Lots of new soft and warm stuff from that other land down under.

Are you a 59 or 62?

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Riv Cust Fram Raf

The headbadge will be some variation of this one, the rest of the bike will be designed for you.

The Contest

In an attempt to encourage some holiday sales and spread around some end-o-year cheer to one lucky customer, we’re rafflin’ off a custom frame.

Place an order for $300 or more during the month of December and you’re automatically entered into a raffle to win a custom Rivendell frame.  We’ll pick the winner out of a hat held by a stranger within a quarter mile of Riv HQ on January 3, 2013, and we’ll say Who on the BLUG. Here.

Non-frame/rim/bike orders over $150 ship free and you get a 5% rebate on all orders still. Don’t forget that.

A few raffle rules:

• Only orders over $300 (that’s pre-tax and pre-shipping) PLACED between December 1st and 31st count.
  
  
• So if you placed an order with your last $300 on November 30th and it was shipped Dec. 3rd, sorry that doesn’t count. It’s still fair. No Backsies. New December orders only. We could use an influx.
  
  
• Don’t place two orders for $150 then ask us to combine. No deal.
  
  
• One entry per customer. Placing multiple orders for $300 (while encouraged) does not increase your chances of winning, nor does creating multiple email accounts or other schemes, any duplicates will be removed from the running.
  
  
• Frames and bike orders are included.
  
  
• We hope you buy parts from us for the frame. What’s a custom Rivendell equipped with all Tiagra or 105?
  
  
• New paid-in-full $300+ orders only okay? So orders paid with rebates and gift certificates don’t count. Unless you put in $300 into the riv xmas pot in addition to those. Paying off an order you already owe on doesn’t count either cuz that’s not new. We’ll stop you now before we have to say no in person. New $300+ orders only, one per customer.
  
  
• Any other rules that make sense and make the contest most fair that we left out.
  
  
• To be fair to all customers please don’t ask us to make exceptions.
  
  

Decent things to give and get as gifts. And Brooks-Huckleberry Book-Related thing (at bottom of this)

It’s the often happy, usually damp or cold, always stressful time of the end of the year, there and here. Let’s help us all get through it.

We are perennially late and little in our holiday push. It’s like we’re juggling flaming bowling pins up through Thanksgiving, and then a look at the calendar tells us we’re behind on flyers that help us sell stuff, and with end of the year expenses, we need it.

Gift shopping is fun for the really wealthy who in addition to being really wealthy also have lots of time and creativity, but for normal people it can be stressful and hard. So, to somewhat balance out the you help us and we’ll help you equation (and this is also us helping us by alerting you), we’ve compiled a list of things that are not only good, but make good gifts, too.

Please look them over and see if any of them make sense for you or any of the people on your list. One last sentence on that: If you can help us both, now is a great time.  Thanks. - Grant

Gift Certificate.

It will be either an unexciting but appreciated present, or the best thing in the whole damn stocking. Email or print, you-pick-em amounts on Gift Certificates here. 

Mark’s Tool Wrap

No matter how bag-y or basket-y you are, this tool wrap is a nifty way to keep all your tools in one place. It can go in the bag, in the basket, or on the seat rails. Close it with a unincluded strap—get an Irish strap and cut it, or buy a pair of toe straps and use one, throw the other one out. Stuff a multi tool and a patch kit in there.

MUSA Half-Mitts

These are too dorky for mainstreamers, but here at Rivendell they’re cool and smart. They’re waterproof and windproof and slightly fuzzy on the inside, so they’re perfect for chilly riding that’s not actually cold, or for wearing over our Cheap Wool Gloves, which by themselves aren’t all that warm. They go on and off in a second, and an elastic loop hold them to your wrist. Never heard of “Half-mitts”? Perhaps you know them by their other name: Coldthumbs, but there are ways around that. Wear gloves with these over. Wear fingerless gloves with a full thumb (get a pair of our Carolina-made ragwool knobby gloves and slice off the fingertips but not the thumbtip. You think they’ll ravel, but they won’t.  Back to the Halfmitts: They’re red, and one size fits all. They’re our own design and made locally and useful. The wrist straps mean they’re always there, can’t get lost, no hassle on and off,  no putting them away.

