Sun Tea is Fun Tea

For the past few weeks I have been trying to kick a Coke habit. Coke is expensive, it's not great for you, Coca Cola's labor practices are atrocious, and the manufacture of aluminum cans is hugely energy intensive and creates very toxic byproducts. Like most of my efforts to get clean and sober it was't going very well. Maybe I was down from five cans a day to four. I remembered that in college I used to drink tea endlessly in my dorm room, but boiling tea is energy intensive too and it's been too hot for hot drinks.

So I've started making sun tea. It's easy, delicious, healthy and cheap. You take a big, clear glass container, fill it with water, put tea bags in it and leave it in the sun for a few hours. The flavor isn't as strong as with boiled tea, but it's good. My mom likes Good Earth Original which has a nice, sharp cinnamon flavor. I like Celestial Seasonings because the bags aren't individually wrapped so there's much less waste and they have lots of berry flavors - Celestial Seasonings bags also don't have the string and handle that most tea bags do. We use 8 bags for a galleon (4 liters). After a few hours you can bring it in, let it cool to room temperature and then put it in the fridge. I move the tea to Nalgene and old Gatorade bottles, fill the big container up with fresh water and put it right back outside.

Brewing up some Good Earth Original sun tea

As a cyclist I need to drink well over a gallon a day, so the ability to cheaply and easily flavor water helps a lot. I get my caffeine kick but at a lower dosage than the Coke's. 

If you don't live someplace with clean tap water or aren't home during sunlit hours of course this advice is less practical. Oh, and by constantly drinking sun tea I'm down to one Coke a day.

Cleaning your bike chain the cheap and easy way

Everything I need for bike maintenance

Biking is great for your health, for your wallet, for the planet and, IMHO, for your soul. You're not paying for gas and you're not pumping fossil fuel fumes into the air. Bike maintenance is also much cheaper than auto maintenance - but there are ways to make it cheaper still.



I think that the vast majority of bike maintenance boils down to keeping the drive train (the chain and gears) in good condition. Rusted or eroded drive trains seem to account for the vast majority of bike deterioration; having kept my chain in good condition I have had to do very little else to keep my bike running well over 4 years and thousands of miles. If you take your bike in for maintenance, the main thing the mechanics do will probably be to clean and oil your drive train. By doing some simple maintenance on my chain and gears I have avoided needing to take it in for maintenance for the last 4 years and many thousand miles. (I've also replaced one chain that rusted in my basement while I was in Namiba, one pedal and the bar tape. I replaced the breaks and most of the wiring on my old mountain bike).

Dirty chain and gears

When you work on your chain, the first thing you will do is take off the dirtied oil and all the crap that's sticking to it. The oil serves an essential purpose of lubricating the chain and protecting it from rust, but over time and as you bike it will collect dust and grit. Having that stuff pass through your drive train will reduce the smoothness and efficiency of your pedaling and add wear-and-tear. So your first job is to remove it all. You can buy chain degreasers, but like most specialist products they are overpriced. A better solution is to use diluted dish soap. I use the Park Tool CM-5 Cyclone Chain Cleaner (without the CleanBrite solution; you'll use diluted Dawn) to really scrub the chain, although for years I got by just using rags and wire bristle brushes. I bike every day and clean my chain at least once a month, so I'm glad I bought the Cyclone, but if you're a less frequent rider you'll need less frequent cleanings so buying special tools is unnecessary. Expect your hands to can dirty doing this, especially if you use a rag (layer it - the grease will soak through) but the dish detergent will clean them too. Cleaning dirty grease stains out of your clothes is iffy at best so don't wear nice clothes.

The Cyclone makes things easy but you can use a wire brush and a bunch of rags.

So now your filthy old chain looks shiny and new. However, it's not ready to ride on; you've removed the lubrication and rust protection. So you need to add it back by applying chain lube. I recommend Finish Line. At this point my attention is wandering so I do it the easy way: I pour some on the chain and then run the chain by pedaling while cycling through all the gears to make sure that all contact surfaces are well lubricated.

This is most of what a bike shop would do for your recommended annual checkup, but they'd charge you $50 or more.

The diluted dish detergent removes the dirty lube. Then you'll need to reapply clean lube. This is the majority of bike maintenance. 

I think it's also a good idea to run degreaser (dish soap) on a rag over the rims of your wheels. Grease and gunk that builds up there may make it harder for your breaks to grip. Then clean the degreaser off with water and of course do not lube your rims!

After two years and many thousands of miles, this chain looks and rides almost like new.

Surprisingly clean hands, because I used the Cyclone and layers of rags. Normal washing
won't remove those stains easily but dish detergent will.

If you want to go the extra mile for environmentally conscious bike maintenance, many cyclists swear by using Simple Green as the solvent. I have never done this nor used Simple Green for anything, but it may be ecologically better than Dawn. 

The purpose of this blog

Dear Friends,
After taking a class on sustainable living this summer and hearing some inspiring stories from friends, I've decided to try and orient my lifestyle to be more in-line with my ideals (and my income). My hope is that we can use this blog to share tips on DIY projects and other methods for cutting down waste in our lives. These tips can be as grand as you like, or as simple as the observation that Gatorade bottles are rugged and relatively wide-necked and therefore better for reuse than most disposable plastic bottles. I'm talking about recipes, gardening, composting, recycling, energy savings, money savings, ideas for repairing, reusing and repurposing things that typically get thrown out, or finding cheaper and less ecologically impactful ways of doing things. Also please feel free to ask questions, for example does anyone know how I can get line dried clothes to be soft and unwrinkled like when they come out of the dryer?

If I've set it up right, everyone I've invited should be able to post their ideas.