What 2009 Was Like + Brooks FLASH

January 11, 2010

It was a year of not much Rivendell Reader progress. No issues were mailed since February, but any insider here will attest that there's been progress all year long, but it just hasn't come to an Old Faithful-like head, and if it were finished now we still wouldn't have the loot to print it, although we could put it up on the web. It should be on this site in two weeks, maybe sooner, and in paper maybe by mid - Feb. We'll print enough to send to those who've sent in $5 for one by Jan 25 or so, and then maybe a few hundred more, which may cost more. Low-volume print runs are inefficient that way, but massive print runs cost too much. This is why magazines have advertising

We're losing our all-Japanese built frames - the Quickbeam, Atlantis, A. Homer Hilsen, Glorius and Wilbury --- and have already lost some others. They cost too much because the U.S. dollar is too weak and the Yen is too strong. We have some Japanese Atlantis and Hilsen frames in stock, but unless the dollar goes up to 115+ Yen, we can't afford these frames anymore. So  --- whatever, but these are supremely well-built frames, with at least two Samurai-like details (in these last two batches) that are more artsy than you'll find on any frame anywhere, so they're good, and they're the last of 'em.

When we're out of the Japanese Atlantis frames, the future ones will be made by Wford. The chainstays will be different but just fine, and some microdetails will be diff, but not functionally so.

Early this summer (late May, maybe June) we'll introduce a new bike, the Hunqapillar, pronounced "Hunkapillar." It's sort of between an Atlantis and Bombadil; a toury traily du-it-all kind of frame in four sizes: 48 54 58 62, all with the "expanded, not compact" sizing like the Sam and Bomadil. So the listed size fits like a bike that's two to five centimeters bigger. I ride a 59 AHH, and a 54 Hunqapillar, for instance. We'll have more on the Hunqapillar (just today we switched from "-er" to "-ar") in a couple of weeks. The 48 fits 26-inch wheels (like the small Atlantis does); the big three take 700c. We're still in deep amour with 650B, but have enough of those bikes, and wanted a replacement Atlantis, so it made sense to keep this bike 26 & 700.

It's shaping up to cost $1400 frame-fork-headset. The frame is made in Taiwan under the obsidian eyes of Tetsu Ishigaki of Toyo; and he builds the forks himself in Japan.

And the Quickbeam is gone and will be replaced with the SimpleOne. Same geometry, basically same frame and lugs and crown and bb and dropouts and everything, but made in Taiwan, so it costs less. I wonder how they'll go, because you never can tell with one-speeds. So many people convert old junkers, and then there are Surleys for even less, and it all comes down to a guess. But this is a bike we like a whole lot, and so we're doing one run of them this year, and that may be it. Frames will cost $1,000, with headset, seat post, bottom bracket -- a 107mm Tange, which will work fine with the Sugino XD crank.

The Rodeo is doing quite well, as it ought to. We're keeping it for sure, and we'll lock it in forever. If you need a fasty bike that's actually useful (can take 33.33mm tires and fenders), it's the way to go.

About fifteen years ago Yvon Chouinard wrote an introduction to the Patagonia catalogue, saying Shaker-like things about simplicity and trimming down. He said something really close to, "Do we really need six different ski jackets?" And then explained that he trimmed it to two. I am not the climber-surfer-businessguy he is, but I do understand what he was saying, and I like it. "Selection" begets "confusion"  and "indecision." Go to REI and check out the locks sometime; or the helmets or gloves, or sunglasses or Swiss Army knives. Aye, Chihuahua.

Do we need seven different pedals? Balaclavas in four colors, when all anybody ever buys is black? Brooks makes forty or so saddles, but you have your B.17, the slotted Imperial, and a wide model  ---  the .68 or .67, but not both, and that's it. Brown or black. Special order anything else. We should get our stocked Brooks selection down to five, and that will be all. Brooks would probably like us to sell all the different models. I think Brooks doesn't like us. We've been a good customer for 15 years; I bet  --  no big deal, but I bet we've been Brooks's best customer. It may depend on how you define "best."

