BLUG

Of course this will seem biased toward our bikes—with the black magic power of the subconscious and all, that’s inevitable—but it’s not like our bikes show up however and then we figure out how to sell what we’re stuck with, how to make the best of a bad situation. We make sure the bikes have what matters. That way, we sell what we LIKE. It’s so much better that way.

First thing that matters: Safety

Feeding yourself and walking, even if with a walker, is more important than riding your bike, and safer. Riding bikes is fun, but it should only minimally put your way of life at risk, so safety is paramount. A huge part of that is you. Anytime you crash on a bike and you aren’t totally blindsided, it’s probably your fault, and at at least isn’t the bike’s. The bike should be reasonably easy to control, strong enough to hold up, and be made of a material that if it fails, fails slowly. “Slow” is key. It doesn’t mean it will cry out to you in loud English that it’s about to go. You have to look, listen, and feel your bike. Just don’t be oblivious to things that aren’t loudly obvious.

Second thing that matters: Design that allows fit and feel

The bad things are:

1.    Too low, too faraway bars.

2.    Too short chainstays that position you too much on top of the rear axle.

3.     Fork blades too short and brake bridges too low, so there’s no room for the tires you’d like to ride, and fenders.

There are others, but if your bars are high enough, your chainstays are long enough, and you can ride the tires and fenders you want, you’ve got a huge headstart on bicycle happiness.

Third thing: Good tube proportions

Tubing should resist buckling to a certain extent. Don’t be go making bike frames like Coke cans.

Third and a half: Nice looking proportions

This is more subjective, but to me nothing looks worse than fat tubes or blunderbusses with skinny tires that nearly skim ‘em, and low bars. Nothing looks better than skinny tubes and fat tires with lots of air around ‘em and high bars. You may be somewhere in the middle on that  one. You don’t need to be anywhere near the middle. It’s just a guess.

Fourth thing that matters: Good frame design

Short frames get too-steep seat tube angles, almost always. I’ve tried to imagine the thinking behind it, and it’s all well-intended but either weak or flawed. Either the designer didn’t know, or preferred to go with the flow rather than having to explain a 72-deg seat tube on a 48cm frame. So they get 75-deg seat tubes that shift your weight too forward-like and put more weight on your hands.

Big frames have too-short chainstays, because they build to maximum wheelbase, maybe so the big bikes fit in standard boxes, or maybe it’s tradition based on short racing frames, and big manufacturers not demanding longer raw chainstays, because their customers (the frame-makers and bike makers) are good businesspeople but bad frame designers.

Fifth thing that matters: Good looks/graphics

There’s a trend to lower the down tube decal and put it on a fatter tube and curl it around the tube toward the underside and make the letters huge so the brand shows up on a race photo. I’d say the decal belongs on the upper part of the tube and should be rolled slightly toward the top centerline. It should be legible as a word, not just a look. Of course, whatever you like, but still, can the bike be proud without shouting? What’s wrong with that?

Sixth thing that matters: Rebuildability

A bike that gets wrecked should be fixable. Steel still wins because there are more people who CAN fix it, all over the world. If you break your carbon frame, it’s Craig Calfee—who probably makes them stronger than new, but there aren’t a lot of Craig Calfees around.

Seventh thing that matters: The afterlife

If your frame dies, wouldn’t recycling it feel kind of good? You needn’t be the Buddha to like that. Most frame materials is recyclable, even carbon, but steel and aluminum are the most recyclable—more places take them and they can be made into new things more easily than titanium, and way more easily than carbon. Steel wins the greeny war if there is one.

What Doesn’t Matter

Making your bike visually symmetrical. Putting the rarest acceptable part on it, or the newest ancient functional piece. Inappropriate showy materials for unshowy jobs.  Picking every part just so. The past in the present when it’s not as good. The present when it’s not as good. Delaying because you’re waiting for the future (well, it depends). Overkill here and there. Any bike that wins any award is weird in some way, because when the selection is vast, voters tend to like extremes. Bikes that harken to or pay homage to. Era-inappropriate bikes, and yet also bad moderns. Total cohesiveness, the bike as the child you never had or an an extension of a part of you that doesn’t really exist, or as a manifestation of anything less important that seems important.

Also, this

Don’t overly attend to cosmetics, but start with a foundation that you find pleasing, and let it age and get worn and improve over the years. Don’t falsify, fertilize, cultivate, take pride in it or get weird the beausage (beauty thru usage), just let it happen. Repair stuff before replacing it, except tires. Patch your tubes.

There’s never a fantastic reason to undo handlebar tape—just wrap over it unless it’s getting too fat. The closest to a good reason to not overwrap cloth is to avoid, fifteen years down the road, having to unwrap several old layers of tape and taking thirty minutes to do that, but you know, won’t that bring back some decent memories? It seems like it might. Nothing specific, but just a whiff of the old times and maybe a brief visual image of something.

Pedal without thinking about your cadence. It’s OK to shift too late. It’s normal to intend to attend to a quirk on your bike or to something on something that’s on your bike, but never get around to it. On my everyday bike I have a bell that I can’t ring because the hammer’s gone. Don’t weigh your bike without first weighing yourself. Here’s a secret: It’s hard to make a useful bike weigh less than 32 pounds. That’s not a challenge; I know it can be done and how to do it, but a bike that weighs 25 pounds and is useful is some combination of stripped down/obsessed over/too close to a dysfunctional edge. Pick rims by weight, but not the way you’ve been told to. It’s OK to clean your bike and OK not to. Let’s not make fun of the neat-nicks, for they shall inherit the earth, but be OK with a dirty boot-of-a-bike. It’s OK to ride your good bike slow and close, and it’s no better to ride it far and fast. Ride it some every day it’s possible to without making it a chore. As you ride it, imagine the effort it would take to run or jog that fast while carrying the load your bike carries for you. Your bike is just supposed to make your life easier and better, to bring convenience to it, not glory. Everyday convenience and fun matter so much more, and are their own gloriousness. This is not philosophical or even anything, but run your thoughts on bikes thru this filter just once and see if it works for you, or make up your own filter, or ignore all filters. You is here, the bike is there, the macho of shopping is everywhere, but ignore it.

Dave’s bike looks fine, despite its begging for a cosmetic makeover.

Who can look at this and not have an urge to start all over with new tape? Dave, is who. I’m at my limits here.

A couple of weeks ago Dave and did an S240 (bike campout) on an island in SF Bay. The bell was shiny to start. Now it’s just getting good. Will the tarnishment eventually wear thru? Only with loads of time and good luck. Imagine having a bell with a nature-born hole in it. Would you sell such a bell for $65? Would you say, “I could get three brand new ones for that?” and think it a no brainer? I bet you wouldn’t, and I know I wouldn’t. That would be insane. (Apologies to lunatics; apologies to the moon.)

Grant

———————————- We may have some neat news soon ——————-

Thanks to all who came by. It all ends Sunday.

Raffles Friday and Saturday at 5.

Rich will be playing sax for the last few hours Friday.

That’s the winning order number. It belongs to A.R. of Atlanta, Georgia. Congratulations! A Nitto Mark’s Rack and a Sackville Trunksack got him in the contest, now he gets to pick a Sam or Betty/Yves. Did you get my voicemail yet?

Thanks to everyone who placed a big order during our Spring push. There were 417 eligible invoices so the odds were pretty good.

A sub-10-year-old girl won the $500 gift certificate at the SF Popup store’s opening night. She immediately started cashing it in for bandanas to Dad’s chagrin. The space was full of new and familiar faces, some baffled locals. Marvis licorice toothpaste and the new King Iris cages were the hot sellers (new items in the webshop).

