then (and this is the interesting bit) rinse the chain out with hot clean water again. There were huge quantities of gunk stuck to the magnet in the chain cleaner, as well as gunked up WD40 stuck to the sides of the chain cleaner. It took 5 washes before the amount of gunk coming out started to subside, and I gave up after another 5 washes. I assume the clean water was forcing the WD40 out of the chain, which was in turn transporting all the really fine gunk that the chain cleaning fluid couldn't get out.