A couple of years ago we had a Secret Santa game, and we were to make an educated guess on what your chosen recipient should get based on his/her posts. My Santa was @oddjob2, and he found a comment of mine that I don't overhaul my bearings often enough. He sent me some grease and some bearing balls.
Last week, I discovered severe neglect in the freewheel and rear hub of my old Raleigh Super Course, and a few months ago, I found the same in the BB of my old McLean. OK, time to get things back up to snuff.
I still haven't organized things well enough, and I couldn't find the 5/32" balls I needed for my Super Course's headset, but I overhauled it anyway, reusing the balls I was able to catch without losing. It's a crude headset, not precisely ground, but it spins freely enough and evenly enough and will last a lifetime so perfection isn't a goal.
I overhauled the front hub, too.
I removed the cranks and cleaned the chainrings. The BB is a Shimano cartridge type, and it's working fine and doesn't need anything.
I cleaned nearly the whole bike, even the tires and the rims. It still looks like hell because the paint is so awful. One of these days, I'll sound down the bad spots and touch them up. In the meantime, the bike is functionally as close to perfect as it will get, and that's satisfying. Now I have to do all my other bikes.
I'm finding keeping them all in good running shape to be a bit tough, especially since home projects are more important. I'm thinking again about how I should own fewer bikes, but I can't figure out what to let go of. I'll be watching how much I ride each one. I own ten, including our tandem.
Now I need a recording system for maintenance. I think I can use ridewithgps for that, and that's a wonderful thing.