 

Goines poster

It’s a beautiful poster, and if you’re super rich, present it with a gift certificate at a local framing place, too. Or, if you’re poor-but-handy and have good taste in mat colors, frame it yourself. Should retail for $150+ but we sell them for $32.

 

Wool Zip-T

This is the most useful garment we have. Sold them for years, and I have one on now. Feeling fine. Made in Australia, all soft Merino wool, way underpriced, black or mossy green. In cool to cold weather you can wear it every day from October thru March. You can sleep in it on cold nights. Everybody outside of Africa and Arizona needs one of these.

GrabSack

It’s not a bike bag, but it’s super useful on the bike, in a basket, on your hip. Sling it over your shoulder or wear it around your waist. A beautiful bag.

Soap Trifecta

Eleven months out of the year the only soap we sell is Grandpa’s Pine Tar soap, which—if you haven’t tried it by now, why not? Now for the holidays we’ve got two others—made locally by a guy who quit his IT job to make really good soaps. He has a stand at the local Farmer’s Market, where I discovered Soap No. 2: Clove, which is killer; and talked him into making Soap No. 3: Anise (smells like black licorice). Soaps 2 & 3 are made with coconut, olive, and palm oil and shea butter and essential oils for smell and some kind of flower pedals for color. The guy is a loony stickler for only the best ingredients, and he knows his soap. The Pine Tar soap (not from him) comes in the same box it always comes in, and the Clove and Anise each come in a two-pack wrapped femininely in something that looks like and is similar to organic papyrus, and tied with raffia n(point being, they present well). These are, all three, usual and pungent soaps. Great smell.

Let me give you a Free Tip here—from somebody who never stinks OR uses deodorant, and sweats averagely, and it’s been that way for years: Scrub and froth in the shower, go at the armpits, and rinse. Then suds up the armpits again—with any of these soaps, or even a combo—and leave the suds there to dry. You won’t stink. This has been my trick for almost 40 years, and it works. You should have smelled me before!

See all our soaps and goops here.

Random Lug

In a stocking. It’ll always fit, and what bike rider doesn’t like a nice chunk of metal? It can be a Christmas tree ornament, or a napkin ring. Whatever—-lugs are cool just lying around. Start your collection with a Riv one.



Splats

Listen: These are The Best Thing We Sell. They’re Simple Genius and they Work Greatly. A friend of mine commutes on his motorcycle in the rain, and they work for that. Will they work for your 3-mile ride across town in a downpour, or a four-hour unavoidable pedal to the next town? U-betcha. Made in Connecticut of Scottish waxed cotton. Stiff, waterproof, simple, perfect. Three sizes and each is adjustable.

Book of Nonsense (by Edward Lear) (for kids)

Written in 1848 and maybe the best funny children’s book of all time, and totally fine for adults, too. It’s largely limericks (There was a young man from Nantucket…etc), but also includes short stories, poems — including The Owl and the Pussycat), and a science lesson. Cloth cover, sewn-in bookmark, acid-free paper and a library (extra tough) binding make this a hundred-year book. We sell roughly a hundred of them a year, with many repeat customers. This is a classic book that every child deserves to read, but good luck finding it in your local book store. With Lear’s own illustrations.
 

All books go up in price by $2 for the holidays, but wait:

We include with each one a $2 book mark. How do you know it’s worth $2? It’s a $2 bill, is how. We all know they’re out there, we all had a few as kids, but it’s probably been a while, too longa while. What a fun thing, what a neat cheap fun way to make any book-gift even more better,  if I may say it like that. These are so-crisp-and-clean-you-can-eat-off-‘em $2 bills, too. Nothing somebody’s going to touch and saw “eeeeewwwww” at.

