Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
Same here.
There is a huge salt mine that runs under Lake Erie. Since they mine the stuff here, road salt is cheap so they use a LOT of it.
Back in the early '70s, I had a five-year-old bike that literally rusted out! I rode year round here in the Cleveland suburbs - in the Winter and salt, too. It was only my Ashtabula-crank Sears Free Spirit three-speed. I knew I was hard on it, so I would take it
completely apart at least twice a year down to the bare frame for a thorough cleaning. Year four it even got repainted. Then late that fifth Winter, I hit a pile of snow that turned out to be harder than I thought. The rust-weakened frame snapped. The top tube broke just forward of the seat tube.. Rusted from the inside out. I had it welded at school, but the toptube broke again a few weeks just forward of the repair. That's when I got my first Fuji Special Tourer...
Back in those days, our family never had a car that reached anything over 80,000 miles. They'd just rust into a pile of junk. My first car was a '72 Cougar bought in '76 - and already the doors were flapping in the breeze and quarter panels rusted through. Driver's floor, too! Remember the first Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volare? The fenders on those rusted through in just two years, prompting a factory recall. The front suspension torsion bar crossmember would rot out too, and you'd see a lot of those with their 'chin down'.
I HATE RUST!!!!
/rant
We now return you from this off-topic rant back to the topic of... whatever the heck it was. Winter training, I guess.
