Brrrr.

It was 19 F when I left on my ride this morning. It warmed up to a balmy 24 F by the time I got home. But the wind had picked up, so the wind chill brought it down below 10 F. I've been out in worse, but usually not until December. Most years we only get a handful of days below 20 F; preview of things to come or a weather anomaly?

Friday I tried the Surly cranks on the Juice. First pedal stroke; snap, crackle, pop! No good. When I got in to the cover of the woods, I pulled over and checked the torque on all the crank bolts. Seemed good, added a little more pre-load, and off I rolled. Crankle, snap, pop!

Ugh! I hate a noisy bike! At least the leaves will drown it out while I'm in the woods.

When I got home I removed the pedals, re-lubed and torqued back on. Crackle, crackle, crackle!
Lube the chain. Snap, snap, snap!
Fine tune the chain line. Pop, crackle, snap!
File the chain ring teeth. Snapple, popple, crack!
Change the chain-ring, which included adding a link to the chain since all I had was a larger ring. Crankle, crackle, crack!

The only thing left was the bottom bracket cups. They were silent with the XT crank, but there wasn't anything left to change.
Yanked the cups out of the Stumpjumper (where I had taken the Surly cranks from), cleaned them, lubed them, crossed myself, and put them in.
In the stand everything sounded and felt good. But what about when I actually was riding the bike?

As I rolled out this morning, and pedaled away from home all was quiet! WooHoo!

Tinkle, tinkle tink!

What the F@#*!
As I gaze down at my cranks, distraught, I see the tag from my teabag hanging out of my bottle flapping against my seat-tube.

Ahh, silence!