Bike noises

It's a beautiful day so I thought I'd go for a bike ride and up my Vitamin D levels. First the bike needed a bit of cleaning and tinkering and whilst wasting time prior to actually doing anything I came across this excellent looking site http://www.jimlangley.net/wrench/keepitquiet.html Many of the irritating noises your bike makes are documented here with the solutions. Unfortunately I still can't quite work out what the rattling noise is from my back wheel. Sounds like a ball bearing rattling around but is that really what it could be? Might need an expensive trip to the bike shop. ho hum...

Jumping in... and braking

I'm going to hold my nose and jump right into the fast flowing stream of information that is the blogosphere, with this blog dedicated to being a 50 year old cycling woman. If that isn't a poor metaphor for a cycling blog. I have cycled since I could walk and sometimes cycled when I could barely walk. On one occasion in fact I cycled, then couldn't walk - at a very young age when I didn't understand the incompatibility of steep downhills and no brakes, although I didn't do that again, and have always had a healthy respect for the brakes on my bike ever since. So first post is about brakes.

I have a Trek 7.5, lovely bike, but it has V Brakes which is not what I'm used to in bike maintenance terms so I wasn't sure how to adjust them. Tightening them is easy - no need for a whacky 'third hand' (remember those, what a handy piece of kit that was). However they have this annoying tendency to go out of synch so they're not pulling evenly on both sides and then they rub on the wheel rim, slowing me down and requiring more effort to ride, something I am never in favour of. After some unproductive fiddling fuelled mainly by guesswork I realised that the answer would probably be available on YouTube - being of the Richard's Bicycle Book generation it hadn't immediately occurred to me that there would be a video explaining what to do . And there was - so here it is. The relevant 'adjusting the little screws' bit is around 2.15.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oPxuyQ7YKI&feature=related

My brakes are now in perfect alignment and no longer rubbing. And when they aren't, I'll know what to do. Small victories empower us!