My primary bike is heading over to Graham, WA this morning with my in-laws (I'll be following with my family in a few days and didn't want to break my nearly 70 day riding streak while I'm over there) so I finally got motivated to do some minor maintenance and get my Norco Cherokee single speed back into operation for today's ride into work. That involved scraping most of the residual winter rust off the chain, making sure my bike computer worked (got to log those kms), pumping up the tires and making sure the headset was tightened all the way. The last issue turned out to be the source of the violent braking shimmy I experienced on the first several test commutes to work last fall. Bike repair noob that I was back then, I didn't realize it was fairly loose while I was building up the bike.
The ride into work was pretty fun, but definitely different between the massive 2.1″ tires and gearing that cruises comfortably at approximately 22 km/h on level ground. I spun things fast enough to only be a couple minutes slower for my usual morning route. Turning felt a bit stiffer than I remembered, but I managed fine by leaning a little more. As it turns out, I'm still a bit of a bike repair noob as I realized I had overtightened the headset! Steering should feel a bit better on the way home now that I've readjusted the headset.