Continuing on from our Beginner’s Corner article – Riding & Racing on Gravel – You Get Dirty – we thought we would share some quick tips for those who travel to distant events or races – how to clean your rig before the flight or drive home.
Assuming you took a flight or made a road trip to a distant gravel cycling event or race, it is possible your bike may have gotten a wee bit dirty. While mud and crud caked onto one’s frame, components and wheels isn’t detrimental, cleaning your machine sooner versus later always makes the job easier.
This is particularly important if you flew, especially to an event overseas. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is known to open bike cases for inspection, and they don’t need further aggravation dealing with a filthy bike, potentially dragging along soil samples from another country.
Whether you drove or flew, resources such as water, hose or spray guns aren’t found at every event.
So, what to do? One one proven solution, and one unorthodox solution, can get your bike clean enough for travel on a plane, inside or outside a car.
Solution One:
Car Wash – Most modern self-service car washes feature at least one or two bays installed with a powerful jet spray. While the power jet action won’t get your bike absolutely sparkling clean, it will remove most of the crud. Additionally, car washes are cheap. To run the sprayer for a couple of minutes will cost one or two dollars, at least here in the US of A. If you have some paper towels or a rag handy, they can be used for a quick wipe-down of the bike, making your clean-up effort a little tidier.
Avoid directly jet spraying hubs, bottom bracket and headset areas. These areas of the bike contain bearings – while most modern bicycles feature sealed cartridge bearings, even those cannot prevent infiltration of water flung at high speed.
This solution is a little unorthodox and requires the use of a hotel shower / bathroom. It has the possibility to be a bit messy – no toilets are involved – but take great care not to make a mess. Because most hotels have a strict policy about trashing a room, we do not recommend this method.
- Step 1 – Bring your bike inside. Hotels are generally fine with bikes being stored inside a hotel room, but if your bike is filthy, probably not.
- Step 2 – Lift and carry your bike to the room – mud on the hallway carpet isn’t cool.
- Step 3 – Load the bike into the shower. Assuming a shower / tub type arrangement, carefully slide the shower curtain aside, lift the bike inside the tub, climb in, and slide the curtain closed. If you’re dirty, it may be a good time to get naked with the bike – nothing weird please 🙂
- Step 4 – Fire up the shower and clean that bike! If the shower head attachment detaches, use it to spray clean most of bike. As in the first solution, use a paper towel or rag to do final wipe-down of the bike.
- Step 5 – Give your filthy cycling kit a quick clean in the shower.
We hope these quick and simple cleaning solutions prove helpful. Thanks to Michael Toth of Valrico, Florida for suggesting this article.