Want the scoop on our latest promotions? Sign up for our email list. Good luck to all in the future and thanks again to everyone for your support. Our customers always come through and we sure appreciate it.

-D

Our Sub-240-Hour-Storefront is coming in just a few days.

June 1st through 9th

12pm-7pm

3156 24th Street
San Francisco, CA

(by Shotwell, here’s the map)

Here’s what it looks like now. The place is run by Asterisk magazine, they do art openings there. Nice huh?

Picture a bike in each window. At night there’s an accordion fence that slides over.

There will be bikes to see and touch, art from our other showroom, bags, handlebars. Some free schwag, brochures, coupons, a secret “have to be there to get it” super deal. Small items for sale, and discounted posters. No test rides, sorry, just too much to worry about at the start and our insurance for the rider, well, were not sure about that part.

Our big honkin’ 71cm Homer will be there though. It will be the only bike available for test ride. “Century Club” only (PBH is 100cm or higher).

Word is there’s an espresso machine, but not quite like the one we have in Walnut Creek. Rich Lesnik himself will be building wheels while you watch! At least a few days during the week. Meet our friendly staff.

Opening day is Saturday June 1st. At 5pm Saturday we’re doing something special, a giveaway? Hmm.

There are parking meters along the sidewalk for blocks. Plenty of bike parking. Yesterday I checked and the road between BART and Shotwell on 24th is under construction, FYI. Good luck parking a car!

Wouldn’t it be neat if every one of those parking meters had a Riv locked to it? Come by! If for no other reason than to get a coupon… but your support will be appreciated by us and make this stretch of the Mission quite the spectacle. When I visited yesterday there was a gorgeous red Glorious parked right outside. Come back Saturday please. That bike is the best advertisement we’ve got!

Walnut Creek location will be open normal hours, but since we’re taking a lot of stuff to SF, we’ll be low on test bikes & staff and the walls will be bare. You can pick up your bikes there, in Walnut Creek.

If the store is a smash success, or we break even, we might be able to pull a Rapha and extend it longer. I’d like that.

~D

All over the place there are old cheap and medium bikes that have been resurrected as modern street bikes and have secret artsy touches that can’t be had and will never again come on modern cheap or medium bikes. I have a mini-fascination with these bikes, at least to the extent that I always look for them and stop when I see them. It’s just the old kind of trickle-down from high-end to low-end, but it doesn’t happen anymore, since high-end isquitefrankly so blagly (bland + ugly). Here are some now ancient bikes with the kinds of details (specifically, fork crowns) that I’m talking about. All found in the west village of NYC, but they’re really all over the place.

Motobecane from the late ’70s. Flat crown, ornamental shoreline.

Raleigh from the ’60s? I completely dig these tubular crowns that must have been made from scraps at the factory, then closed at the end with a nice chome plug. Flat and tubular at the same time.

Flying Pigeon: The famous most popular bike in China. Maybe the biggest bike maker in the world? Riveted head badge, stamped-and-visible serial number, flat crown, good clearance, striped fenders—two color stripes, even. On a bike like this? It’s so great.

Sears Free Spirit. 1970s, I’m sure. More striped fenders, good clearance, and a twin-plate style crown with a cheap chromed cap. Matching paint and fenders. Totally cool, wonderful.

Ross from the ’70s. A lousy decade for pop music, hairstyles, men’s shirts and pants…but good for bikes. Chromed flat crown with a one-piece crank, even. Ribbed and striped fender. These bikes were on every other pole.

Schwinn Varsity. This fork, the most aero of all time, is a flat piece of steel, continuous from left dropout to right dropout, and with a nice chromey crowny thing. The Bridgestone “Technart” Fork—-which really belongs here, but I don’t have access and it’s just not worth tracking one down. If you have one and send a photo, I won’t post it…it’s a small thing. Well, maybe I would, but really, don’t look. If you have a Bridgestone Carmel from 1982-3-4, that’ll do.

Raleigh, old one again, another view of this wonderful crown. But it’s the fender mohawk that steals the show in this picture. So, so cool. And look at the fender tab, so integrated. Let’s not get overly sentimental about these things…but they are neat, right?

Raleigh later on, more sporty flat crown. The funky R decal there—-no, shouldn’t’ve done it. But the crown is fine, and the lug there.

Huffy. Flat top with chrome cap and that super chunk sleeve-thing coming out from it. Matching fenders, striped and all—-and on a Huffy. This is really cool, and speaking of cool, look at the Kool-Stop shoes. It makes you wonder what the salesperson said or what the motivation was to buy the most expensive brake shoes for this inexpensive bike. And they match both the paint and the tire, or close enough. This kind of thing makes me happy on a normal street-walk.

NOW: Compare those to this modern bike:

It looks like a dementor.

https://www.google.com/search?q=dementor&client=firefox-a&hs=N9s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=wACMUaT_JYSk8QSf1YHgBw&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1038&bih=649#client=firefox-a&hs=U9s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&q=dementors+face&revid=1984776562&sa=X&ei=xwCMUb3ND4uk8QSazoHIBA&ved=0CGsQgxY&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.46340616,d.eWU&fp=56d42fcbf5869e44&biw=1038&bih=649

There’s nothing arty or to look at on this bike. The internal headset—it’s like how kids draw bikes, and it’s hard to find anything to harp on. It’s whole deal is absence. I’m not into it.
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YouNew Yorkers may know the White Horse Taven on Hudson as the last bar Dylan Thomas ever took a drink in. He died on November 9, 1953, just 59 years and 6 months to the day from the date of this posting, and to force another coincidence, I ride a 59cm A. Homer Hilsen. There is some controversy as to whether he died from drink or a bad injection of morphine intended to clear up some pneumonia, and you can read about that here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/nov/27/books.booksnews
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There have been allusions to a new Moustache H’bar. Here’s a comparison, old and new:

So: less reach and drop, more comeback, and wider. We’ll have these in a month or so. We have a few of the old ones left. We still LIKE the old ones. The newies are not an improvement as much as a reshapement, and only slightly, at that. They’ll work with a lower stem, so they won’t be as dependent on a DirtDrop stem as the others were. Oldies were 51cm wide, newies shall be 55.5cm—a bit less than an inch per side.

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We’re looooooking at a Mini-RIV retail spot in a town nearby. It would be our first foray into the real world. We might not get it, but there’s a chance. I wonder what it would be like to be in a strip mall, and we may find out.
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I am not much of a wingtip-wearer, but in my advancing age I’ve come to like them a little, and four years ago I got a pair and wear them only rarely when I have to, even though I like them—-my lifestyle does’t call for them. And then about a month ago I found another pair I Had to Have, and—-uncharacteristically I bought them. I got a $5,000 royalty check from the publisher, and before turning it fully over to college tuition, I bought a pair of these, which you have to admit are the kinds of shoes you’d like to wear everyday so they can aquire great beausage:

But here is the pisser, at least from where I sit: They’re a hair too narrow. No, I don’t want to stretch them. Yes, I can take them back to Nordstrom and they’ll take care of me. But I see this as my fault, and although I don’t begrudge any of you your returning rights, once you l iive for a while on the receiving ends of returns, you get really reluctant to return anything, and that’s where I am. So I wanna sell them. They are Allen Edmonds Neumok, in olive, and 10E, and I had a thin rubber sole glued on over the leather one—for better pedal-gripping and less queasy slop-walking. You can go to the Allen Edmonds site and see that they cost a lot, and the rubber soles cost me an extra $30. I would LOVE to take this opportunity to sell them to you for $140, which, if you do the research, you will find to be pretty cheap. I’ve worn them for about four miles of walking, and with clearn feet and fresh socks, and they still have that “new shoe smell.”
It’s up to you to know your size (these are 10E). If you have Allen Edmonds shoesm maybe you know. Don’t try them on locally just to get your size. I’d rather not sell them than be a part of that. But if you know and you understand that there are no returns, send me what they call a PM and then the $140, and then if they don’t fit you, you can sell them to somebody else. I’ma get me some 10EEEs..

