Originally Posted by
Andrew R Stewart
To shift the drift a bit- Who here has filled their tubes (yes, remember those old school bladder things?) with some water? With a floor pump it's easy to remove the top cap off the cylinder, remove the piston and rod/handle, pour water in it and reinstall the piston then pump water into your tire. a few pump fills in both tires and then go ride it. Lot's of fun feeling the bike surge back and forth as the water sloshes about in the spinning wheels. Talk about un balanced wheels
Or maybe the rider is un balanced. This is a fun trick to play on a friend too. Andy (who didn't forget to dry out the pump as to not corrode the check valve)
I experienced something like that last Cycle Oregon. The first 4 days were wet. At times seriously wet. Bikes were outdoors the entire time. Night 4 it rained hard. Temps went below freezing. Apparently I had water in the tubes, in the rims? Anyway the early miles I had a block of ice that made for a very disconcerting, Paris Roubaix-like ride. This while on a road surface with ice. Finally the ice melted and the the rest of the (long) day went fine.
And I l know I should have brought a waterproof sheet to cover the bike at night. But, I would have had to stash that still wet sheet in my waterproof bag with all my not so dry clothes to sit in a truck all day, distributing the moisture throughout. Drying wasn't happening except during the hours between rains while riding and in camp some of the time. Bad enough having to roll up my wet tent and stuff it in that bag. (Cycle Oregon - run in the best weather week of the year. Last year's weather had never happened before; at least not in the Cascades or east. The coast is a different story.)
Ben