The moneymakers among you will instantly figure out that with a five percent credit rebate that comes a month later, the $2 actually costs you less. You get one per book you buy. That’s the only way. You can’t say, “Charge my card $10 extra and send me five $2 bills.” You can say, “Charge my card $20 extra and send me five $2 bills,” though. We’re not fools.

Deforestation.

In the 1800’s a particular brand of possum was introduced to launch a fur trade in New Zealand, and all hell broke loose. With no natural predators, they multiplied like rats, and now every night these non-native possums eat 22 thousand tons (so, 44,000 pounds) of native trees and plants crucial to the survival of the whole damn ecosystem. In the most beautiful country in the galaxy. The  government wants to fix the problem, so they thought hmmm…let’s incentivise woolleries to make garments out of the fur. Let’s subsidize those business. Let’s go!

And it’s not like those possums are the skanky American ones with the long, hollow, broken, yellow teeth and creepy eyes and ratty tails. These are super fluffy, soft, always clean, never road-killed possums, and the fur is out of this world. The following garments are a blend of possum, merino, and mulberry silk to add structure, and are so soft that even wool-haters can wear them. We’ve bought holiday stuff from this company for years, and always sell out, and it’s always good gifty. Vegans, listen up: The possums are are destroying vegan habitat and the normal natural animals are dying with it. This is your chance to get in on the cozy while still staying true to your cause. Sort of.

Here’s what we have (beware: one thing is merely sheep, not possum):

We haven’t gotten them in yet so links and pictures coming soon!
 
Blue calf-high semi-furry possum sock. Thin enough to fit into tight wingtips; long enough to cover all but the highest part of your shin when you sit cross-legged and cavalier during scoldings and negotiations. Really cozy, medium-thick, super nice, works with normal or dress shoes. It’s 90 percent possum, 10 percent silk.

 Possum neck gaiter—ribbed and black and natural tan. Everybody in the world who has one of these loves it. Super soft, warm, no constricting, and wearable not only on your neck, but on your head as an ear-and-above warmer, too. It weighs like an ounce, you can stuff it anywhere and unstuffy it and it looks like you just unwrapped it. Natural and black. Roughly ten inches tall and wide enough to fit over your head and cuddle your neck. Can you wash and dry it? Yes, but go easy on the drying. Still, you can do it—-yes, it’ll shrink, but it’ll stretch out again and will never not fit over your head. Laundering is not a problem.

Possum fancy scarf. It’s black and tannish in kind of a checkery knit. Women picked it, but it’ll work fine for guys. Same furry soft possum as the other possum items, just in a scarf.

Striped Black Possum Glove. These are sized for a typical adult woman’s hand. If your lady has monster hands like Seinfeld’s date in that one episode; or tiny hands like the lady in the SNL skit, they won’t fit. One of the stripes is red.

Titanium spork.

If your person eats with untinsels and isn’t all-fancy all the time, this is a killer utinsel. Ideal for chunky soups and all salads, especially big ones in a bowl. The curved edge hugs and the tines stab enough to be useful. Real forks and real spoons are lousy for huge salads served in monster bowls. Like, when everybody is  finished with their salad and there’s still some in the serving bowl, and what are you going to do—-transfer it to a Tupperwear and let it rot forgotten inside the refrigerator? No, you eat it with one of these. Yum.

 Titanium plate.

I eat off one of these at least 250 days a year. It’s big enough for a four-egg omelete, and has a lip big enough to hold like nuts and nutshells. It stacks easily and is easy to grab. You will never break it. Want to personalize yours? OK then, here: Put it empty on the stove and heat it up for a few minutes. Heat makes titanium go all rainbowy, and since your rainbow won’t be exactly like any other, that’s what we here call personalization. This is the way one writes after just having read the book Room, by Emma Donoghue.