This BLUG won’t turn into a place to sell used shoes. That is for sure.

They are plainer this time, no contrasting crotches.

It’s for some bike in the future, but not an inexpensive one. The name will come up later, but it’s only a working name, anyway. This is a beautiful lug, though. More so if you’re an investment caster, and can appreciate the challenge risen to. 

Rear view showing the cast-in donut at the bottom of the slot. It’s a small thing, but actually a big improvement over a normal lug, cast or not, and only our lugs have it. It’s free for anybody to copy, go ahead—it’ll make a better slot-ending and give the painter something extra to paint (or the bike owner, after the fact—a fun project, not too messy.

Another picture of the Clem Smith Jr. lug. A frame builder or designer would look at this and think aha, that’s lousy, the seat stay angle is fixed, so how do you vary it as you necessarily have to do, on different frame sizes? That is a good question, but not one that went unconsidered. It’s like this: Most bikes are designed to specific chain stay lengths, and then indeed, as the seat tube gets taller, the seat STAY becomes more vertical, and this is the case even if you vary the chainstay lengths in a minor way to look like you’re thinking about things. I apologize for not being super clear about that, but visualize it and you’ll see.

But this lug is made for ONE bike that’ll come in ONE size, and it’s a big one. If later on we use this lug or another like it on a range of sizes, we’ll just make sure the big one has super long chainstays (which we’re into anyway), and then on smaller sizes, we’ll let the chain stay length be determined by the angle of the seat stay. Plus, there’s some flexibility in the dropout design—if the right elements are in place, and we’re working on that, too.

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Has anybody else noticed that the new gmail formatting is worse than the old one? And that Tumblr has gotten more fussy, too,  when you go to save, or even hit “return”? Right to the top of the page. Like now, I have to return, but it’ll shoot me to the top.

It did. I’m sure there’s a way around, but I don’t know it.

The frame below is a Legolas, a light cyclo-cross frame, and it got wrecked in a…wreck, and since it’s steel—and lugged at that —- the fix was fundamentally easy, although of course it required time and skill. But this is one of the good things about a steel bike.

New top, head, downtube

New steer tube, which bent. Same crown and blades.

Back to that Clem lug again. Here’s the top view, but look at the seat binder ears. All of our seat lugs (since…’99) are this way, with thick, straight sides that allow—-and this was the idea—-you to hold your seat post in with a vise-grip clamped on, if that’s what it comes down to. It probably won’t, but more practically, the ears will never pinch in and bend bolts or just wear out over time and repeated uses. They hold up to our demo fleet, and on a 40-year old Riv they’ll be as good as they were when you got it. It takes an M6 x 22mm socket head bolt and a 10mm hex nut, and if you lose yours you can get one at any hardware store in the world that sells nuts and bolts. And if you’re not at a hardware store, you can slide in any bold that fits, and on the other side use a washer and a nut. It isn’t genius, but it makes total (not just a lot of) sense.

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Lugs too boring? (never, here). OK, here’s a prototype of a bar that looks a lot like a Moustache Handlebar. Made for us by Nitto….with some (not a fan of this word, but it comes in handy) tweaks here and there not to improve it, really, but to make it ——- well you know what? After 24 years of no changes, this is something we get to do. Less reach, less drop, wider, and more retrieve—-it comes back more. It’ll be a while, and we’re getting a round two-er with a hair more flair. We will have ridden this one by this time next week. I’ll probably put it on my bike-of-month, which will be up for sale in a couple of weeks.

There are ongoing projects.

Here’s something from today and the last few days. The topic is rim width to tire width to brake compatibility and set-up. It started when Keven put a new-to-us model sidepull on the back of his long Joe Appaloosa prototype. He was riding a 24mm wide rim and the brake—a big BMX-y sidepull with a reputation for power, felt super wimpy, like—dangerously so. Looking at it close down on the rim got us to thinking it wasn’t contacting the rim soon enough, so needed a wider one. We asked Tektro about that and it confirmed THAT brake was made for a 28mm to 32mm wide rim, and although it makes sense that the rim’s action and mechanical advantage will change as the arms go through their stroke, it had never occurred to me (Grant) that it would matter so much, because in all these years of bikiness, I’d never experienced a bad combo before.

It made me wonder if the Tektro 559 brake—first introduced as “SILVER” and the standard brake on Sam, Betty, Homer—was designed for certain rim widths. We know it works on a 23mm Velocity (brand) Synergy (model), and feels fine/great/the same on the new 25.4mm Velocity Atlas, but what about a 28mm Velocity Cliffhanger?      Will mounted one, and the the Marathon 38 actually measures 38mm on the 28mm wide rim; so it sticks out only 5mm per side. Braking is even improved, if anything. But Tektro said this brake is for 22 to 25mm rims, so there was some relief there. In the next few months we’ll say more about this kind of thing. In RR44, for sure. It will actually come out this year.

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I’m reading the new BSNYC book, Bike Snob Abroad, I think. It’s at home, so no picture yet. I just got it a day ago, but I’ll report later. I’m 40p into it, and it seems—-well, it’s good, entertaining, interesting, and he’s a really good writer, Eben Weiss. Good book.

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The drag news of the day/week/month is that the Bettys will be a month late, which is sad-to-us because we need the bump in posi-cash flow. Sams too will be late. Arrghhh. Some of you with bikes on order are being called——-and are kindabasically coming through with payments you’d have to make anyway, earlier than you’d otherwise have to make ‘em. Soooooo appreciated, serious thanks.

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Many of you know the name Manny Acosta. He’s a local, rides a 48 Sam, is the only man alive who actually uses his digital camera enough to give it beausage——-to the extent that can happen on a digital camera——and to everybody-who=knows=him, he is at or near the top of the list of favorite bike snappers. He goes out there, he shoots, he gets the grabs we all wish we’d gotten, but he’s Manny the Man, and he’s the one who gets them. I’m older, I have shot so much more than Manny, and all things are in place for me to hate him for his results, but he happens to be the nicest bicycle rider you’ll ever meet on top of that. Here’s his cover photo on the new Merry Sales catalogue (bike parts supplier to retailers). I know many of you have heard of this cover photo, but some haven’t seen it, so here it is:

That is friend Mike on his Atlantis, somewhere south of here, I think on the flanks of Mount Hamilton. Note to Manny and Mike: Don’t bother correcting me on the loca; I’m just showing a photo and have no time to fix it later, not that important, just be happy you shot the shot or are in it, because it looks so good.

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Here’s a photo of the Marathon 38 on the 28mm Cliffhanger rim. It’s not a common look these days, but widening the rim to chase the tire has benefits:

It’s no Mike-on-the-hill, but it’s kind of neat, and this is what it looks like. The tire isn’t as skinny as the wide rim suggests.

Thirteen dollar, set-it-&-forget-it Spanninga Pixeo Fender Light. Made in Holland for the European market, you’ll be surprised how effective the single LED is. Works great on our Longboard Fenders. 

Should also mention other stuff going on in lights: Rear rack-mounted German tail lights in both battery and dyno form, and a nifty little adapter to make them backwards compatible on the Nitto racks we sell.

-Dave

In the late teens of March’13 I went to Taiwan and visited the Long Shen lug factory, which I believe makes the best lost-wax (investment cast) lugs, crowns, and bottom bracket shells in the world.