In the early years, Brooks saddles were hard to find, and that was all we sold. Over the years we've dabbled with other leather saddles, but have never wavered on Brooks, and yetI know this is petty  ---  but on the Brooks site, dealers are rated with rivets, and five is good. The last I looked, we were zero. We've done more than sell them, have been super low-maintenance, have never been late with a payment, have never asked for anything extra, but here were are, zero-rivetted. That's OK. We don't need to be in the Brooks Premium Elite Presidential Club. Selle Royal owns Brooks (not Brooks, anymore). They've improved the saddles since taking over. The boxes are a shame to throw out. Good for them, but screw the rivet-system (pun intended).

FLASH: Well, that posting raised a ruckus, and Brooks explained that to qualify for Rivets, we have to fill out forms and show pictures of our displays and employees and---it all makes sense from their perspective, but the fact is, we have no displays, and our showroom isn't impressive.  Plus, the 6-Rivet dealers have to sell the whole line---bags, tool rolls. bar tape, leather grips. We're in a simplifying mode, and that would complicate things here, so if anything said here reflects badly on Brooks, I take it back. I accept our zero-rivet station in life, and am happy enough just to continue to sell the finest saddles out there.---Grant

Tires, in the bicycle world at large and even here at Rivendell, are out of control and so we're cutting back. The 27mm Ruffy-Tuffy/Roll-y Pol-y tire mold is wearing out and we may see the last of those tires this year.

How does a metal mold wear out from being filled with presumably soft rubber? But that's what I'm told.

When your bike can't fit a bigger tire, there isn't a better tire in the world than a Roll-y Pol-y or Ruffy Tuffy (I'd say). But you should have a bike that fits a bigger tire, and you should be riding bigger tires, mainly because tell me one reason not to. The Jack Brown (33.333mm) is the new Roll-y Pol-y. So there's your new starting point: 33.3333mm. A small selection of stepped-up sizes from Panaracer and Schwalbe, but only one model per step, and not too many steps. We'll get our 700c tires down from twelve or so to six or so. Welcome to the newer, simpler world here.

(Sheldon Brown once complained to me about the hyphenation of the Roll-y Pol-y, and he was a million percent right, but too late, and there still wasn't and isn't a better alternative. I wanted them to be long "o" sounds, and didn't want the second word to read like the first part of polyester, so that's how the hyphenation came about, but it sure makes it a pain to type.)

In 650B tires we're still going to stock every one we can get, overlaps and all. But you have to understand, that's the kind of support a "new" size needs, and it can count on us.  At some point we'll have multiduplicates and we'll have to cut back, but we aren't there yet. Nine or ten or eleven 650B tires in 2010.

Bags is another area. We're focusing on the Sackvilles, made just for us by a small company that's been a pure delight to work with, and that makes the best bags I've ever seen. We'll do one run of Nigel Smythe bags in the English Tweedy, sometime early Summer. And we'll keep the Brand V line of vegan bags, because they're more affordable, and it doesn't bode well, to piss off the vegans. John's one of them.

You know the heavy heathery gray long-sleeve Rivendell T-shirts? The maker, in North Carolina, is discontinuing that shirt, and there is just nothing like it. It's the best toughest, t-shirt you'll ever wear, good even for cold weather (with a wooly under it), and quitting making it is no less a shame than the shame of Case stopping the scout knife after eighty years because the knife market is mostly collectables these days, and kids don't carry pocket knives anymore. There are worse shames, worse thing, but still. Anyway, we have some of those shirts left, with the big ol' Rivendell Bicycle Works collegiate-style logo, and can't justify another run of thoseso we're going to do a more sedate kind of semi-cycling T-shirt, maybe one you can wear without looking jockish. If and when they come, they'll be your last chance at this shirt, and let me tell you: Get one.

