No. 18 Latest October

No. 18 Latest October

 

 

 A couple of BLAHGS ago I showed the backside of a Patagonia shorts label, which read: VOTE THE ASSHOLES OUT. Asked for anagrams. These came in. Some violate the "use all the letters and don't add any" rule, but 95 percent are fine. Some are fantastic.

The PANEL INTERNATIONALE of EXPERIENCED JUDGES of ANAGRAMS (PIEJA) will vote on these pretty soon, but I thought it'd be good to show you-all all of the entries. Prizes of minor consequence will be awarded. Thanks to all who entered. 

STEVE-OH LOST AT HOUSE
EVE LOST HOST AT HOUSE
HOUSE TO HOST LAST EVE
HUE HEATS LOTS O' STOVES
VOLT HUE HEATS TOES SO
TAUVE LESOTHO'S ETHOS
SETH OSTAUVE LESOTHO
SEE SOHO VAT LUT ETHOS
SEE THE VAULT SHOOT SO
STOUT SLAVE SHOO THEE
O, SHH ! SEE STU EVAL TOO ?
SETH HAUVEL. TOSSE, TOO
EVE STOULT —   SHE'S A HOOT
U SHOVEL TAHOE'S TOTES
ELVES HUSH AT TOES, TOO
SHUSH, VETO E-TALES, TOO
O, THE LAST VESTOUS HOE
O, SHE VALUES TOTES THO
VALUES ETHOS SET HOOT
ETHOS VALUES TOES THO
THE SOOTLESS OVUTHEA
THE HOOVES OUT TESLAS
THE LOVE SHOUT TO ESSA
THEA LOVES TOUT SHOES
TEA SET HOUSE UHS LOOT
HOT ASS VETO THE SOULE
SOULESS HATE TEVO THO
LESS HATE SOOTHE UVOT
SOOTHE THEE VAST SOUL
LET'S SOOTHE SOUTH EVA
SOOTHE VAST LEE SOUTH
THE VAST SOUTH SOO LEE
THOU SEE THAT VOLE SOS
THEE SHOUT SO AT VOLES
SHOUT OLEE AT VOSH SET
SHOUT OLE! AT EVA'S HOT SET
A HOSTESS' VEE TOOL HUT
VEE SHOUET HOSTS A LOT
TOOT ! LET'S HAVE HOUSES
HO ! HAUTE VESSELS TOOT
VEST TOOLS HEAT HOUSE
HOUSE HEATS TOOL VEST
USE O' SEE VAST HOT HOLT
EVA USES THE HOT TOOLS
THE SEOUL TOOTH VASES
O, OH ! SUTTEE VALSES THO
OH, SHOOT ! SUTTEE VALSE
OO ! VELO TESHUTTE SASH
TESS VOULE ASH TOOTH
TESS ASHLEE VOUTOOTH
TESS HAULS V.O. HEET TOO
TOOTHLESS HEAVES OUT
US HAS THE VOTE TO LOSE
OLE HEAT, SHOUTS STOVE
THE AUTO SHOVELS TOES
HE SCOT LEAST UH STOVE
HE SOOTHE US STAT, LOVE
SUE LOVES TATTOOS, HEH
UH, SEAT TOOT EH, LOVES
SET SOUL HOOT. SHE A VET
UH, SAVE TESTES LOOT, OH?
UH OH. SAVE TESTES LOOT
SO, TO THOSE UTAH ELVES
LEAH SHOUTS, TOO, STEVE
HOOT HOUSE TEAL VESTS
HOE AS THE STOUT VOLES
SHE HOVE SALT, TOES OUT
HAVE TO TOSS THE LOUSE
THEA'S VETO SHOUTS OLE !
LOVE THE ASS, E.T.! SHOOT, U !
THESE, TOO SHOUT, "SALVE!"              i didn't mean to draw attention, can't get out of it. tried something, didn't work. But I DO like this one a lot.
THESE TOO SHOUT "SLAVE!"
U TOO, SHOT THESE SLAVE
"LEAVE US TOO!" THE SHOTS
THE SHOUT: "SLAVES TOO!" — E.
THE SLAVES SHOUT, TOO. —E.
THOU SHALT! TOSS OVEEE…
THOU SHALT SEE, SO VOTE!
SHE HOT AS STOUT LOVE. — E.
STOUT ASS! HOT LOVE! EEH
STOUT LOVE! HOTT ASS! HEE!
SO. HE SHAT STOUT. LOVE, E.
SOUSE: HE SHAT TO LOVE. —T.
TO SOUSE: HE SHAT LOVE, T.
O, THOS SEES…SHALT VOTE.
S0…SEE? THOU SHALT VOTE
THOU LOVES! HE'S TOAST!
SALVE: SHOUT "ETHOS!" T.E.A.
"LEAVE, SOT!" SHUT. SOOTHE…
SHUSH! LEAVE! TOTES, TOO…
"LEAVE THE…. '(SHOTS)'   US TOO?!..."
"LEAVE SET?" SHOUTS "HOOT!"
HOT TOES LEAVE SHOUTS
TOAST: "O, SHE LOVE YOU, SETH!"
SHOO, U! THE ASSET? LOVE. T.
SHOOT, U ASS! LOVE, THE E.T.
LOVE THE ASS, E.T.! SHOOT, U !
HE LOST U, TO SHARE TOES
TO HAVE TOES, SHE LOST U
LOST? SEE? HAVE TO SHOUT!
HAVE TO LOSE? SET. SHOUT!
LOSE TO HAVE. SET? SHOUT!
SET TO HAVE. SHOUT: LOSE!
HAVE TO SHUT….LOSE TOES.
LOST TOES HAVE HOT USE.
U LOVE THE ASS! SHOOT! E.T.
TOUT SASS! LOVE, THE HOE
TOUT ASS! LOVE, THE SHOE
TOUT THE SHOE, LOVE! (ASS!)
TO: T.T./HE LOVES HOE ASS
TO: T.T./HE LOVES U AS SHOE
TOUT THE SHOES AS LOVE
LOVE AS THE STOUT SHOE
THE STOUT ASS HOE LOVE
THE SHOE! STOUT AS LOVE!
TOSS! OUST! LEAVE! — THEO H.
TO TOSS HE: "OUST! LEAVE!" —H.
TO SAVE: TOSS HE OUT! E.H.L.
HEAVE, TO TOSS LOUSE. T.H.
OH, EVE! TOSS THAT LOUSE!
SO, STEVE…OH? THAT LOUSE!
"THAT HOUSE! SOO STEVE!" —L.
TOSS TO LEAV' THE HOUSE!
TO ELATE: TOSS HOUSE. —V.H.
O SHUSH!...VOTES TO LATE
TOES! SHORE THAT LOUSE!
TOAST! SHORE THE LOUSE !
SHOOT! STAVE THE LOUSE!
HOUSES TO SAVE THE LOT.
HE LOOTS! SAVE HOUSE! —T.T.
HE LOOTS! SAVE THE U.S. —O.T.
HE LOOTS TO "SAVE" THE U.S.
O, TO SAVE THE U.S., HE LOST
UH-OH, TV SET LEASES, TOO?
SO, THE TV ATE US HOLES
HE ASS. VOTE OUT. HE LOST.
OOH! THE TV EATS U SOLES !
HE LOST. HE ASS. VOTE OUT.
OUTVOTE THE ASSHOLES
SOS LEAH, SHOUT TO SEE TV
SEE TV: LEAH TO SHOUT SOS
I'VE LOST THE ASHES, TOO?
SO SHOUT TASTEE HOVEL !
TOE SOULS SHOVE HEAT
SOOTH HASSEL, TOUT EVE
UHOO! VAST STEES HOTEL
LAST EVE TO THO SHOES
HE VETOES STOUT HALOS
O! OVAL TEETH: SHE TOSS U
O SHOUT: VETOETH SALES !
SHOVEL THOTS EASE OUT
SHATTLE HOUS STOVE
SHUSHES VOTES…TOO LATE!
SHE VOTES PATE. US, TOO.
HE VOTES. US: "TOO LATE! SH…."
SOO…HE VOTES LATE, THUS…
SHE ATE HOT TO LOVE SUS
SO. THESE…O HATE! O LUST! — V
OO HATE! THUS, LOVE!...TESS.
O HATE! O LUST! SHE VOTES.
O HATE! O LOVE! SHE'S US. T.T.
LOOT HOES HAVE TO LOSE. T.
THOSE LOST HAVE TO USE.
THESE HAVE LOST US, TOO…
O, THESE HAVE LOST TO US!
THOSE LOST HEAVE TO US.
TO HOST: LEAVE US THOSE!
TO THE HOOD: LEAVE US SO!
OUST THE HOOT! SO, LEAVE!
O, TOSS THE HOSE! LEAVE U!
A STOVE LOOTS THE HUES
O! TOTS SHAVE THE LOUSE !
TOUTS AT HOOVES' HEELS !
THAT SOOTHES EVE'S SOUL
O, AS HE LOVEST THOU, TOES!
HE USES TATTOO SHOVEL
THOSE VELOS, TOAST HUE
OUT-SHOOT THESE SALVES
A SHEET LOVES TO SHOUT
TULE TOTES SAVE HO-HOS
E.V. TOOTH SLEUTH OASES
VETO, O USELESS HOT HAT!
SO, TO SAVE THE TREES, ETHEL, SHOUT! (in violation, but sounds good)
OTHELO TOUTS E-SHAVES (violation, but too bad

THOSE LOVE TEAS SHOUT
TEAL TOES SHOUT SHOVE
TOESHOES HATE SOUL TV
OUTLAST THESE HOOVES
HE SHOVELS STATUES, TOO
HEELS AVE SHOOTOUT ST.
ELVES HATE SHOOTOUTS

HOT STEEL SHAVES YOU, TOO
SUV'S TASTEE HOOT HOLE

SLOTH VETOES HOUSE SEAT
SHE OUTVOTES SEA SLOTH
SEA SLOTH STOVE OUT, EH ?

LOVE SHOUTS AT THEE----SO?
ET TU, EVE'S LOST HOO HAS
O LET US SAVE THE HOOTS
LEAVES OUT THE SHOOTS
LUST ATE THOSE HOOVES
OH THESE TOOTS' VALUES !
TUT SHAVES LOOSE THEO
HOT SHOT VELEETO SAUS
LOVE HAST THE TOOSUES
LOVE HATES TOOTH USES
THE HOSSES VALUE OTTO
TOOSEE HAVE TO SLUSH
OUTHOOVE THESE SALTS !!  (horse riders being chased by sailors)

 

There are so many good ones. I don't see how the PIEJA can pick any one single winner.

Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and...the other one. I'll google.. I think it's Florence Ballard, judging by the cameras. 

Things are inching along, but everything is uncertain. Except, you can certainly buy $2 contributions to this, if you like. F is for fund.

On a pencil note, I noticed that BSNYC has a greater collection of Wald pencils than I do, and in more colors.

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Michael Mann was on a ride and noticed this platypus cloud. Forgive the longer than normal tail. Try to beat that, cloudwise. Michael sez:

I live in Portland and last Friday I was up on Powell Butte, which involved 8 pre-dawn miles of multi-use path, streets, gravel road, and single-track, and brewed some coffee and got this photo at sunrise over Mount Hood. I posted the pics on IG. And later than that Rob Perks (in Ventura) pointed out in a comment "hey, looks like a platypus."

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Tomorrow we get in Sam Hillbornes. Today we got a NITTO shipment. I don't know what's happening with our MUSA derailers, but people are spending time on them, so I assume something. UPdate when there's something to say.

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I want to thank somebody for sending me this link. It's still your favorite song, 44 years later? I think we were in a diner in Ohio when you told me that. I can see how it could still be your favorite. It hasn't lost anything, that's for sure. Thank you, yes. I didn't know I was on your radar...and that you read this BLAHG. I wrote to you a long time ago and told you I'd send you a bike. We're kind of low right now, and maybe you don't ride or don't want one. I can write this, because I'm not identifying you...so you can't get mad.

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 We are having the worst week we've had in close to 18 years, and I don't know why. Not the BRP/BRF thing, I assume. Will is putting up an email update, which may help. Sams are due tomorrow. I'm going to sell two personal bikes that I love, AS IS and cheap. They come with the stickers on them. 