Lost wax casting is an ancient technique—-at least 5,000 years old, and employed by Indians, Egyptians, Chinese, Romans, you name it.  Long Shen has made other lost-wax items (years ago I saw a bunch of  ear-piercers), but I think it’s been only bike parts for the last seven years, at least. Lost-wax casting is a common way to shape metal intricately, and jewelrs do it all the time. An intricate lug is more complex than an Elsa Perreti heart, though. I’m not an authority on how Elsa makes her hearts, but the smart money has to be on lost-wax.
In any case, Long Shen proprietors Alan and Shirley generously allowed us full access to the process and to share it with you, so here we do that, hoping you like it. —G

Throughout this presentation we will call these hanging brown things “trees,” because that’s the normal terminology. The brown part is wax, but they’ll get whitish. Inside the brown wax is metal. At the top of the tree is a funnel that is capped here with metal plugs.

This lady is removing cores from a multi-piece die so she can remove a freshly-made wax fork crowns—one of ours! Unseen behind her is the machine that shoots hot wax into the die.

Closer.

The wax positives come out near perfect but not quite. Some of the wax squirts into tiny seams in the die and gets molded into the part and has to be trimmed off.  EVERY piece is hand-trimmed. The wax is delicate, and you can’t trust a robot to do this. Human 1; robots 0.

Here’s another tree. The next step is dipping it into a ceramic batter several times—up to eight—drying each dipping before the next. This builds up athick crust of heat-resistant ceramic, which, after the wax is melted out (lost), becomes a mold for the metal.

Another picture of a wax tree, with somebody’s right rear dropout. Each one has been made with the same die-injection technique, and each one has been hand-trimmed. Never two at a time; only one.

These trees (of wax lugs) have been dipped once, and are on racks in the drying room.

Dipping a tree. This, actually shows-tho-not-in-detail, a secret lug we’re having made for our secret bike.

Working Name: Clem Smith, Jr. 

It’s a year off. it’ll be too big for you. It’s a complicated lug, LS doen’t like to make them, and see how few fit on a tree? Sooo inefficient. And to add insult to injury, there is expected to be a high reject rate, due to the complication. All in all… not a smart move, but it will be a heck of a lug. We will not answer any questions about this bike. We might not even make it. Seriously, don’t ask. If you preface your question with, “I know you said not to ask…”…we still won’t answer. Back to the lug-making process:

Dipping again.

Some battered-up (multi-dipped) waxed crowns on their tree. Trees are dipped up to eight times, drying each time in between.

Here’s a dipper with a tree. Them’s the Clem lugs again!

And here he is. I couldn’t pronounce his name. I will get it and eventually post it. I’m not presenting him as Generic Dipper or disrespectfully. I just don’t have his name.

This is Alan, who with his wife Shirley owns and runs Long Shen. We did an  interview with Alan-Shirley-Long Shen in one of the earlier Readers. No, nobody here remembers which one. Alan is holding a finished ceramic tree full of wax bottom bracket shells. See the funnel atop them? Molten steel goes in there.

The tree-drying room.

Loading wax-filled trees into the melting-out oven.

In the oven, upside down, wax will melt out.

After molten steel has been poured and all’s cool. They’re full of steel castings.

Yep. Another shot of same, but this one showing the pouring gates.

The ceramic molds are broken open and out come…in this case, bottom bracket shells.

Used trees with castings broken off. These will be dipped into wax and reused as the future trunks of other trees.

You’d hope, after all that, that each lug would emerge perfectly formed. That’s not likely, but most are close enough. This one here isn’t close enough, and I picked it out of a reject pile.

Even after the unrejected lugs are culled, they still need to be deburred and crisped up at the edges. 

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On a related to lugs note—-

Sean here has a 2tt Sam and there was the faintest bit of monkey business going on with the paint at the edge of the rear tt lug. Paint prefers flat or smooth surfaces, and a lug edge isn’t, and the paint was ruffled a bit at the edge and looked stressed or cracked. We suspected it was just paint imperfection, totally inconsequential, and you had to look deep into it to see anything, but to be sure we sent it to the maker in Taiwan who said, “That’s paint, not metal” about the ka-ka, then blasted it off to show it:

Paint, not metal, but here’s a close up of the nice brazing.

==========

Here’s a Video

Making Bicycle Lugs

Back by popular demand, the Nitto Bullmoose bar  with a 150mm extension.  Now in stock.

And Bosco Aluminum bars in narrow 52cm width.

I’ve been reading and have almost finished Jan Heine’s latest book, a big fat one, on Rene Herse.

It’s 9.5 x 12 x 1.75 x 424 pages and six-and-a-quarter pounds.

These days, to some who are familiar but not super familiar with Herse, his bikes seem frou-frou, more show-less go, but the book makes it clear how wrong that is. Herse bikes are proof that beauty doesn’t have to mean stupid. In fact, that it can’t. His bikes were smart first, pretty next, a perfect mix. It’s a book of bikes, and lots more. A respectful and useful way to show off the beautiful bikes is in perfect studio photos, and the book has plenty of those. It would be a weird book without them. But most of the photos are gorgeous black-and-whites of the bikes and riders in action, and these photos—to my way of thinking— show the bike at their best, in use. As good as the photos are, the best part, remarkably, is the text. What Jan does, probably what he intended to do, is teach you about the designer, builders, and assemblers behind the bikes, and then some of the riders.

Another thing remakable is Jan’s role in the book and his writing style. A book like this could easily have come off as heavy on the hero-worship and shame on anybody who’s out of the loop, or even look at me for knowing so much. Instead, Jan is respectful of the reader and if anything under-represents Herse’s contributions, so in the end you figure it out yourself. It is clearly a labor of admiration and love, and has countless fantastic photos and fascinating insights and interviews with those who were there at the time. Rene Herse is an educational, attitude-changing, enlightening, fascinating, detailed testament to the man who contributed more useful beauty to bicycles than anybody else. If Jan hadn’t written it, nobody would have, because nobody could have. and if nobody had, then we just wouldn’t know.

Way to go, Jan.

It costs $86, a bargain. We’ll have some by March 4, but I want to make it clear that our selling it has nothing to do with me liking it…except of course I wouldn’t sell it if I didn’t. What I’m saying is that the possibility of selling came way after the liking. You can buy from Jan or us or anybody else. Here’s Jan’s site:

http://www.compasscycle.com/

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Bike Show Bikes

There are bikes I think of as “doily” bikes that bring out the worst in me and lead to thoughts of self-criticism for feeling that way, because it’s just a bike, which is true, but the accolades heaped on crazily designed and nearly dysfunctional bikes at bike shows bum me out anyway. Not all show bikes are like this; only most.  When you see city bikes with skinny tires that skim the frame and fork and the same bike has a long, low stem and handlebars, and it all costs so much for what?, it’s hard to be mellow. Maybe it comes down to the question of whether bikes are metal-art, shock-art, or functional art or some other kind of art or avenues of personal expression, and when you say they can be all of those things, then there’s really no foundation for scoffing.

Some bike designs seem to be driven by a need to be different and to get votes for originality, rather than to be good. Originality isn’t inherently good, and when it’s the result of intentionally avoiding existing designs that a lot of thought went into originally and a lot of refinement went into subsequently, then “original” can be construed as disrespectful, ego-driven, or just foolish. Whatever the case, “original” usually means “hidden influences,” or “never combined just that way before.” Every seemingly original or at least exclusive design here comes from somewhere. The Noodle handlebar was inspired by a Modolo with a slight retrieve and flattish ramp. Ours is better because I have better taste, but it’s basically a copy. The Moustache H’bar came from Japanese schoolkids bikes, and those bars were first seen as early as 1907, or at least a variation of them. I got my affinity for lowish bottom brackets from Richard Sachs and Marc Muller. I learned to like steel from Ritchey, who still likes it,  no doubt, but the segment of the market his company operates in dictates other materials. I learned to like lugs from seeing Bridgestone’s tests, and then (again) Richard Sachs was influential. Fattish tires I came to from riding, and I think anybody would do the same. The list could continue but I’ve made the point, at least in RIV’s case/my case.

