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We all know that if we ride our bikes a lot, they will gradually disintegrate. If you commute by bike you’ll feel this particularly hard, since who can face cleaning a bike after every midweek commute, come rain or shine? The regular rider who gives their bike a bit of a sluice down before heading to the shower can stem the grind a little, and the Saturday rider who then spends Sunday cleaning down and regreasing every nook and cranny may slow the ravages of time longer still. But there’s something that feels all wrong about such a ride:cleaning ratio.
What is the right ride:clean ratio? Any commuter will tell you that 10:1 (if you count the way to work and home as two rides, which I totally think you should) is not enough. But 1:1 is too much. Should we count the ride bit of the equation in numbers of rides, or hours? There’s probably some mathematical rule that says ratios can’t be measured in different scales on either side of the colon, but then the rulers of mathematics probably don’t call it a colon either. And regardless of how fast and loose I might be playing with the theories of maths here, the fact is that it’s not as simple as how many hours of riding you do. There are variables at play in the type of mud (NB I’m assuming there is basically always mud – it is a mathematical constant), the number of descents or ascents, and the drying out time.
I haven’t put this theory to any quantitative testing because I’m playing fast and loose with science as well as maths here, but I’m pretty sure that four one-hour rides each a week apart will do more damage than two two-hour rides across a fortnight. There is something about the drying out and sitting in encrusted mud that is bad. It does not preserve a bike, it pickles it. And so whatever the number is on the ‘ride’ side of the ratio, the destruction that occurs is a product of riding and drying, mud and water, braking and grinding. You could probably write it down, with Greek symbols and stuff. But this is not A Level maths, this is maths for the flippant. I’ll make a small adjustment to the equation: let’s say it’s not ride:clean, but grind:clean that we’re trying to solve, where the answer gives us the right amount of fun balanced against an acceptable amount of destruction.
You cannot simply up the amount of ‘clean’. If you have a zero grind antecedent (yeah, I googled it), then you might think that any value over zero in the clean side of things is putting you into restoration, and that 0:0 would be stasis. But put any bike to the back of the shed for a season and you’ll know this is never the case. You cannot just dig it back out and ride. Tyres need to be pumped. Sealant needs to be refreshed. But somehow the gears also need reindexing, the brakes need bleeding, and the stem bolts tightening. There is an attrition that happens even when you don’t ride. This is the unfair truth of things.
Which means, of course, that doing some riding is always better than nothing. Just give things a clean from time to time too. At about a 4:1 ratio, I think. Get out there there now and add to the grind side.