Rivendell flying saucer.

It’s like a Frisbee, basically it IS a Frisbee, but it’s made in Michigan by DiscCraft, and they make the best flying discs I’ve flung. This one here is 128g, perfect for playing catch and fun, too light for Ultimate and throwing in strong gusts. But overall the most pleasant to throw disc. It goes with a flip of the wrist. We have two bright, hard to lose colors: Orange and Limey Yellow. Easy to find when a throw goes errant. How do you fit it in a stocking? You put a note saying, “Look under the couch for something that didn’t fit.”

MUSA SS WOOLY T.

Cut full, buy your normal size. Super light and soft bluish gray T with raglan sleeves and fancy side seams. No matter how sensitive you are to wool, you will not mind this T at all. I/Grant think it is too smooth, but I still wear it.

SMLXL

 

AUSSIE SS WOOLY (non-Turtleneck) LONGSLEEVE or SHORTSLEEVE T.

Cut normal, buy up a size if you want normal fit, and up two if you like loose. Simple T-cuts, no raglan nonsense, and a heavier, midweight wool. Rare is the guy who can’t wear this next to his skin, but you could then wear a MUSA wooly under it. We’ve sold these for 15 years, and there never wear out. Tip: If you buy up a size or two and find the length too long, just cut it off with a scissors. It won’t fray. You don’t need to hem it. Just go. These shirts are fantastic and are the best deal in woolies in the country. Black or Mossy green.

 

BOOKS

Some highlights from our biggest-of-any bike shop book collection.
 
Any Eben Weiss/BSNYC book.

Either of the two, for now. The first, self-titled BSNYC, shakes sense into bike riders, makes sense of the nonsense, and advocates strongly for a common sensical approach to riding. Eben is smart and funny, cusses now and then so if you can’t handle that don’t get it or get over it, and all in all this is an important book for any 21st century bike rider.

The second, called The Enlightened Cyclist, is about bike commuting, and hidden in the humor and attitude are tons of good tips for getting there safely without bothering any other road users.

Both are easy to read (accessible to all) and they’ll change your way of thinking about things you do on the bike every day.

the all of it. By jeannette haien.

The book title is all lower case on the book, so it is here, too. We’ve sold about sixty of these in the past three months—more than any other bookseller in the country, probably—and many who’ve read it have come back for a second to give away. If your Christmas present client reads novels, it’s a good bet he or she has not read this one—-published years ago and not widely available.  It’s a quick read as novels go (145p), but it’s still a few hours of great entertainment, and in that quite important regard, can hold its own against 95 percent of the box-contents under the tree. Put it into the stocking. It’s a thin book that’ll roll up easily, and unless you’re really hurting this year, it’s kind of a too thin, floppy inexpensive book for an only-gift. I mean, maybe not, but the point is, this book will fit into a stocking, and that’s where we suggest you put it.

———-

Brooks-Huckleberry Bikes/SF Event Dec 8

Here are some links:

Sundays thru December, 10 to 2…and Giving Away Money

Just for now, just for Deciembre: We’ll be open on Domingo from 10 to 2. It’s because  Yes, we need the money, and Also, because the shopping days are few and often spent in major shopping areas not here, so an extra four hours on Sundays makes it easier.

We’ll get the phones then, too, but may not be able to research current or past orders—not on Sunday, at least. Takes too much time.

—————- Let’s Talk About Giving Away Money ————-

There’s this charity and it’s a really good one. In a sentence it teaches public schoollers how to write. gets them into books and reading, too. Really supportive, super effective, and the writings are published in real books you can buy, too. This is a charity we wholly endorse and want to support. We’ve already sent it a couple of hearty donations this year, and will send at least that much again even though it’s a lean time for us, because it’s so, so worthwhile. And we’ll make it easy for you to donate, too. Click up there or right here and read about it. Find the donation link and donate. You’ll be emailed a thanks and proof, and you forward that to donations{at}rivbike.com (just email the donation receipt there, don’t ask tech questions, etc.), and we’ll cut you a credit here for 40% of your donation, up to $300. Guarantee a speedy turnaround by including your customer number, which you can find on an old invoice or search your emails for subject “rivbike.com order confirmation” and the number is on the top right.  That’ll make it easy.

