DECEMBER BLAHG

 

We were and are still hoping to find the woman in the picture, or a relative. It seems to be an early '60s or late '50's or at latest mid-'60s hair-do. A "semi-bee hive," I believe they called it or should have. She looks like late high school, which means she'd be in her mid-'70s to mid-'80s by now, if still living. So all of you AI supersleuths out there in television land, get a move on, and the first one who definitively traces her or her family down wins $3000 cash or a whole bike (we choose). This picture was purchased for the frame in a Bay Area thrift store in about 2020. My nephew is a painter and bought it for the frame, and I said don't wreck the picture (paint over a photograph) just to get the frame--give me the whole thing, and he did, because we have that kind of relationship.

UPDATE: Done, we know all about her now; or at least a lot.

 

 

This Trevor Jarvis is clearly, CLEARLY a British frame. Odd as it is, there are undeniable clues. We had a crank like that in the old days. It might be Italian. The chainrings are "a new one on me." 

Flying Gate is an interesting model name, also British.

"Where are we riding today? I want to ride the right bike for it."

"The Pub-and-Moor loop."

"Okay, thanks, perfect for my 'Gate'."

Interesting truss-action here. Trusses, bicycle frames, bridges, houses, all buildings, I don 't know. Too much to think about.  We used to have a new in box bent crank like that, but I think we sold it at a garage sale. This frame has four triangles where there are usually two. The front one counts as one, even though...the head tube makes it not.

Some other KINDS of trusses, actually known:

As anybody who has ever been in a car with me and driving over a truss bridge, I talk the whole way about how great they are, how fascinated I am by them...

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Old photos from The Atlantic archive. KInda fun even tho no bicycle content.

DON'T OPEN THE LINK if you hate great black and white photographs, the past, and science and history.

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A fellow on etsy is selling lots of Bridgestone stuff. I've got most of it and am not in the buying mood, but some of it is mildly interesting only maybe.

This is a Bridgestone-generated desperation plea for dealer support in 1993.

The "dealer support" never happened. Here and there maybe spotty support, but things were tough. The exchange rate made it impossible for Bridgestone Cycle (U.S.A.), Inc. (our official name) to make money AND--believe it or not, I swear to god, dealers in general didn't like our stuff and were overloaded with Specialized etc, and would take more Bstones only if we gave them 60-to-90 days to pay...and dealers typically were late with payments, so even the past due bills would be "renogotiated" to get ANY payment from them. This is a really broad brush story. REALLY broad brush...and ultimately it led to our closing and Rivendell. 

And below is a mailing sent in November, before our first sales on January 4, 1995. It was several pages, but this is the intro.

Of the 3,900 who were sent this, 1,300 subscribed, and we had a business. Me and Spencer and somebody to keep the books.

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Unbeknowngst to everybody except the 205 people who are reading this, we have been having a grand old tyme learning neutrino-sized things about the interplay of rear derailer pulley size and chain wrap.

What's chain wrap? The rear derailer's capacity to tension the chain, and it can be compared to your ability to stretch an elastic cord: If your own wingspan (determined by the width of your torso and the length of your fully outstretched and horizontal arms) is 70 inches (5ft 10in.), and you're given a stretchy cord that's 7 feet, you can grab the ends and stretch your arms as much as possible, but your wingspan is too short, or the stretchy cord is too long, it's all the same--it won't work. A tall basketball player with a 7ft+ wingspan could tension it, and you could tension a cord that's 5ft 10 in. Or you could tension 5ft 10in of the 7ft+ rope, but then you'd have some dangling ends.  It's like that.

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The current state of the art in suspension forks:

Shown with sensors that measure its shock-absorbing powers.

On the bike it's much "cleaner":

No doubt it's effective. It's for another kind of bicycle riding, that's all. Still, Yikes.

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This suggests there's a crash around the bend, which may or may not be true, but the sign could be written a few other ways and been ... better.

I go down this road at least once a month, and sometimes once a week. I'm going to carry a couple of fresh, chisel-tipped industrial Sharpies with me, or maybe some black nail polish (I don't have a secret life, but I do have black nail polish for assorted art projects). I wonder who it'll make mad.

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Does anybody really like Christmas music, especially when sung by the classic American crooners? If I may, No. So why do they play it in stores? I don't ever again need to hear Bing singing White Christmas, or Sammy Davis Jr singing this.  I'm guessing my clues will keep you from clicking on it. It is...hard to get thru. As is Dean singing this.

This the only version of any Christmas song I like, and a columnist in the NYT recently said it was the worst Christmas song ever. I play it every Christmas. It's not great, but at least it's not the normal fare, and that alone gives it an advantage. It's like Bob is trying to sing it as fast as possible. So much better than Bing dragging one out as long as possible.

