October 14, 2007

We haven't sent out a Rivendell Reader since about January, and many of you know why. Some don't  (I get four to five emails a day asking about it), so the short answer is: Got a mousing injury that makes it hard for me to type. Am trying to fix it with assorted measures, and it's coming along slowly, but not fast enough to put out RR40 in the next month or even two.

I have notes and outlines and pages of hand-written articles, and will try to enlist some friends to help with typing and information-collecting, with the goal being a mailing before the end of the year. That's a dream, not a promise.

One thing that might help is reformatting the Reader, so it's more the physical size of VeloNews. That size lends itself to pages-of-boxes with bitesized and mouthfuls of somewhat useful and occasionally interesting info or tips that by themselves wouldn't warrant a full page, or even half a page, in the current pages size. And not only that--although it sounds bad to say this--it also lends itself to more frequent mailings of less significant information.

I know that sounds like we're taking it downhill, but I'd be careful not to do that. Sometimes we discover or find out about neat ways to do things on your bike, and right now they're just languishing here when they ought to be out there. Our interviews have been long up to know, and I like the long interview, but wouldn't it be OK to include a shorter interview or profile of some other worthy figure or company? I think it would be good.

There really are some neat things, some good things happening out there, and if I wait until we have a giant Faberge egg to cram them all into, it'll be old news by the time it comes out.

Shimano has some neat new things for 2008. But it still is ignoring normal bikes in favor of extremers.

The 650B thing isn't just a weird tiny underground thing anymore. Kirk Pacenti has run with the ball and is jazzing up mountain bike makers to build frames and bikes and tires for this new size, and it's working. In the mountain bike world there are 26-inch wheels and 29-ers, and you can't just throw in "650B" in there and have it stick, because it's a different language. It's like mixing Hebrew and Latin, click-talk and French, Welsh and Kiswahili. So in the mountain bike world, "650B" will likely be called "27.5" -- to the dismay and maybe shock of ascot-sporting preservationists -- but for the good of the breed overall. Who cares what it's called, so long as they make the rims and tires? Not moi (French).

The real naming solution is numbers, of course. Call it a 584, after its nominal bead seat diameter. But then you'd have to call 26ers 559s, and 700c-ers 622s, and you've got the esperanto challenge all over again. It doesn't matter what should happen.

But it will take some habit-breaking for me to start typing "27.5". 

There are rumors of new tires from Panaracer (currently the leader in that size), and three from Kenda, and WTB is interested, and Schwalbe will likely add a third to its lineup of two. Once that all happens, other tire makers (late adopters) will jump in, and I bet by 2009, you'll be able to get them in that lengendary bike shop in Timbuktu, even.

Our new CATALOGUE will be mailed by the end of this month, and it will be in all mailboxes by November 20. It's not much different from the last one, but  it has a new picture on the cover. I remember back in the early '70s, the Dan Bailey (fly fishing) catalogue had a close up of a Royal Wulff floating in an aquarium. It was a stunning photo, but every year I expected the new catalogue to have a new photo, and it never did, and I really wanted it to change. The thing about the photo that really bugged me was that the fly was tied on with a figure-8 knot. That works in gut, but not nylon, and it just hammered home the stagedness of it all. The knot was loose, too, to help the fly sit less-influenced by the knot and tippet, for the photo. If a fish took that fly, you wouldn't even be able to set the hook without losing fish & fly. Our pictures aren't technicallty as good as that one, but they're real-er in their own way.