So, you donate $10 and you get a credit for $4. A hundred gets you forty, and so on—- up to that max $300 credit.

Donate in $10 increments to make the math easy. Hundreds even better.

It’s tax-deductible, 100 percent.

Assuming you’re going to buy stuff here anyway, what this means is it costs you forty cents on the dollar to support this fantastic, worthy, needy, productive charity that is so effective that there have been spinoffs in other parts of the country, too.

As icing on the cake, it is also the only independently owned and operated pirate supply store in the country, probably the world.

Get on it, and we’ll process your credit within two business days, probably the same day, but give us two. Progress reports at least weekly. And each week, now thru the end of December, we’ll calculate your donations and match them up to $1,000. Per week. This is a good charity, so let’s go. Thanks. G.

Sound good?

It’s just Monday, not “Cyber Monday,” for crying out loud. And Thanksgiving catharsis

I woke up this morning, as you all did, to emails announcing “Cyber Monday” sales. Yuk. Isn’t Monday enough? Is tomorrow “Cyber Tuesday”? Is all week “Cyber Week”? Enough!

——

Computers and blogs and even Blugs can get you into trouble, but they can also save you money while making me saner. This one’s about general and perennial year-end stresses that every involved and dependent small business owner feels. But, I am speaking only for me, not those others. They’re free to horn in.

The general stresses are sales, which means bills get paid and the emps get some kind of holiday bonus; and taxes, always a big one for us, because we’re taxed on assets, which includes money in the bank which we never have, and inventory, which we have either not enough of or too much of. But we can’t pay the taxes on the assets with the assets that are inventory, so while the government (and I like the government, don’t get me wrong here) sees profit on paper and thinks we can afford a $30,000 tax bill, we in fact have no money in the bank (to speak of, no pile after payroll and bills and the twenty or so other extremely boring but extremely real bills that we get every month are paid)—yes, no money left after that, and so we borrow money to pay our taxes, which makes it harder to pay the normal bills that have to be paid, and make holiday bonuses extremely painful, and yet—everybody is so deserving, and I’m not going to stiff ‘em.

Every year I plan to plan better and every year I don’t. A paper Holiday flyer seems so basic. I’d fire anybody put in charge of that who failed, year after year, to get it out on time or at all, and yet I can’t fire myself. I do other good and valuable things. I earn my salary ($75,000). But I do a lousy job of putting out a holiday flyer on time. It should include fun gifty things and a few fun normal things.

I did a really really great fun fantastic one about eight years ago, but nobody noticed. It may have even backfired, in it’s own tiny way. It is here. I cannot emphasize enough that this is an ancient one, we don’t have lots of this anymore, and if we happen to, the price is changed. It is here purely for entertainment value, and offers little of that.

This year, now and soon, as you’re reading this it’s happening, we’re getting in some possum wool

You’re all old enough to remember the song Society’s Child, right? Janis Ian? She wrote it at sixteen, and here she is, still sixteen, performing in on the Smothers Brothers show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW_rYLoIR08&feature=related

And then there’s this one, too. It’s chock full of mondegreens, but what a fine little compact contribution it made. It’s about the dad of a dead soldier. Do they make songs like this anymore, and would they…be Top Forty? I don’t know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFcRRKqcaEI

OK, then, one more. This is the second easiest song of all time to identify within one second….if you’re, like, 55 or older. A fantastic video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXjVd0TeOX0

———-

Hurricane Sandy Damage

The owner and his people are OK. His nextdoor neighbor’s house exploded, blowing up his house as well, and this bike was in int. It came in the mail today. For puposes of inspecting it, assessing whether or not it can be ridden safely, repaired, and how much all that would cost, and how long. Here are some detailed pix:

It was built in 2001.