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One of the ways I KIND of drive my wife nuts is finding "interesting" slogans, advice, announcements, explanations--etc--on signs, billboards, quotations wherever, and then harping on them rather than just moving on. 

This one, fine, but used as it was as a kind of banner teaser to get you to read this person's story seemed to highlight it too much, as though it itself was the main takeaway and life lesson. It's OK, but just a little overblown, or something. I think --OK just do it, don't announce it. 

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Neat art here.

it's a farm bird.

Linoleum isn't the heinous cheapskate alternative to marble or tile that you've been hoodwinked into believing it is. It's made from flax, the same stuff linen is made from (lin/lin). As I recall from my deep well of generally useless knowledge, it used to be made by hanging some kind of goopy, drippy flax-derived stuff from several stories up on NYC buildings. And it is really amazing stuff, that linoleum. For those of you who walk around thinking that linoleum is cheap and boring, please read this and feel the enlightenment:

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I found out about this from BSNYC blog. It is inevitable. It will be marketed as a kind of salvation for people who can't walk well, or fast enough to keep up with their families, but teenagers will be the big market.

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Most of you who are not archaeologists and / or anthropologists can look at this:

...and immediately feel good about your all-around knowledge as you tell yourself, "Ah yes, the Easter Island heads. Big and mysterious, they are." And then, continuing this autobiographical story, you might think, "One day, maybe when I'm bedridden and really old, I should read more about them; but for now I'll just put them aside. I can come back any time I want, but my immediate priorities must take precedent."

I'm here to say stop the nonsense and read this.

I will too, tonite. Those stone heads are fascinating, aren't they? We have AI and IG and next-day PRIME delivery, but those islanders made those heads. By the time you read this I will have read the story, so...catch up to me.

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You know what ONE sign of being rich enough is? Being able to give $100 to a stranger who seems to be a likely candidate. I'm not talking about every day, but once a year (or according to your situation). It's risky because you might offend somebody who thinks you're judging them by their gender or color or age or how they're dressed. But you probably won't be offering it to anybody in a Patagonia Puffy or a Member's Only jacket. Also, the amount has to surmount the insult risk. Finding a dollar on the ground is cool, but being handed a dollar by a stranger (when he or she is not panhandling) is not cool. Five dollars, still "not cool." Better, but just risky, and limited in how much it can buy. It's kind of like saying, "Here—go to McDonalds, you'll probably love it."

Here's a neat book:

Universal Basic Income is a thing, and controversial, but the subtitle here makes it sound more far-out than it is. 

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Sam Mack from our dealer in Evanston contacted me about the frame below, a frame he "came into" or upon, and wanted to know its history. This kind of thing happens a lot, most of the times with Bridgestones, other times when somebody buys a used Bstone or Rivendell and doesn't get the historical details from the seller, and in many cases the seller isn't the original buyer anyway, so good luck anyway.  This frame stood out to me because (after showing me more of it) I could tell it was made in 1998 by Joe Starck, whose whereabouts now I don't know, but he was a great person and a framebuilder-craftsman-Jimmy Carter fan all in one. Sam said he was going to build it up, and I kind of wanted to have it here, not that we have room. So I bartered with him and here it is, and we'll build it up. It was a custom for somebody. 

Quick phone-snaps of the frame and details.

The lugs were designed (and prototypes made) by Richard Sachs for a 1995 model Bstone that never happened. We had them cast and used them for some early frames.

Rider's view of top lug.

Seat lug. The wave in the seat stay plug, I think, stands for Waterford, who supplied our plugs until we got our own. The seat binder was designed for a Campagnolo binder bolt...but it had minor problems. If you way overtightened the bolt, the "ears" would bend. Our current seat lugs and ears prevent that.

Detail of brake bridge. We don't "do" the diamonds with windows anymore. We COULD, but they add another two layers of tediousness to the build without offering any advantage, and while the same could be said of a couple of other details that we include, this is one that I am not exactly thrilled to wipe out, but I wipe it out without any smidgen of guilt or sell-out feelings.

Our original custom head badge, attached by Joe Bell with self-tapping screws. It's cloissoné. 

I sketched out on paper in about honestly a minute, and then we had it cast.  It's for 24mm round fork blades. Classic track bikes have 22mm round blades. The idea of roundness is that they're equally stiff in all directions, which may matter when you have a 190lb track sprinter riding at 32mph around a 36-degree banked track, but that never made total sense to me, because won't the crown limit the dreaded side-flex? Anyway, a normal/classic steel fork starts with a 24mm (outside diameter) tube. The 24mm end destined to be at the fork crown has walls 0.8 to 1.2mm thick (0.9 to 1.0 are the most common). The 24mm end for the dropouts is typically 0.6mm thick. When the tube is reshaped/tapered to shrink the dropout end, the 0.6mm end gets drawn down to 12mm to 14mm, depending on the whims of the tube designer. (We design our own, and use both, depending on the frame). No material disappears, it just gets thicker. So now, the blades may be 1mm thick, same as the upper fatter end. Then the upper end is ovalized, so the 24mm round loses and gains 4mm and becomes 28mm x 20mm. 

