tubesocksFred you are correct, if water i.e. rain, gets into the cable housing and cold weather hits it can freeze the cables causing shifting to be harder. The same goes for the interface on the hub if the lubricant has been spread thin due to use. The cables coming out of the shifter sounds like you said, some goof ball was JRA and twisted too hard and broke the small plastic piece inside of the shifter. This causes over rotation and will make the cables stick out of the shifters. I believe the fluid inside of the hub turns to a slushie basically at -4F so the hub was probably okay in this situation.