Too Cold to work on bikes

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It warmed up now to -5F, up from -15F last night. High yesterday was +4F. It's over -30F in Northern Minnesota and Northern Ontario near the Minnesota border. International Falls Minnesota is going to get below zero for the next 10 days and probably longer as that is as far as the long range weather report goes. Bob Dylan's hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota is -32F right now. I went outside this morning and my warm boots from being by the radiator last night melted the dusting of snow on my side walk and froze my feet to the sidewalk. I should have kept moving but the weather kind of stopped me cold and by the time I decided to move I had to unstick my boots. I painted some small parts in my shop yesterday. I was going to get the sticky parts this morning to bring in by the fire to cure but I gave up. I went back inside to sit by the wood stove to dream about bicycles. -25F yesterday 65 miles west of me at my friends cabin but it only got down to -17F here. Even Green Bay Wisconsin 4 hours south of me is below zero.
 
I put away the tools when the temp gets below 50deg.

I would almost never work on bikes here if I did that. It's actually colder today than yesterday as it never got up to 0F and it is now dropping. Yesterday it got up to +4F. I warmed up the truck and the car for a half hour then let my two dogs run along side the truck on a backwoods road. They started hopping around and limping on cold feet after a half mile so we quit. I got the painted parts from my shop while I was out warming up our vehicles and they are drying by the fire. We saw two snowy owls today while staring out the window at the snow. It's called "The U.P. Stare". I'm going to start a new coping organization "Snowbank Stare Anonymous". One coping mechanism is for a group of us to drive 180 miles East or 200 miles west to look at different U.P. snowbanks. Group therapy snowbank stare withdrawal. A traveling highlight is seeing the Road Commission plows go speeding by and all you can see is a plume of snow, the plow is hidden in it.
 
Not that cold in Kansas but too cold to do any major bike work outside or in unheated shop. Tinkering at best. Anxious for May 1st am BO#14. I have several projects to choose from.


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Not that cold in Kansas but too cold to do any major bike work outside or in unheated shop. Tinkering at best. Anxious for May 1st am BO#14. I have several projects to choose from.


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This cold is over such a large northern area and has persisted for 3 days, I think you will feel it's bite in Kansas.
 
The high for the last three days has been +4F. High yesterday was 0F and it is -6F now. It got down to -16F last night. When I go out to my shop my wrists start to ache in my wool lined deer hide mitts just going out to start the vehicles. It's supposed to get colder over the next two days, then warm up to normal. This cold has me a little more than unsettled, bordering on scary. We live in the woods all alone and I have been getting up every two hours at night and running the hot water for 10 minutes and stacking wood in the stove. So far our plumbing in the crawl space has not frozen and the well feed line has not frozen. This will be a test as I think this is the coldest that we have seen here since we built our new cabin 8 years ago. I'm looking forward to getting some sleep when it warms up to +16 - 20F. Burr, it's got to be worse for people who aren't retired and have to go to work. There are no local closings or delays due to the cold. Walking to school would be a treat.
 
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You're a lot further north than me. But here in Illinois we're probably going to set record lows in the next couple days. The fluorescent lights in my garage won't light. Only 4 days left in the MBBO haha & I'm so close on my second build, Muscle Spasm. I went out there with a LED light and took the steering column off to bring it in the house to wrap the bars. So yeah it's too cold, but I'm working around it.

Carl.
 
I'm probably around a degree latitude lower than the UP...and we are mostly in the 50s by day, low 40s/high 30s at night. I think the coldest temp so far this winter at our house was 24'F :grin:. Not a single day of snow so far this winter (we usually get our last snow event in february, or march...if any, this year). If I want to play in the white stuff, however, it is only about 45mins away up the pass :thumbsup:.

Its not bad living in a temperate climate...though, around here they complain in both directions...no snow in the winter...not enough heat in the summer. Some people just can't be pleased :bigsmile:.
 
You're a lot further north than me. But here in Illinois we're probably going to set record lows in the next couple days. The fluorescent lights in my garage won't light. Only 4 days left in the MBBO haha & I'm so close on my second build, Muscle Spasm. I went out there with a LED light and took the steering column off to bring it in the house to wrap the bars. So yeah it's too cold, but I'm working around it.

