Aug Blahg
I like the lead photo for this story, but it makes me uncomfortable, and no, it's not the short skirt. My youngest daughter took it in Sweden when we were sitting in a cafe eating stuff, and she was shooting out the window and got this picture. I wanted the negative to make a print, she sent it to me, Will made this print, and I HAVE the negative still, but I can't find it. Anna, I will make it up to you. I don't think you read the Blahg. I know you're busy. Seventy hours a week. Yikes. This is my confession. It is not lost, I promise.
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It's Platypuses in Kiev. Public art, a gift from Australia, I think.
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Time, Life, National Geographic are all reaching out to the new generation.
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Trying too hard, clothing-wise.
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That's $0.485 per can, or $1.29 a pound. In what, in the 24 hours that followed, I came to regard my decision to buy only ten cans as one of the most foolish money/food-related actions as one of the most foolish I've ever taken. But then, 48 hours later (another 24 hours, not 48 on top of the earlier-mentioned 24), I started thinking I shouldn't have bought any. They still had many dozens and possibly 180 cans left, but eventually they'll run out, and so my buying it prevented somebody probably poorer and less healthy than me from buying it and benefitting from it. But then, the imaginary person I have in mind might not buy it any way, and MIGHT have plenty of other bad habits that would negate any healthy magic that we all know salmon have.
In the airport in Portland, OR. What led to the posting of the sign?
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Kenyan runners Yikes, but understandable. Who's worth rooting for? This is how competition goes.
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At writer for The Atlantic recently declared this (see link below) as the best song of all-time. Naturally, there will be universal agreement, but if that makes you curious, listen here..
I've liked it since about 1969. It's been one of my recurring earworms.
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We're getting hit "fairly hard," as one might describe it, by tariffs on stuff from Nitto and Japan. It'll start happening in Taiwan too, and England, New Zealand, and Australia--the other "foreign vendors," as one might describe them. We'll discuss how to address this, but we'll soak up as much as we can ourselves and pass the rest on to you as we must.
Trump in all his wisdom and business acumen might say, "Just make your fancy bicycles in America!," but True Temper quit making bicycle frame tubing about fifteen years ago (and weren't all that good at it when they still did). Back in 1995 I wrote 37 letters to 37 USA and (two) Canadian investment casters, trying to find a North American source for lugs and stuff. I sent them technical drawings of fork crowns, lugs, and a bottom bracket shell. I explained how much I wanted them North-American made, and gave them a sense of our volume-which I inflated a bit, but not much. I got about 34 silences, two replies that said, simply and in the same language, "We choose not to quote," and one other replied that the pieces I'd sent drawings for could not be made by investment casting.
Some of you may remember Henry James lugs, made in America. They came on a lot of U.S.-made custom frames in the '80s and '90s. Henry's name was Hank Folson, and we talked frequently. At one point he told me he'd been through six different American investment casters. He kept quitting them, as I remember it, due to quality or consistency problems. At least he got through to them, which is more than I could do.
In Taiwan, there were investment casters who specialized in bicycle lugs, so we went there. Steel came from Italy (so-so), England (good), Japan (good), and Taiwan (as good). The current Taiwan-built frames as as good as any we've seen or used, and far more consistent than..most.
There are many US Tig-welders, but lugged builders who can meet out volumn don't exist, period, so we pay tariffs, and on we go.
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I realize you don't read here for movie or series recommendations, so please think of these as the evening entertainment equivalent of finding a brown paper sack full of twenties, and no evidence that is was a poor person's life savings.
- Astrid (unless you can't handle subtitles)
- Foyle's War (you still haven't seen it?)
- and a one-shot movie that starts off stupid, but hang in there: Penguin Lessons
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It's "funny" to be 71 and not retired and still at my peak jazziness/enthusiam about bicycles, but also facing the reality that despite having no signs of wearing out, cancer or anything could be just around the corner, I still better get cracking on stuff I want to do, in case I'm a goner in a few years. Here is my pre-death list, sorry if that sounds morose, but I have a good attitude about it all. Some people here and a friend or two know these things. In no special order:
- Three books, finish (writing) them. I've been working on one for eight years, another for three, another, sporadically, for five. They're not duplicates of anything, or of themselves. ONE is (working title, describes the topics, anyway): An Illustrated History of the Bicycle Thru Racism, Sexism, Politics, Pollution, and Pop Culture." It would be banned in Florida, but other than that, it'd be a good book. I have more than a thousand hours into it, so it's not like, "a pipe dream." What's a "pipe dream," anyway? I'm 80 percent finished with that book, but haven't made much progress on it in three years. I can't imagine a publisher publishing it, and I can't afford to self-publish, so I just don't know. It would be the first bicycle book ever banned in Florida.