When industrial design students go about designing bikes—and they seem to do it every year in some part of the world, usually northern Europe—they go after the city bikes, since they’re more accessible in some ways than are racing or mountain bikes. The presumed buyer —- it seems to me—-must be a harried executive parent shopper multi-tasker with a tiny apartment, and yet rich and avant guard, who wants the kind of bike nobody has ever exactly seen before, and ideally it will be the only one in town. That is my impression, anyway.

I’ll tell you what a good city bike is, but my description won’t be revelatory.

A good city bike has these qualities

• High  handlebars for an upright position, because guess what? The busy streets are not your raceway, and you need to be comfortable and to see what’s up ahead. No high bars, not comfy, and you can’t see.

• Wide tires, at least 38mm wide—-minimum. So you can inflate them hard or soft, as you like and as the street surface warrants. Even if you ride 38s, it should fit 40s at least, and with a fender.

• Tough tires that are hard to puncture and stand up to no to low maintenance and inspection. Of course we always recommend daily pre-and-post ride tire inspections. Right.

• A city bike without fenders works only if you ride only on dry streets and dry weather.

• Ways to carry stuff front and back. Might as well have carrying capabilities in front and behind you, because city riding means shopping or carrying stuff to and from someplace, and the room is good. If you fill up a bag or basket in back and you have an empty bag and basket up front, no harm done—but at least you’re riding within the cushion, should something else come up. It’s better than being maxed out.

• Easy mounting and dismounting. This doesn’t mean it must be a mixte, because that depends on how your hips and flexibility are. Boys bikes do well for boys and girls; girls bikes do well for girls and boys. Bikes are gender-neutral, but everybody carries some imagery baggage with them, and that’s something I can’t address.

• Kickstandable. These trackbikelike city bikes with no kickstands…ohmy. Here’s a kickstand tip: When your option is a pole or air, use the kickstand. When you have a wall to lean the bike against, wall trumps kickstand. Anyway, city bikes that are made for the city and not for the auditorium will have kickstands.

• Here’s a last-minute thought, a city bike requirement for me, but not one I’d foist on anybody else. Have you ever pedaled with a grocery bag full in one arm? A little planning and bags and baskets or even a sack on your back can prevent that, but let’s say you have no pack and while your bike was U-locked outside of Trader Joe’s a thief took your bag and basket, and there you are with a bag of groceries (not two). Whenever you’re arm-toting, it is good to be able to sit straight up and brake and shift.

Bike categories are so weird, anyway. I’ve told the story before so will make it short: When Bstone introduced the XO-1 in the Fall of 1990, it didn’t have a category, and eighty percent of the bike dealers who saw it wanted to know what KIND of bike it was. Mountain? No. Road? No. City? Not exactly. You could point out the inherent versatility and even the expandability with the help of racks or different tires, but what they wanted was a category, and it had none. Everything in the world has categories, but you use a thing, not the category it falls in.

The Betty and Sam versus Prize-Winning City Bikes

We don’t call them city bikes, but when you outfit them with racks, fenders, baskets and bags and higher handlebars and reflectors and lights, there you go.

The most underutilized upfix for any bike and any city bike is reflective tape wherever it’ll go. First, at least, on the spokes. You can be visible without it, but semi-permanent visibility things have an edge over lights you may not have with you or on, or even my favorite, the big Triangle, that you may forget to wear.  The silver 3M Scotchlite tape we have shines so bright. If your pedals don’t have reflectors, put some on the back of your crankarm.

Anyway, here’s an over-the-top (show bikey?) version of a Sam Hillborn.

It is pretty enough, but is stuffed with smart function. This is a bike that’s nearly too intentionally decked out for my taste—a basket on the front would help—but all that means is it’ll look better when it’s got some wear on it. Purely from a looks perspective, as horribly superficial as that is, does the fact that there are a hundred or two of these bikes out there make them seem less pretty or less special than a no touch one-off?

This doesn’t look bad no matter where or when you are.

Same with this.

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These are some beautiful little beetles. The colors are so good.

They aren’t as colorful as these:

You can’t really pit one against the other. Both good, I’d say! The bicycle connection is that one of our customers showed these to me. He works in the American Museum of Natural History.

Get ‘em while you can.

A few years ago Liesl Chatman of Mpls rode her Riv and chased down a bike thief and apprehended his sorry whatever, thus earning the moniker RIV CHICA WARRIOR.

Now, last Friday the 18th and while riding her 2tt 59cm A. Homer Hilsen on her way back from the post office, packer-shipper Jenny has another sort of similar story, and tells it:

Around 2:45pm, I went to the post office, and on the way back, as I was riding my Homer back down our alley, I saw a silver Mercedes SUV with a man leaning out the passenger side window.  He grabbed one of the frame boxes we had placed against the side of the building for UPS pickup, and the driver started to drive away quickly.

My very first thought was, “what is this clown doing?”  I thought maybe it was a regular customer or someone we knew just fooling around with us— but as I rode up to the vehicle, it became apparent that these two guys weren’t going to stop. I rode in front of their vehicle in an attempt to stop them, or at least get them to slow down.  That was probably a dumb thing to do, but in the moment, I really couldn’t picture them running me over in broad daylight with potential witnesses and I wasn’t sure what else to do.  I never dismounted my bike, and they didn’t stop—-they swerved to get around me and slowed down enough for me to be able to grab the frame box out of the passenger’s arms.  I asked them what they thought they were doing (but a little less friendlier than that, and with an expletive or two).

I’m certain  any of us here would’ve done the  same thing— I just happened to be the one who saw it all happen.  All in a day’s work, I suppose, but I’m just glad everything worked out the way it did.

Shortly after that we snapped this picture of Jenny against a white backdrop:

—————-

Tough work if you can get it. But…fairly manly.

Hillborne rider Earl Craig of Montana makes horseshoes and I THINK is also a farrier, but of that I’m not sure. No doubt he can shoe a horse in a pinch, at least. He was here recently, and since we have horseshoes hanging around here (literally) and as heel-lo-k-tors for our PBH measuring station, Craig felt compelled to talk about horseshoes, and … I really like horseshoes and talking about them, and so it went. Then a few weeks later (yesterday), we received in the mail a photo-book of the horseshoe-making process, shown below, with captions his:

The straight-bar shoe is a therapeutic shoe. Its purpose is to protect a damaged hoof. This shoe also dissipates load over a greater bearing surface, which can be beneficial.

The classic scenarios, though, are bad hoof cracks or cracked coffin bones.

This shoe will be made out of 15 1/2-inches of 5/16 x 7/8 inch flat stock. Forge welded (no modern welding equipment used).

The smithy (looking, for some reason, somewhat skeptical) selects some bar stock

With the Sam Hillborne sitting somewhere off in the corner,

THE TOE BEND IS MADE

Now one of the “hockey sticks” is forged. This will form half of the bar. Molecules are getting packed. In blacksmithing, this is called “upsetting.”

Back in the forge. (This is a coke fire—-coke is coal with most of the impurities removed.

Second hockey stick is now forged.

Now a branch bend is initiated over the horn.

Half the shoe is there.

Some scarfing of edges is done to prepare for the weld, and the edges are overlapped. A bit of flux will be applied and then it’s into the forge for a white-hot welding heat.

The weld is done with a hammer. (This can be done, by the way, in a gas forge as well, but it’s better in coal or coke.

Some more work done on weld over the tip of the horn.