It has been a hard year in a few ways, but you don't want to hear it and I don't want to say it. We've all had enough of that, and no doubt hundreds of you have lost jobs or had hours cut back and are worried, too. It is great, though, to be able to follow a path that's consistent with the kinds of things we like, and whatever commercial success we have along the way, just knowing (from hearing) that you like the stuff too, is gratifying and makes life way better than it would be if, for example, we found out that our major frame suppliers were going all-carbon next year, or threadless, or you get the point.

The view of the real bike world, from this bubble, is nearly unfathomable.  More like, I just don't understand any of it. I go into bike shops and see the racks full there, I am glad we don't have to sell that stuff. It's not all bad, but it's hard to come up with a story, hard to fit somebody on a bike that makes it impossible to raise the handlebar. I feel like, yes I know a lot of people listen to me, or to Rivendell, and think I'm good at this, or something, but they don't realize how hopeless I'd be without this job. When you've worked for yourself for so many years you become hard to employ by anybody else, and on top of that, my skills are limited to bikes, and this particular kind of bike at that; and it's not a popular approach to bikes.

This year we gave about $12K to various charities, but not too many. It doesn't make sense or feel good to spread it out over too many charities, because you end up buying post-its and paperclips, instead of surgeries or toilets. By a similar token, giving $2K to a charity with a yearly operating budget of $100 million doesn't feel superb, either, so we focus our contributions on some small, some medium charities that do special work, mostly for poor people, women, and children, and always ones that are efficient. There are some charities that spend 80 percent of the contributions on salaries and rent, and you can even look 'em up. We do mainly Somaly Mam (anti-sexual slavery in Cambodia), the Carter Center (which does only the work that nobody else bothers with, and is truly singlehandedly eradicating horrible diseases in Africa, for instance, and is super efficient), Smile Train (cleft palate surgeries), and the Fistula Foundation (fistula fixing in African women, so they don't leak feces and urine constantly, which gets them banished to the backwoods and they feel ashamed, and their families abandon them, holy freakin' cow).  Ideally, we'd give $100 thousand dollars, but we're eke-ing by as it is, and this was a particularly rough year, especially at the end.

In 2010 we'll allocate certain product sales to certain charities, as we started to do late last year.

Remember the Bleriot? It wasn't so long ago. That was a bike we designed and sold ourselves and sold through a distributor. It had a life of a two years or so, and through no fault of the bike or anything, it went away. Medium-length story,  not worth telling. Anyway, we have designed another bike for another distributor Merry Sales, owner of the SOMA brand. Jim Porter (Merry Sales owner) is a good friend, and Merry Sales has been a faithful supplier to us for several years, and they being a distributor and all set to sell to bike shops, which something we, for the most part, don't.

That means we can reach more customers, get more riders on to good ol' pretty-and-strong-and-comfortable lugged steel bikes, and probably 90 percent of those riders won't have heard of Rivendell, anyway. So it all makes sense, and as long as there are no dealer problems, it'll all work out. We're going to sell the bike, too.

I hadn't planned on spilling the beans on it yet, but the beans are already spilt, I think partly because we had the frame on a table here in the work area, instead of under a white sheet in a back room. I'd barely rather it be a secret still, because there are details to be worked out, and if they aren't worked out, there won't be a frame, and there's no guarantee that they're going to be worked out. It's not financial arrangements, it's techy frame things. Anyway, here's what I have to say about the bike:

It's what used to be called a road-sport bike. It has light tubing (by our standards -- like the Rambouillet, A. Homer Hilsen), and accepts tires up to 28mm with a fender, or about 35mm without. It has two eyelets on the rear dropouts, one on the front, and hourglass mounts on the seat stays. It's not for loaded touring, but fits a rear rack anyway, and you can use that as a saddlebag support, or put a trunk rack or some other light load on it. It probably won't break-like-carbon if you load it up and head for the hills, but it's really not stout enough to do that fantastically well. The tubing is too light.

It has the same "expanded" kind of frame as the Bombadil and Sam Hillborne. The top tube slopes up about 6 degrees, so ultra classicists will barf, but the upslope forces you to be comfortable, and some people must be forced. It also means you'll ride a frame that's three to five cm smaller than what you'd ride in one of our bikes.

