mascher

I'm sure quite a few of you deal with this, so I'm curious as to what you do.

I commute in the winter in all weather, which means my bike gets covered in snow and slush. I also keep my bikes indoors both at home and at work. I've yet to come up with a system for dealing with a snowy bike though. One year I laid down garbage bags in my spare room, let her drip off there, and threw them away every week, but living in your typical run-down Montreal apartment, my sloping floors still allowed the collected water to run off. Now I just park her near the front door and clean up the melt, but that's pretty messy.

I have no basement and no tap for a hose, and nothing solid to lock it to outside, though I wouldn't lock any of them but the snow beater outside anyway.

What do you do?

Old Dirt Hill

I lay a long beach towel down on the floor at work where I park my bike. I take it home on the weekends and bring in a clean one each week. Still makes a mess, but it lets me keep parking my bike indoors near my desk.

Batson

Put it in your bathtub/shower. And use the power of scrubbing bubbles to clean up the grit left over.

mascher

Heh, I really can't do that, my shower and shower curtain are already jerryrigged, and my old old tub gets stained really really easily because of all of the microscratches.

But I remember seeing a picture of someone in the shower with their bike on this very board.

dmg

I have a porch with a piece of pipe sticking out of it, at about head level. When it's really snowy, I'll hang the back wheel from the pipe and put a plastic mortar bucket (one of those rectangular things that you mix cement in) underneath it, long side perpendicular to the wheels. The snow melts and plops into the container. Works really well, but I guess it presupposes you have some protruding structure that you can hang a bike from...

silent1

I cleaned a set of tires off in the bathtub one time. I imagine I am going to pay a large sum of money to have the tub replaced and or fixed when I decide to leave. All the grit that came off of the tires stained to tub a dark grey color and I can't seem to get it out.

mascher

Yeah, road grime will get your tub super dirty if the enamel is now super porous.

I feel like an idiot, but it never occurred to me to grab a broomstick and just whack the tires a few times, since this is where most of the snow you can't shake off collects - 2.25" knobbies and all.

I just had a brainwave to get three of the trays I use for shoes by the door and put them under each wheel and one under the bb/downtube.

cavit8

I typically just give my bike a couple of shakes before bringing it in. You could get an $1 shower curtain liner, lay it down and put some shaggy rug or something on top of that. It will absorb the moisture. You'd just need to dry it out periodically to make it doesn't get too funky.

mattface 

Large English boot tray?

mascher

I give'r a good hard bounce on each wheel several times before I come in, for sure. But I'd have to walk over a filthy wet rug every time I go into the front room or out the door, which I suppose I sort of already do, dodging puddles.

Yeah mattface, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about, I'm going to give that a try.

I guess in the end I was hoping for some kind of magical widget like a keirin brake to appear, or some genius fix like using a disc hub as a fixed hub.

marqueemoon

Oilcloth is another option. Pretty cheap at any fabric store.

mattface 

I think this is roughly akin to using a disk hub as a fixed hub, but no drilling required! it's 46" long, so I guess you might need two. I was hoping to find one closer to 5 feet long. there probably is one if you look hard enough.

mascher

Mine are about 3 pairs of size 13 boots wide, so I was thinking 3 of them, one under each tire, and a third resting on the walls of the other two.

Pretty genius I guess, because a walk to the sink for a quick rinse and they don't even have to look all nasty.

You know what though, some weird part of me likes that the wood by the front door is permanently damaged from dirty melted snow and salt, and that in the winter there's little bits of black stone from the roads everywhere on my floor when I sweep up, from where they got kicked around when I cleaned up the melt.

Garandman

Around here we use cheap all-weather auttomotive floor mats from WalMart / Canadian Tire.
They comes in several colors; have a lip to hold melted water; have little nubs to keep them from sliding around; and clean and store easily.

There is one long size for the back of a minivan or truck that may work for you as well.

clipped

I bounce it on the back wheels to knock most of the stuff off and use an old shower curtain liner for some stuff like lubing the chain and some cleaning. a carpet strip I keep rolled up in a corner works well to park a bike on or for a matt for roller riding if it's seriously icy outside. Glad to be reminded of the automotive mat as I remember having a cheap truck bed liner years ago that worked great. Regret selling it with my truck.