At this point the fullering (grooves) and nail holes have been done —- my photographer disappeared for a while {damn guy!—G} 

Nail holes are stamped to depth, then pritchelled through.

Time for a quick break. (Tea time without the tea.)

The finished shoe after some rasp work and wire brushing. (Also treated with beeswax.)

THE END.

Closeup

Now it’s above the door. Nobody take it, please.

Lance. I find myself more sympathetic than most, including Betsy Andreu, but it may be easier from this perch—than from her’s, especially—to be kinder toward Lance. Still, it seems to me that if you go into a pool and there’s a sign saying No Cannonballs, and everybody’s doing them and there’s a splash-making contest going on with full bleachers and cheerleaders and prize money for splashing—it might be hard not to splash. I know that’s not a perfect analogy. It doesn’t address the lawsuits and attacks and all, but at some level, Lance’s racing life and No Cannonballs (please ignore cheering and prizes) have something in common.

It is also not a great thing to do, kick somebody when he’s down.  It’s not admirable, at  least. It is tempting, maybe, since Lance isn’t a world class sympathetic figure, but he IS one of US, and to see the same people who egged him on and cheered him/encouraged him now berate him is a little weird. In the big picture he got caught in a trap, a web-of-deceit, and was flailing in different ways at different people to keep it all afloat. Coming clean in the middle of it could be seen as something honorable, but it also could have been seen as betraying his accomplices and teammates. Better for them, I’d think, that he didn’t do that then. And imagine what they’d have thought—-“what the f—, Lance?! What are you DOING? I thought we had a deal…”

It’s hard to even think straight about it. I’m sure I”m not, but I am sure of this: Lance is a complicated guy who’s living a life none of us can imagine but all of us find easy to judge. I totally understand the rage, but I don’t, personally, feel it. I want him to deal with the stuff he has to deal with, and then grow on and lead a decent life. Part 2 tonite, maybe I’ll flip flop.

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It’s been a while, sorry—-unless saying “sorry” suggests more interest in this than is —— warranted? Something. Here’s what’s happening, or not; a mix of boring, interesting, personal, business, observation, trivia, bikes, and whatever else. Some you may know about already.

Price Changes, Frame Availability.

Don’t forget about our February 1st Frame price adjustments from the last Blug post. Important info about delivery. Orders must be in by January 31st to lock in current prices, even on bikes months out. Read it here.

Sam Hillbornes

Sam Hillborne news: We got a bunch of 56 Sams in, but they were supposed to have cream head tubes and didn’t, so we’re taking care of that locally, and in the meantime have some greyblue-head tube Sams that are catching on here, and for a little less money.

We have cream head tubers, and green web specials too.

The 48s do not move, and it’ll be a cool evening down south before we make those again, so if you’ve had your eye on one, anytime….

The new Sam sizes, arriving in May, are 51, 55, 58, and 62. No more 64 Sams. The 51 is the only 650B’er, and the 58 and 62 will have the second top tube. Same color forever now: Greyblue with cream.

Betty Foy

We’re doing one last run of 47s, and from then on it’ll be 50-55-60. The Betty, expected to be our worst seller, is now our second best seller behind the Sam. It should be, but it’s still surprising.

Six Fifty Bee/ Twenty Seven Fiver

For a year that has been called “The Year of 650B”, it sure is making a slow start. Almost everybody’s out of them or low on them, and lead times are as long as 5 months on some models. We’ve been waiting on Schwalbe Marathons about that long and they’re still a month out. The Fatty Rumpkin, our own tire, is coming in about a month, and it will be, this time around, a beefed up black version, screw the wait, make it thick, add puncture protection. We don’t know what it’ll weigh, but it’ll be a good stout all-around tire, fatter than the Marathon, pretty good.

Tubing

We are working on our own tubing. A few posts ago I talked about butting and single-butting versus double-butting (there have been quadruple-butted tubes), and done right, I’d say single butting is the way to go. I’ll talk more about that in a future post, but for now I’ll leave it at that.

Mark’s New Rack

Mark’s HA Rack (Hub Area rack;  kind of like a low-rider) is being made right about now, and tested. It’s all Nitto, and ideally will be paired with the new HA RackSack Mark has also designed, to be in the Sackville line.

Hunqapillar

A guy was riding a lightly ridden Hunqapillar on a woodsy or gravelly road, when all of a sudden KA-RUNCH and assorted chaos behind and below him, and presumably continued pedaling through it, and two seconds later the dropout ripped in half and several spokes had snapped.

He was disappointed in the bike, and we are “accommodating” him, fine, but we get to get a lesson out of the accommodation, and the lesson is this:

• New things can get wrecked as easily as old things
• Noise coincides with contact, and sudden unfamiliar noises mean stop pedaling and stop the bike.

In this case, the wreckage is an impartial witness to what happened.

Something, maybe a stick, somehow got flipped through the spokes and onto the lower part of the chain and dragged to the derailer. It jammed there, and continued pedaling forced the rear derailer backward and upward, leveraging it against the dropout. Continued pedaling ripped the dropout in half. The evidence for a sudden rip, as opposed to a fatigue failure that grew over weeks or months, is that the broken cross-section is crystalline and sharp although, with no evidence of smoothed-over, burnished areas that have rubbed against one another for a while.

Plus, the derailer tab is bent, and has scar-marks that could only have been made by something harder than a twig, but probably not much thicker, so maybe a spoke.

That’s the limit of my after-the-fact/I wasn’t there analysis skills, and I might be stretching them some at that. Maybe the derailer had been bent or otherwise just shifted into the spokes and then got pulled up by the spokes. (So, maybe no object-from-the-road).  The point is, something strange, unusual but not unheard of happened, and it made a noise immediately, and ideally the pedaling would have stopped before the mayhem ran its course. Were earbuds involved? We don’t know and at this point aren’t going to ask.

Although we have no policy, we try to come to your aid when something wacko hits you.

In this case we’re sending a new frame. We’ll repair this one. The biggest bummer is the super crappy packing job the local bike shop did. The rear wheel with cassette was resting on the downtube decal. It was padded with foam, but foam is no match for metal cogs and jostling, and so the decal is all chewed up. Good job, guys. It’s OK—everybody’s anonymous, but seriously, one would hope for more respect and foresight…on the bikepacker job.

 Yen Watch (our financial section)

Japan elected out a government that liked keeping the Yen strong to make its many millions of retirees flush in travel money, and elected in a more reasonable set of rule makes you see that in the big picture, an economy that is based on exports and manufacturing needs to be more export friendly, which means a weaker Yen. The Yen – stay with this now – needs to be weak to allow importers of Japanese goods to wholesale them to retailers who sell them to you at a reasonable price. For that to happen, a dollar needs to buy about 150 Yen. Bstone got worried at 130, morose at 125 (break even point, why bother?) and quit, gave up, at 110. I started Rivendell at 110, and within a year it was 82. That was laughably low, except that it wasn’t, and yet for the past year and a half a dollar has been worth about 78 Yen, with a low of 75.5 or something.

Then the new government, and in the last two months it has climbed to 88. To us this means a savings of between $2,000 and $4,000 on every big old shipment. I’d like to say it’ll mean lower prices to you, but the fact is that for the last year and a half we’ve been selling Nitto Etc, at less than sustainable prices, HOPING that this turnaround would happen, and here it is. It’s like now we have raindrops in the water cup, and we get to at least lick ‘em out. For us to consider Japanese bikes again, Yen would have to go to 110.

New Riv Vid

Jay Ritchey, who used to work here until he moved to Arizona to be with his girlfriend who is temporarily there doing her internship, is now a moviemaker, a career he kind of got started here, doing Hunqapiller videos for us. Now he’s made a Rivideo, and it is right here and any way I’d have to introduce it beyond that is covered in the first minute or so of the video, which lasts about 30 whole minutes, and is right here. Jay did a great job.