The fork is threaded, so you can use a quill stem. All the lugs, the crown, and the BB shell are the same ones we use on our own bikes. The rear dropouts are a stock model that have been used on lots of frames, but I didn't pick them. They're small, strong, and light.

The tubing is Tange Prestige (heat treated CrMo). Tange is a tubing maker; Prestige is it's top, heat-treated CrMo tubing, and it's plenty good for any frame.

The downtube says the opposite of SOMA, and the model name - San Marcos - is in small letters on the back of the seat tube.

I think it's best and fairest to evaluate this frame in the context of the current bike shop selection, and the price, about $895. I want to say that, because if all you do is consider "lugs" and "steel" and "fork crown" and maybe even "Rivendell-designed" it's a short step away from being compared to frames that cost a whole lot more.

Please DO compare it to any carbon frame and fork. Compare the clearance, the bar height and comfort, the tire and fender clearances, and the overall look. DON'T compare it to an A. Homer Hilsen, etc., and expect the same details. The fork won't be as beautiful, but it'll look a whole lot better (by certain standards) than any carbon fork, and it'll be way safer, too.

This frame is perfect for anybody who wants a really nice, super comfortable, attractive, safe, and versatile bike for well under $2,000. It's great for any road rides, centuries, and (with 35mm tires run soft), some smooth fire trails.

Wrap-up

Sizes: Probably 51/650 or 700c (not sure); 55, 59, 63. Maybe a 47/650, too. It's designed, but nobody ever buys small bikes, so I may suggest to Jim to nix it. It'll be up to him, so don't get mad at me....

Fitting: Go three to six cm smaller than your level-top tube frame.

Color: Not set, but maybe the light blue that's on the table (and the 'net)

Brake style: 55 reach, sidepull or centerpull, but there's no cable hanger stop, so if you want to use a centerpull you'll need the stops and hangers, and I'm sure Merry Sales will make them available to dealers.

Max tire with fender: 30mm. (Who makes a 30? But if you have one)

Max tire no fender: 37mm.

Braze-ons: Two bottles, two eyelets on rear drops, one on each front, plus the normal cable stops.

Designed for: Road riding, light loads. If you're light or if you ride light (don't smack things, pedal smoothly, unweight the bike over bumps, things like that), you can go glorious unpaved places on this bike, but the bottom line is: Road bike, not trail bike.

Loaded touring?: Nope. It won't break, but it's not touring-stout. Don't let the rack-eyelets fool you. It can take a rack and a light load, but it's not the fantabulous touring bike. (People will ask: "If I weigh 120 pounds, can I load it up with 50? Isn't that the same as a 170-pounder riding with nothing?" And I never know what to say. Body-weight rides different than static weight, but...the point is, it's not a loaded touring bike. If you have just this bike and you must tour, and you can get in sync with the loaded bike, then foray away, knowing heavier people have toured on way wimpier bikes multitudinous times, but still....not a superb bike for loaded touring, not intended for it, but still a capable light all-'rounder.

Rear spacing: 130mm

Fork type: Steel (CrMo) with Riv's crown

Lugs, BB shell: Riv's investment cast

Kinda tubes: Tange Prestige, with 0.8mm butts in the top and down tubes.

Seat post size: 27.2mm

Anything quirky, weird, or spooky that you'll find out too late? No, it's normal.

Frame weight: Shouldn't ask, but a 55 will weigh about 4.4lb.

Available where: Bike dealers who opt to stock it, and Rivendell.

Available when: We aren't going to rush it, and if all of the details aren't nailed, it plain won't happen at all. Right now the most optimistic guess is Fall, 2010. I bet it won't land till Spring 2011, though.

If you're on the Forum and have any questions, it would be good to designate a regular contributor to ask me questions ganged in bunches of three or four or something. It's possible that I won't know the answer, but if it's about the frame sizing, fitting, tubing, details --- I should probably know the answer.

It's going to be a really neat frame, and wouldn't it be good to see normal people (not us!) on good steel?

--- Grant