profjmb

Terrible winter in Chicago, but it's finally melting. Just hit 40. Lots of ice/snow to melt still, and there are puddles, probably fairly salty. I have a steel commuting bike with fenders but am itching to break out my nice carbon road bike. I'm wondering what how those of you with a similar predicament resolve it. Especially interested in what Chicagoans think.

NABodie

Winter and summer bikes, I don't think my wife will go for it!

Elvo

Only on group rides or crowded MUPS to impress complete strangers

Silvercivic27

All my best stuff has already been out. It's still a little salty out, but oh well. Your carbon bike will actually probably do better than your steel bike in the salt.

bobones

Still loving my winter bike at the moment. Spring bike will come out when the roads are dry (possibly tomorrow!). Summer bike in May.

rpenmanparker 

All my bikes are top notch. No difference. Want to ride, gotta ride a nice one.

gioscinelli 

Riding my Spectrum TI until the streets and roads are dry for my CF bike and perfect for my Cinelli and Gios!

pdedes

Winter bike, rain bike, sun bike. They’re all nice bikes. Even the trainer bike

gc3

Call me crass but I'd rather have 1 nice $$$$ road bike than 4 ho-hum $ road bikes. I ride it year round or I don't ride outside.

lesdunham

Around April 10th. The heavier bike with wider tires for winter does good until the temps get to 50, then all the animals want to come out and ride.

Silvercivic27

The trouble is that the nice road bikes eventually turn into the hohum road bikes, and we can't get rid of them anymore for sentimental reasons, so they become the crit and bad weather bikes. At least that's the way it works at my house!

clausen

Who has only one bike? Why trash a your good bikes drive train in salt and dirt?

hubcyclist

Even though I have a 2014 giant escape and a 1995 raleigh, I consider my raleigh to be the nice bike. I did take it out in early February when we had a warm weekend with pretty clean roads, but since then we've had nothing but snow and grimy roads. It was over 50 on sat and I took out the giant and still felt a bit of panic going through some spots where melted snow had pooled on the MUP. I'm still very much in the protect my shiny new toys phase

f4rrest

I do. Every day is a "good bike" day. No salt here.

gc3

There's this new scientific process recently announced by NASA called "cleaning your bike"...

copswithguns

My Roubaix with Ultegra 6800 is already out. Then again, I live in Texas and it's been a dryish winter here.

KLiNCK

It depends on the conditions.
Ideally, all the snowbanks have melted and it's rained a couple of times to wash away the accumulated road salt/sand. Usually it's sometime in April.
Until then it's more "quality time" on the rollers...
I'm getting really tired at looking at the clothes dryer. LOL.
Come on Spring!

big chainring 

I did my share of cold weather riding when I was a yute. I'll wait till April?, May?, or when I get sick of sittin on the couch. The roads right now are just trashed. Use your fat tire bike till things get patched up, maybe July.
I'm just groovin on the Scotts commercials starting up again. "Feed your lawn, FEED it!"

And the Bulls! Great win today over the Heat.

MagicHour

Riding my one and only new 'good bike' since snow finally melted. Lotsa salt still on roads, but I've been diligent about rinsing off after every ride. I have a fixed Pista that I'll ride occasionally too, if its sloppy out.

Chris R.

Took out my Colnago yesterday for the first outdoor ride. 0 C and sunny. 1.5 hours on the bike and 30 min to clean it all up. It was wet and salt on the road but a good clean up was all it took.

hueyhoolihan

i've got a beater bike for bad weather and it's not a bad bike to ride, but i've only had the opportunity to ride it about ten times in the last year and a half seeing as how the weather's been so good. but i don't suppose anybody wants to hear that...

StanSeven

I used to think that way. Then I realized nothing happens from riding in salt and dirt. It takes some concessional cleaning but I never see any harm. My oldest bike is steel, is 22 years old, kept for over half that time in a shed ten feet from salt water, and the worse thing that happened is the knurled nut adjuster for one brake corroded.

I just came back from a ride on my best bike today and used a water bottle to rinse off salt and sand.

I certainly don't see any evidence of them being trashed. That's like saying don't drive a car when teh weather is bad.

Samfujiabq

Three nice bikes,excellent weather,,67degrees today ,no wind absolutely perfect riding conditions,,tomorrow is predicted 70 ,,,so as Willy Nelson sings" On the road again"the bad side is we appreciate any moisture we can get.

mpath

Except if you're in Portland OR where they cancelled their "Worst Day of the Year Ride" due to bad weather. [h=3][/h]

Drew Eckhardt 

Every day.

When I lived in Colorado I built up a titanium frame which I could ride in any weather with increased crash risk without worrying about paint damage and built a second set of wheels on which I mounted 27mm cyclocross tires.

My 1996 Chorus ergo levers didn't look too pretty at the end of that, but worked fine until a discontinued spring broke and still fetched $45 on e-bay in broken condition.