Carl.
I'm building two bikes. I'm using the bathroom and my bedroom. Makes a mess, especially chemicals and grease. I'n not painting them, just oil on the cleaned parts. My seat was stripped in acid in a storage container in my bathroom and painted in my shop and moved inside by the fire after a day curing in below zero in the shop. The bathroom is good as the fan can clear the chemicals from the air. The hubs, nuts/bolts, handlebars, stem, fork and skip tooth drive line were also put in the storage container of acid. The frame was stripped in the shop using two treatments with oven cleaner followed by two coats of stripper. The frame was cleaned outside with a bucket of hot water. The frame was then wire brushed and treated with several coats of phosphoric acid. all parts were then covered with Penetrol or Gibbs. I'm pleased with how the metal on both bikes turned out. My big hold up is building the wheels. The wood wheels on one bike have no washers on the spoke nipples on one rim and those are coming from Europe. I built wheels for the other bike but the rear hub was bent just enough that the chain would come off so I got another hub from France and now I have to disassemble that wheel and build it again. I'll need new spokes and haven't gotten around to calculating the length yet. It has a 114mm spacing and is a 4 speed cassette, but my first build turned out perfectly dished and round, which pleased me. I'll probably have a problem repeating the dish, ha.
 
Well I have bike build stuff going on in the living room and in my basement, so a little at a time all over. It helps that I'm a bachelor so no Honey Do's to slow me down or put my stuff away when I'm not looking... o_O

Carl.
 
Well I have bike build stuff going on in the living room and in my basement, so a little at a time all over. It helps that I'm a bachelor so no Honey Do's to slow me down or put my stuff away when I'm not looking... o_O

Carl.
Nice to know someone else builds inside. My wife is an angle, she never complains about my hobby. She says she always knows where I am and what I'm up to. I can't believe she doesn't complain as the bathroom has a stinky acid bath big enough for handle bars and forks. Right now a bike is being built in the bedroom, one in the bathroom and I have a primed frame drying behind the wood stove in the living room and my cloths closet is full of stashed half built wheels.
 
My wife and kids are usually pretty good about me having a project in the house too. I try not to get involved with major overhauls or anything really greasy in our living space, but it's not unusual for me to have a bike in the family room for a new set of tires or some other basic tinkering. If it's been sitting in the way for long enough and someone complains, I drag it to the ̶d̶u̶n̶g̶e̶o̶n̶ basement.
 
I can't even imagine that level of cold!
It's warming up, break out the pina coladas. The high in the last 24 hours got up to +1F. The low this morning was only -12F. Better than N.
Dakota -75F. Six US States are colder than the South Pole, but it's summer there.
20190131_065642.jpg
 
On the noon news today cold record set. Coldest day in 112 years!
IMG_4793.JPG

Roads are nasty, dangerous to even be outside, frostbite in like 5 min. on exposed skin. Note the sudden warm up on Sat. incl. rain! There is maybe 6" hard pack snow on the ground here as we had been enjoying mild winter with little snow till now. I'm dreading the freezing drizzle.
IMG_4776.JPG
IMG_4769.JPG

Our horses usually stay out 24/7 and they have shelters to avoid nasty weather, but this is extreme and everyone is in the barn...
IMG_4785.JPG

Even the farm dog wants to stay inside. Note the plastic bags of wood shavings, they are around our water faucets to help keep them from freezing...
IMG_4762.JPG
IMG_4787.JPG

They are going outside tomorrow, hope the rain does not force us to bring them in again.
 
-21F at 7 AM today but it is now, at 2PM, +8, warmest in a week. Its' getting warmer. They say it's going to get up to +12 today. I just took the garbage out to our shed and brought in an armload of firewood from the wood pile, 100 yards round trip. No hat, gloves, jacket and in my slippers. Yesterday I couldn't even go to the wood shed with two winter jackets, snow pack boots, flannel lined pants and double wool mittens. My wrists would start to ache, it was scary. My feet got pretty cold today in my slippers, serves me right for being too lazy to put on the snow packs.
 
On the noon news today cold record set. Coldest day in 112 years!
View attachment 89467
Roads are nasty, dangerous to even be outside, frostbite in like 5 min. on exposed skin. Note the sudden warm up on Sat. incl. rain! There is maybe 6" hard pack snow on the ground here as we had been enjoying mild winter with little snow till now. I'm dreading the freezing drizzle.
View attachment 89468 View attachment 89469
Our horses usually stay out 24/7 and they have shelters to avoid nasty weather, but this is extreme and everyone is in the barn...
View attachment 89470
Even the farm dog wants to stay inside. Note the plastic bags of wood shavings, they are around our water faucets to help keep them from freezing...
View attachment 89472 View attachment 89471
They are going outside tomorrow, hope the rain does not force us to bring them in again.
nice pictures
 
Green Bay TV weatherman said we had 69 hrs. or about 3 days solid below zero temps. Pretty sure I wouldn't last too long in the Arctic as going out doing chores gets pretty hard. Then we were rewarded with an awesome sunset when the cold snap ended!
Sunset after cold spell.JPG
 

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