The link is here

Joe Appaloosa

The Funny Long bike is officially called the Joe Appaloosa, a fitting name suggested by local Finn Taylor, after I and we were drawing blanks. It’s a fitting name, not to overanalyze it, but here goes: Bikes are like horses, and Appaloosa is a kind of horse. The defining characteristics are spotted lips, often with other spots but always the lips, which—-maybe when the bike comes out we’ll supply it with spotty decals to be used or not. Appaloosas came from Spain, but were famously bred and developed and rose to fame as the horses of Nez Perce (“pierced nose”) Indians. Want to read more about the breed? Here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appaloosa#Nez_Perce_people

I’ve always liked Indians, the lore, the lifestyle, the weapons, the look—-pretty much everything about Indians is right down my aisle, although I’ve never been a fan of the look of the long pipe-smoking Tecumseh (he did good things, but looked the wimp). Growing up as I did wanting to BE an Indian, I’m not one who’s quick to cry foul when I hear somebody not refer to them as Native Americans. I get that they were the first to inhabit where most of us are now, but they were immigrants, too. I think they got the royal shaft, no qualifiers there. It is our eternal shame, and just one of those things that——-well, we can’t own all past infractions, but let’s own some of this one, since it happened so recently.

Anyway, the Joe comes in NOT from Injun Joe of Tom Sawyer fame—-although there’s the Indian theme again, and I do like that—-but because our recent models have had people names, and with a long last name we needed a short first name. If it were strictly a women’s bike, maybe Jo Appaloosa, but it’s a unisex model, and so we follow in the tradition, good or bad, of defaulting to the boyish name for both. Here’s the headbadge:

(link)

The bike itself is probably a year away. We may have Nobilette make a run of 20 of them, but they’ll cost a lot, and this is a wonderful bike that warrants a bigger litter and lower prices…and yet the question remains, can we sell a hundred of them in a year? That’s what we’d need to do to justify them from Taiwan.

Cassettes

We’re now carrying IRD cassettes, 8-speeders and 9-speeders, made, we hear, by

Shimano’s subcontractor and to the same quality standards. We had some mixed results with IRD freewheels (problems now solved), so were nervous about these, but the Shimano connection and us not being the beta-testers have let us relax about these, and Brian has one on his bike, no problem. Anyway, the great thing is we got to pick the ratios, and although it’s hard to go way wrong with a cassette, there is a theoretically-smarter-than-usual way to go about it, and that’s what we’ve done. The cog gaps increase as they cogs get bigger, so the effective change in gear or effort makes sense. PLUS, we got 12t top cogs, which are more useful than 11’s, and 34t low cogs, which split the difference nicely between a 32 and 36. Coggery lends itself to overthinking, but we’re thrilled (that’s overstating) with what we’re stocking.

Catalogue

Cat teaser

One of the bigger projects here is a paper catalogue. I hope “catalogue” isn’t like “tyres” and “rear mech” and  “mudguards.” I got into the “ue” habit when I was at Bstone and a guy named Tom Franges sent me an old catalogue as a model for a good catalogue, and that combined with being slightly more of a weirdo back then got me started on “catalogue”, and I automatically type it that way now. I have these obsessions. That’s one. Another is, I’ve never once typed a shorter version, with the second word H, of Moustache Handlebar or Moustache H’bar. Not once. Maybe the “Moustache” is another one of those things, but it’s a good marker now, so when some other bar maker comes out with a “Moustache” model, I can trace it to the Nitto one. Otherwise, “mustache.”

The catalogue will be nearly 90p and letter-sized. We’re planning to sell it, not give it away, but wait: You will get a coupon-toward-purchase for more than the purchase price of the catalogueuegue, and the catalogue itself will be useful in some ways beyond the merchandise. There may be a useful chart or sidebar. We can’t do a big catalogue, print and mail, unless we do it like this, and so, if you’re so inclined, please go along.

—-

And looky what’s here on the Brooks blog.

Important information for anyone thinking of getting a frame or bike in the next year. Lead times are getting longer. Up to four months depending on model and size. Prices are being readjusted for the year on February 1st, so if you plan on getting a bike from us in the next year now is the time to snag existing inventory, place preorders on American made frames, and lock in current frame prices.

Are going up February 1st on all models except San Marcos Sam Hillborne and Bombadil. How to lock in old prices: Buy stock now or pre-order out-of-stock items with a 25% deposit by January 31st.

So the lineup is now:

San Marcos: $900

Sam Hillborne and Betty Foy: $1225

Hunqapillar: $2000

Roadeo: $2200

Atlantis and A. Homer Hilsen: $2300

65cm - 71cm A. Homer Hilsen: $2400

Bombadil: $3000

Call to see if we have anything in your size before giving up, but when we run out of stock, expect long waits.

A shipment of Betties is due in April, but prepare for May. We have many sizes but our stocks are running out in all sizes.

Next Sams are expected May maybe June.

Homers, Bombas, Roadeos, Atlanti, Hunqapillars now have FOUR top tubes… just kidding, four month wait times. That’s all we can promise though we hope to have them in three if not sooner. They are made-to-order, so if you want one for summer, put down a 25% deposit as soon as possible.

How to lock in old prices: Buy or pre-order with a 25% deposit by January 31st. Give us a ring 800 345 3918. Representatives are standing by.

~Dave

Got some new colors of USA made bandannas.

Liesl Chatman of Minneapolis, MN.

Congratulations Riv Chica Warrior!

Big shipment of wool arrived today.

New long sleeve Black zip tops.

Long sleeve crew tops.

Short sleeve crew tops.

Ever popular Not-so-tights.

New possum caps in grey.

OK, we got some new good things in. Maybe too late. This is not how Orvis does it, it’s how we so often do it. BUT—-we do have this:

Socks

Thin all wool grey sox for dressy stuff (boo) or just warm weather everyday and ridesox (yay). Now and then I’ll still wear my cotton monkey sox—-we may pick them up again in the Spring—but with these thin, even hot-weather woolies, there’s really no reason to. They don’t seem to shrink a ton.

Medium weight darkish blue possum wool sox. Dressy length, fuzzy, and as good for riding as any. Warmer and cushier than the thinnies, and dark blue. I recommend buying up a size, washing normallly, and not drying. They seem to shrink less than some other wool sox, including the Canadian blues we love so much and still sell, but everybody except kids should buy only in large and then wash on low to medium and never dry. Man, I love those sox, but for me and the way I wash them, as  opposed to the way I recommend you wash them, they are “shrink-to-not-fit.” Other than that—-a forgiveable offense —- they are so good. My favorites…although there are other things at play here, things that have nothing to do with sox. I like the idea of Canadians making sox the same way forever.

Head-hats

Bulbish Beanie: Much thicker and fuzzier, a possum-wool blend that can either hug the head and cover most of your ears, or be work higher. A better choice than the Mossy thin one for actual cold weather.

Radar-Style Possum bill beanie: Our warmest beanie for truly cold weather. it has a band you can pull down to easily cover your ears, and a short bill for style and sun. Here’s the natural and grey versions of this cap.

Tops

We just got in MUSA long-sleeved crewneck superlight tops. They’re summerweight or layerable long-sleevers, really comfortable, the same girly-smooth wool as the short sleeve MUSA tops. Cut full but tailored. You can buy your normal shirt size.

Symbolism…or Cymbalism?

I had to finish Life of Pi because the fam may see it this weekend in the theater, and I was the only who handn’t read it. I wonder how the movie will be. I wonder why they made a movie of a book that seems so hard to make a movie of. How will they deal with the island and Richard Parker? I will find out. I am anti-symbolism. The word  “nauseous” was misused in the book, as it is on TV and in the News. Still, I couldn’t have written it.

