Just to show what the conditions here are...

Here's a photo of my chain on Sunday. This is typical if I lube and wipe down on Wednesday night, then ride Thursday and Friday, and go out to do pre-ride maintenance on Sunday. The curves you see there are the shape of the cog that it was on when I stopped; the chain wouldn't bend much.


So two days of riding, then 1.5 days of sitting in the garage. It took me 20 minutes to get the chain back to working condition again; I have to apply oil (for winter I'm using 30W motor oil, though I've tried different stuff) and then I have to manually flex each link to break it loose; some are tight enough that they leave indentations on my fingers when I push, before they finally snap loose and the oil works into the joint.

Here's typically what my bike will look like after cleaning it then riding it the 11 miles to work: