Mother knows best about spring cleaning

Mother Nature has been graciously lending me a hand with my spring cleaning lately. Last week was cold and rainy, leaving me quite content to stay home and catch up on our post-vacation laundry and housework. Beautiful spring weather arrived just in time for a Friday night Phillies game with family and friends. Saturday was warm enough to put on our flip-flops and shorts and spend the afternoon in the driveway cleaning our new old bikes. I have been waiting for the chance to start working on my Raleigh, and my daughter was eager to join me. She parked her new old bike (which will be introduced in a separate post) next to mine, and we spent all day scrubbing and chatting. She enjoyed my lesson in finding the right cleaning tool for different parts of the bike. Her favorite tool became the baby bottle brush with sponge tip, while I stuck with the old standby my mother had introduced to me, the toothbrush. Poor Daddy doesn't have (or want) a new old bike to clean, so he took off for a ride on his favorite trail. Sunday was slightly cooler and cloudier, but Daughter was anxious to make more progress on our bikes, so another afternoon in the driveway followed. Once again we worked until dinner time, just as a chill came into the air to signal that the weekend was ending. This week's forecast is almost a carbon copy of last week's - cold and rainy during the week, with a beautiful weekend to follow. I'm looking forward to getting more greasy bike grime under my fingernails, although I'm still trying to clean out this weekend's accumulation. An old toothbrush should do the trick.