I was thinking about the ’60s this morning, and mostly the early to mid-’60s, during which “My foot” reigned among all expressions of incredulity. But it seemed more than that. It seemed slightly aggressive, although not as aggressive as its big brother-come-lately, “My eye!”  I wonder whether those were localized to my area or maybe California, or scattered about, and were there foreign equivalents? Did they originate in a foreign language? I think, in some small way, “foreign,” to describe a language, is backwards these days. Why not just “another” language?

British writers say “towards”  with the “s” and American writers don’t, except for Ann Patchett, although in one of her books she had the “s” in there just once. Taft, I think, but I’m not sure. Maybe The Magician’s Assistant.  She knows the British-American rule, but started out without and just wanted to be consistent. I think that makes perfect sense. In America, I believe from what I’ve heard and my own experience, that 100 percent of kids include the S, and 80 percent of adults do, although it changes in writing. The S yes lingers longer in speech than in writing. My awareness of it is a source of confliction every time I say or write it, and it goes that way with “backwards,” too. I wonder if anybody says or writes one with the S but not the other. I wonder how tightly books are edited with regards to this rule, if it’s a rule. I wonder if “regard” and “regards” are in the same boat. They all have the a-r-d-(s), but the vowel sound is different in regards. When you sign off an email, it may be

Best regards,

but never

Best regard.

Sheldon Brown signed off, “All the best,” and I’ve seen this adopted by others, too, but I always assume a Sheldon influence. The first time I ever saw “Best regards” was about 18 years ago in an abbreviated form, just
BR.

I was email correspondence from my former co-worker, then friend, now co-worker again and Japanese guy Masa. I asked him what “BR” meant, and he told me. To me it sounded like the kind of thing a native Japanese (can one be “native” of a language?) speaker would learn in an overly formal English class, taught by an elderly person who dredged it up from America in the ’50s or something. But, not knowing how to deal with sign-offs and not wanting to sound harsh without one, I adopted BR, and now I go usually just to B, although I wonder whether (if?) people get it. I think “whether” beats “if,” because with the latter there’s the chance, even if remote, that “if” makes the wondering sound contingent on the getting. Sure, most people can figure it out, but that’s why I said “remote.” Somebody just learning English is more likely to be confused by (with?) if than with whether. Notice that I use quote marks and italics kind of interchangeably there. I don’t know what the Chicago Manual of Style says about that, but quotes seem more ordinary and italics seem more high-brow. Somebody will send me a link and tell me.

This is frivolous and indulgent in the aftermath of the shooting. Talking about the shooting is——something we generally leave to the pros and papers, because like so many other things, it has the potential to become a political discussion, and it gets complicated by the gun control or mental health? … not debate yet, exactly, but issue. I want to make it clear that Rivendell doesn’t have an official position on that, except that we all think assault weapons should be banned, and it should be harder to get-a-Glock than it is, and all people need to be reared with love and attention to their quirks and idiosyncrasies and predilections <———third try on that spelling….and it is so sad that so often it’s too much trouble to make a deal out of something that you hope is a phase or can write off as something else, and then when the teasing about the weirdness begins in middle school and goes unabated thru high school, the next thing you know that person is dangerous, fuming inside, resentful even if they’ve never expressed it that way.   

I never understand trying children as adults just because the crime is serious. I remember a few years ago there was a 6- or 11-year old who was being tried as an adult. Why?  At what point in development does a person cross the line dividing—-well, the dividing line? If you talk of age in numbers of days rather than numbers of years, does it seem more arbitrary to call somebody an adult at 6574.5 days than at 18 years? In an old Bob Dylan song there’s the phrase, “..bent out of shape from society’s pliers,” and it forces you to acknowledge the environment’s role in it all. To say it has no role…is ridiculous. It would make everything genetics and free will, and then there’s the question of whether we choose to have free will or not, or how much we exercise it (choose to exercise it?) and that’s a free will thing, too. So it becomes circular logic, an explanatory fiction.

The problem is that while people acknowledge the environment—which in the Lanza kid’s case, was different from YOUR environment—they have a hard time attributing everything to it, because of this thing called “free will.” But can you have one without the other? Does it make sense to make an imaginary line or a point in time when free will takes over, or is that a societal convenience that allows we normal people to not think about it anymore, just lets the laws take over so we don’t have to deal with it?

This last many days has been so sad for everybody, not just the ones directly affected, although them the most, of course. But it really is reaching to everybody, and the holiday season goes on, but we’re all confused—none more than me, clearly—-and although life going on doesn’t seem just right, at least for us it can, and so it does.

I am a socks and soap person,  and I have no problem with socks and sandals. I wear sandals most of the time and i love, love, sock—so I’m not going to deny myself the pleasure of both just because sox-with-sandals is a no-no to —-well, even if somebody knows nothing about fashion, that person knows that, right? I’m not into it that way.

I was at a cocktail party last Saturday night and it came up in a conversation I had with a writer-editor—a subject-verb agreement thing, like sox-with-sandals is, as opposed to sox with sandals are. She said when you group singulars you treat it as singular. I wasn’t sure.

The neck gaiters and scarves. They’re so good.

I don’t understand why half-mitts only trickle out. They’re my everyday hand-thing. I wear them with and without wool gloves. The best combination is wool gloves with the fingertips snipped off, but not the thumbtip. Nobody’s going to do this, but it works.

In too many days to work for Christmas unless you—oh, the Calendar Gods are being mean to us and you this year. Look at Christmas eve, on a Monday. Thanks a lot, man. So we lose Sat and Sun as shipping days, and we have lots of stuff we’ll get in on the 26th and 27th.

Look—we have those socks and hats and scarves, and half-mitts. Put the half-mitts in a stocking. Too anticlimatic in a box with wrapping and a bow.

We hope you all have good holidays. Good, low-carb holidays, if that’s possible. There’s the meat. Nobody eats salad at Christmas, do they? “Christmas” comes more easily to me than “Holidays.” Kids don’t say Happy Holidays To You and Yours. Have a fantastic Now-To-New Years, and beyond.

The Clove soap and the Anise soap. Mix them with the Pine Tar. Soo good. I never smell.

—-

Here’s an interesting Holiday Question:

About 14 months ago at a garage sale we sold a Worksman (made in Queen) folding bike. We have a few Worksmans around here, long story, and we sold this one for $50 or so. A guy bought it. Shortly after that, several of us notice that it was parked at the local BART station. That’s fine—it’s kind of a lousy general commuter for any number of reasons, but it is a perfectly good folder, and you’d think it would be ideal for taking ONTO the BART train, not just park it outside.

Until about 8 months ago it had a saddle and seat post, but then somebody swiped them, so now the bike is like this:

Thar she blows, right there. It’s locked with one of our ABUS locks, and clearly is not being ridden. You’ve got to wonder whether the owner died or not, or exactly what happened, but now I’m thinking I want the bike back. I could probably somehow manage to arrange to get it back, but would that be stealing IF I left a note, laminated for weather resistance, that the guy can have his bike back if he comes and gets it here, and that we just didn’t want a real thief or vandal to get it? Note it still has the plastic axle-protector (more like box-protector) stuck on the rear axle. I rode this bike 15+ miles around Marin County once, and I guess it was on the whole time, because nobody here would have PUT it on. We don’t have them lying around.

Lying vs Laying: You….well, here.

But about the bike—-I worry and wonder about it. I could mention it to BART agents or the BART police and say hey here’s who I am and my business and here’s the story on this bike, so—-can I get it? I might have to break the lock, but there are ways, and then if the guy came back, I’d owe him a new lock, too.