Here’s the downtube decal. Not too much heat got to it.

The top tube was paint-melted over a lot of them.

Front of the bike. Mostly soot-damage.

This is not beasage, it’s burnage. Brake lever.

Presumably the bag was all-consumed. Lugged stem. Computer.

Rear brake with some meltage. The invisible pad suffered more than the visible one, but still, what’s a brake pad?

I am guessing there is insurance. I know that of many burned things, this is a relatively unimportant one, it being fixable or replaceable for less than the piano, as an example.

We’ll look it over and see where it all goes. This is no reason to buy a steel frame, but a frame of any other material would be unsalvage-able for sure.

——-

We got chambray shirts in, and they’re exactly as planned, hoped, etc. They’re on the site now. I’m thinking no more shirts after this. I won’t rule it out, but we’re not cut out for the shirts, the whole textile world. Bottoms are easier, shirts…hard. But these are good ones.

We also got soap. Holiday soap. We’re not veering off of Pine Tar for good, just offering some holiday additions, and they’re all on the manly side of things. The new two flavors are clove and anise (like licorice). These are strong, pungent soaps—-nothing subtle about them. You can wash hair with them (as with Pine Tar soap) and now here’s my once-or-twice a year washing tip. I can’t be the only one who does this, because it’s so simple and works so well, but here it is:

OK, you’re in the shower, the bath, or in front of the sink washing. Lather up your armpits, scrub a dub, then rinse. Now later up again and LEAVE THE SUDS. That’s the the deodorant you need. You won’t stink, the soap will dry, it won’t itch, and you won’t have to spray weird stuff in your armpits. I have not stunk in 40 years, and that’s how long I’ve been doing this. It works fine, and if you sweat after it dries, it doesn’t froth up.

Three great soaps. When they get down to stubs, compress them together in a ball. The flavors mingle well—-all dark smells, really good.

All for now. OH—on Dec 8 between 6 and 9 there’s a Brooks event at Huckleberry in S.F. I was invited to go there and talk a little, somehow related to Just Ride, and so I’ll be there. More later, but ——- we’re closed till Monday the 26th. Want a fun novel to read over the weekend? Run, by Emma Donohugh.

Seat Pouch’s, there hear

Haven’t had these Tweed Seat Pouch’s (aka Banana Bag) for like 71 weeks.  They’re now back in stock.  Who knows when or if we’ll have them again.

Nigel Smythe Seat Pouch

reminder: Holiday Garage Sale tomorrow.

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A fresh batch of Tweed Bags has arrived all the way from England.

Nigel Smythe Li’l Loafer

Nigel Smythe Big Loafer

Nigel Smythe SaddleSack XS

Nigel Smythe Seat Pouch, not in yet, hopefully in a couple weeks.

Garage Sale November 17, 8:30am

Once a year, or so, we clean out the warehouses here and have a small driveway sale before normal open hours on a Saturday. 

UPDATE: MORE STUFF THAN WE THOUGHT

Stuff that was in web specials for a long time, new but discontinued.  Used tires, lots of fenders with various defects, complete cockpits ripped from frames, baskets, stems, seatposts, some wheels, about twenty blem frames and bikes, discontinued items. Things will be sorted by price from $5 in increments up to several thousand for the bikes. So bring your ones, twos, fives, tens, twenties, hundreds. Cash only.  We can’t/won’t tell you EXACTLY what’s gonna be there, but there will be some real priced-to-move bargains and at least one box of really cheap front derailers. Also if you are an extra small or extra extra large person there will be plenty of clothing items just for you and practically nothing in between.

This is a local, cash only sale.

Normal Saturday business hours 10am-4pm will continue afterwards.