So. We were without air conditioning in our building for awhile today. Fortunately it’s a nice day out with unseasonably low humidity and a breeze, so I was able to open the window to make it tolerable.
It’s amazing how much beeping you hear in populated regions (like college campuses) nowadays. Seems like all day long, there’s beeping somewhere from a truck backing up. There’s so much of it that it just kind of fades into the background with other stuff like birds chirping. After awhile you don’t even hear it. Something about the sound makes it carry over really long distances, and it’s also very non directional, making it hard to tell where it’s coming from. It could be right around the corner, or it could be a mile away. You can’t tell. It’s just sort of “there.”
Last fall I put fenders on my road bike, which I use daily for commuting. They work great, but they make the bike really noisy. Now that summer is here and the weather is drier, I decided to try to figure out why the fenders are so noisy. I took the front fender off and rode to work with just the rear fender. The bike was TONS quieter without the front fender. I think that’s the culprit. The fender itself doesn’t rattle, so apparently something is vibrating against the bike frame. My front fork doesn’t have dropouts to mount fenders, so I had to use zip ties to attach the struts. Could be the struts vibrating against the fork, or the front of the fender vibrating against the underside of the brake, or who knows what else. If I can’t figure it out and make it stop, I may end up getting a clip-on fender to use on the front. Or I could replace my front fork, or I could forget about fenders on the road bike and get a hybrid or cyclocross bike (with better clearance for fenders) to use in wet weather. One can certainly never have too many bikes…