We had these 24mm blades only because we bought (more likely traded) for them with Waterford, who used them for chainstays.

This is one of manymanymany aspects of making a steel frame/fork that I find beautiful and fascinating and increases my own appreciation of them. I rarely tell those stories, because I don't know how interested anybody is, and if it's not interesting at all, then it won't just be neutral, it'll be tedious and boring. Anyway, we. had the fork crown cast, and the mold is long gone, and Will would like us to have that crown again. The think is, the round blades cut into sideways tire clearance, and this fork here kind of maxes out at 38mm tire. If we did it again, we'd widen the crown to accept at least a 45mm tire, but then would the proportions get all funky? Maybe maybe not.

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Friend Dan knows all about painting and photography and things like framing and matting, and thought the artist might have included some clues about the woman/girl in the frame, so he offered to excavate and see, and bummer, it didn't.

We hoped to find the artist or model's signature or a date or something, but didn't.

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If you recognize this as a NYer cartoon, right...and whether you do or not you could do worse holiday season viewing than this 90-minute documentary on the magazine.

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Here's something that may or may not go into the next paper catalog, which we're working on now. 

 FRAME AND BICYCLE WEIGHT ARE MISUNDERSTOOD…

 

In the bicycle-shopping world, weight falls into the low-hanging fruit category. Even people who don’t know anything about bicycles know what a pound is. But a pound isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. A one-pound can of beans lifted at arm’s length to shoulder height feels 10x heavier than it feels curled or pressed. A 100-pound table pushed across a deep shag carpet is harder to move than a 200-pound table on casters on a hardwood floor.  Your legs are the strongest muscles you’ve got, so pedaling a bicycle ten feet up a hill (of any steepness), is easier than military-pressing it. Add smooth bearings and momentum into the equation, and it’s clear how misleading it can be to judge a bicycle by lifting it up off the showroom floor.

Getting something to move is harder than keeping it moving. And prepare to have your mind blown: Heavier bikes and heavier wheels maintain their speed better than superlights. Imagine trying to stop a hula-hoop and a car tire, both rolling at you at 25 mph. This doesn’t mean heavier is better or always faster, just that weight is complicated.

Bicycle weight matters most if you have to carry your bike up a three-story walkup. For that, the trick is mostly finding the right technique and a balance point. One DIY addition that will help immensely is taping the lower part of the seat tube to the lower part of the down tube. Use adhesive backed cloth bar tape, duct tape, or whatever you have in the drawer right now. Lift with a straight arm and climb away.

Here's a related chart:

Note that there may be some ethical concerns when selling a 10-year old carbon frame to somebody who isn't aware of carbon's demerits, and it's a good bet that anybody interested in a 10-year old carbon frame falls into that category.

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I have rarely to never been as excited about a bicycle accessory as much as I am about wool grips. They never get sticky or sweaty. They provide diameter and cush and grip. If you can tape over them if you like, but no need to cover the whole thing. You can add rubber bads for more grip. Get fat ones. In hot weather that may help, but most of the time, no.

Plus they're modifiable in length, and easy to install, and are the cheapest, or at least among the cheapest grips you'll find outside of a flea market, and they're the most enviro grips around. You don't even have to kill the sheep to get it. These are made in Michigan. Assorted installation images below. In these images, we show the 4 x 4.5" rectangles being cut to 4 x 4" squares. Keep them longer if you like longer grips, but on swept back bars, if you go with 4-inches and scoot the brake lever and shifter all the way back,  no gaps, you'll maximize the forward-grip space, which..counts for something, too. Anyway, these are "semi-DIY," and if you're that kind of person, you'll find this a piece of cake. Assorted images below. We have these in stock now.

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Finally, this is the last one. A good friend, Tom Franges, died. Another friend and the best writer the bicycle industy has ever had, and former publisher of Bicycle Guide, Ted Costantino (not "constantino") wrote his obituary, pubished in a recent trade magazine. It is worth reading. I am mentioned, but good god, if you think that is why I want you to read it, please don't. Tom was so helpful to me early on. He was great, and you can read about him HERE.

I just found out that Tom liked Bob Jackson (English brand) tricycles, and his wife, Sky, sent me this  photo of him.

Do tricycles. have differentials? I feel like I should know, given my decades of being a non-well-roundedness and all, but I don't. I know tricycles don't corner well, you have to lean over so far to keep from high-siding, and that may have something to do with the rear wheels moving at the same rate even around corners. I'll know the truth before you read this, so no need to explain it to me.

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Wool grips: We're getting kits together, we'll. make it clean, cheap, easy. For January.

 

OK!

G