- Set RIV up for life past me. "Set up" means, I don't know..sell it? Not to pvt equity, not to anybody who'd dilute it and branch it out and try to "scale it" or capitalize on whatever brand equity or reputation we have. And ruling out those rules out a lot of possible buyers. Every week I get emails from people who assume I'm sick and tired of the whole thing and want to sell it for me. NOT sick OR tired of it. We, meaning my wife and I, and Will is in on it, too...are considering some options. The emps probably can't buy it. I can't think of another bike company that'd want to buy it and keep the focus. We might have some customers who could buy it, but I can't think of any names. I could sell most or all of MY shares, without selling the whole company. Who wants a chunk? I dunno. Somebody might want to be responsible for keeping this bicycle direction alive. We are slightly profitable, but it would still take a devil-may-care philanthropist.
- What it's NOT about is money. Obviously, not everything is. My dad impressed on me once that not everything's for sale, or should be, and you had to decide for yourself what is and isn't. When you do, money stops mattering as much. Like here's a gross, ugly question: For $50M, would you shout a swear at a child? Would it matter how old the child was, or what ethnic background? Would you say "Boo!" to an old lady using a walker? Part of the deal is that you couldn't say, "Yes, but I'd take half of that and donate it to charity." This is where you have to decide what's for sale and what isn't. It's not even a friendly question to ask. It seems like a high-horse question, a test of the quality of person who's being asked. Like you're trying to trick them. Its a variation of the gross sex4$ question that I don't feel like repeating. My point is, I would not sell RIV for $2M or $100M if I thought there was a good chance that it would be wrecked. It would make me feel like my whole bicycle-professional life was a ruse. So, rather than saying No to $100M, I'd be saying No to wrecking Rivendell, because that's what it would amount to.
- I want us to get the V-brake and a front derailer or two, and another rear derailer (OM-2!) that shifts to 42t. I want us to be 100 percent independent of the big brands of bicycle/car parts out there. I want to put on blinders and keep them on and never hold a wet finger to the wind.
- I'd kind of like to fish 60 days a year. I'm tying pretty good flies these days, and I like my style of tying and of fishing. It's kind of counter-culture, and I'm not saying it's better, but it is good for me.
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Tarrifs again
I still think they're temporary. Trump has to stick it out a bit so he doesn't look weak or non-committal or whatever else he doesn't want to look like. When even HE has to acknowledge that Ruth and Harold aren't going to start making blue jeans and bicycles again, he'll back off.
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I am so arrogant. I wish I could advise Campagnolo and Shimano. I wish I could interview Shimano's engineers from the late '80s to mid-'90s.
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pencil
The big deal in 1896 wasn't the introduction of Blue Tip matches; it was the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that made segregation legal.
Pencil
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I am famous in our bubble here for not giving a proverbial flying fig about matchy-matchy left and right side bar tape or grips. I thought it was odd or bad or sad that I didn't, anymore, have one bike with drops, so James put these on my prototype Roaduno, and I said I'd take care of the grips/tape myself, and I used tape stubbs and wool grip remnants and a few rubber bands. I am not proud or ashamed of them. I'm not trying to say "be as cool as I am with funky bars." I just wanted a quick, no-fuss, asymmetrical and functional/comfortable solution, and somewhere in my youth and childhood I must've done something good, because it sure came out great. Note the Silver2 shifter mounted for front shifting.
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Here are two things from our 2006 catalog:
1.
2. And here's a thing on brakes
Note that we have the same telephone number.
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Attention fly-tyers. The next several photos SHOULD blow your mind. From the books of Roberto Mesorri, of Italy. Non-fly tyers, excuse the diversion.
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The pouch will be available when the cobbler has made 100. So far, 37.
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Big Jim from Scotland video. I don't know what to make of this 7-minute video.
I know what what driving his adventures, though, and I suspect Annie either knew he was coming and skedaddled, or was hiding.
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We had a nice ride with Blue Lug people. Maybe Will will write about it. Film not yet developed. On Mt. Tam.
Wakako, James behind.
Riders: Wakako, Shammy, Soh, Samba, Sabu, Calvin, James, Antonio, me, Will, Dan, and Roman had time for half of it.
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I'm pretty excited, relatively speaking, about the silk fly line I got from France. A normal modern plastic line costs $70 to $140. This one, $160...but silk lines can last 50 years. They require some maintenance, and as we all know, NO MAINTENANCE REQUIRED, and MAX CONVENIENCE is 80 percent of any product's success in the market. The maintenance is easy--I have another silk line, so I know from experience---but this is another style, and it'll be good.
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