Winter grime

Just completed about 400miles over the last few days on winter ~ UK motorways and A roads. First leg was to London setting off at 5am in the dark on Friday - 135 miles in freezing fog in some of the coldest, bad visibility roads I've ever ridden on. Soon glad I have some great Keis heated jacket and gloves, don't know how I did those journeys for the last thirty years without them. Fog was so thick you could only see about 30 feet ahead and it froze on your arms and knees into sheet ice which you had to smash off every so often.

To think that this usually looks like a load of slick, precision made parts well maintained and glistening with the sheen of oil and obsession.

http://allyearbiker.co.uk - now a little more expensive but still great value.

Yuck when I look at the bike mess it tells me enough about the conditions that words are not necessary . You know that picture is worth a thousand words thing? Well the saving grace to this is that if you, like me, get some meditative joy from detailing a bike back to shiny and pretty your in for a marathon session. I do not choose to travel in such conditions I am what's known as a hobby rider. Once the road is put into the chore category I'll sit in cage comfort sipping latte's and blasting Chingon while recognizing that my wipers are in perfect cadence with the beat. Stay where you are and enjoy the mental therapy. Hell my bike is covered in the garage to keep the sawdust off.

That salt eats everything and will put a fur on parts. I don't ride in the shitty conditions of winter and if hypothetically I could only ride, I would use a winter hack. Cars can use winter tyres as they say grip is very compromised below 7 degrees and having broken more bones than I would have liked, I'm not getting any younger.
I will wait until March where it will be getting a tad warmer and drier with added length in daylight.

The bike has looked like this every winter for ten years now. It all cleans up and every spring gets a good strip down and thorough recommissioning for the summer.

It's a tool for doing a job all year round in my opinion, not a toy for pleasant weather.

Getting rid of salt and winter grime is a good way to keep you on your toes and keep the bike running well.

Like you, i also ride year round, but we don't have salt on our roads over winter, sometimes gravel on the mountain passes, or down the South Island on some of the shady sides of frozen hills they spray some liquid gunge, but not up north, with less than 20 frosts a year, we are good to ride year round. That salt must be hard on those chains, and bare metal.