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Grumping about about tech, sorry...but it's kind of my schtick isn't it?
Campagnolo just introduced, or is about to introduce, a 13-speed group for gravel bikes.
https://blog.3t.bike/2020/09/15437/campagnolo-13-speed-ekar-groupset/
I recently got my best time in two years on a 7:00 to 7:50 climb (that’s minutes) riding an Appaloosa with the chain on the 21t cog in back, and I shifted only the front, a 44x34x24 triple. I did it in 7:04, five seconds slower than my all time best, 6:59, of at least 150 timed ascents. I was only 62 for that 6:59, though. THAT was on a single-speeded Roadini 61, and I ride a 54 in that bike…and I had the extra benefit of riding it with Dan, who started faster than I do but crapped out a bit about halfway.  The point is, it is hard for me to get thrilled about a 13-speed cassette. STOP.
Rim brakes are becoming so rare that it’s hard for us to find 135mm-spaced rear hubs that won’t have disc mounts.
The definition of “bicycle” now includes things with motors, and bike advocacy groups are fighting hard to make them legal wherever bikes can go, using gramps and grannie as battering rams. It’s a human-centric view of the world, the idea that we have a right to go anywhere technology can take us, which of course reminds me of this Bob Dylan lyric:
Man thinks ’cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please
And if things don’t change soon, he will
Oh, man has invented his doom
First step was touching the moon
Now, there’s a woman on my block
She just sit there as the night grows still
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?
I’m a little uncomfortable with the anti-moonshot sentiment, but not THAT uncomfortable with it. I am fascinated by ye olde cosmos and I read a lot about them, must have 35 books about them and all that. And I like the fact that this photo was taken with a Hasselblad either while standing on ze moon, or flying just above it. The foreground is the moon, in other words:
Swedish manual film cameras on the moon are cool. 
I think there ought to be a limit to what we bring to the woods. I have tons of mixed feelings about everything. Using the wilderness as your personal gym: Mixed feelings. Wearing gym clothes and logo-clothes in the wilderness., no mixed feelings, totally against it. GT Bicycles in the ’90s renting Macchu Picchu for an ad shoot—against it and aghast that it happened. 
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The current MTB vibe in the Patagonia site and catalog, using carbon-sus bikes and throwing up dust in far-off countries somewhere near 24,000-foot mountains. What's being battled, what's being conquered, and with what kind of tools? It's bad modeling. They're shredding, not traveling. Whatever, I know, there are worse things happening in the world, but in THIS world bikes and how we ride them matter, and manufacturers ought to be able to see this stuff.
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I’m using “wilderness” super loosely—incorrectily loosely— as anywhere there are no cars or billboards and people go there to detox. I don't put hiking boots in the same category as mountain bikes, or, actually...I don't put Hillibikes in the same category as modern mtn bikes. I draw squiggly lines and you can draw yours. Don't draw a big ol' huge wide circle and say it's all the same, tho.
One out of three “bikes” I see on local trails have motors. 
Disc brakes are leading to the ending of quick-release hubs.
Nobody wants to buy something that’ll be obsolete. We don’t want to make stuff like that, either. We do the stuff that’s as backwards compatible as possible, and is less “group-dependent” as possible. It’s the stuff that is more future-safe than any new-tech stuff.
Convenience is an issue. Most people would like to shift by thinking or blinking, and that is the way it’s going. Seriously…but within ten years there’ll be a way to hook your brain up to your bike, so you can shift by thought. Part of riding a bike is operating it, and every bicycle made from 1972 onward has been plenty user-friendly—although, I gotta say, I don’t love downtube shifters. But what came before them?—seat-stay-mounted shifters that required you to loosen the rear wheel and pedal backwards to shift. Google “Campagnolo Cambio Corsa.” Here are two. They make it seem easy. No doubt they get easier after the hundredth shift of the day, but On a scale from one to ten, where 1 is indexing and 3 is friction shifting, these are a solid 10.The shifter most likely to keep your grampa and grannie off a bike. This video makes it look easy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlbBCYA82uE 

 

 Wifi beats dial-up, of course, but riding a bicycle is still, at its best and most basic, a manual task. The best manual parts are reasonably ergonomic to access and to use, but at some point they cross a line, and beyond that line is where they start enabling your lazy-lust, and then you start looking askance at pocket knives that you can't open in a second with one hand, because so often you have to, right?
Don’t require so much of your bike that you resent having to learn how to operate it, like easing off the pedals before you shift. The goal of bicycle technology shouldn't be to remove you from interacting with the bike, to make sure that you don't ever have to suffer mis-shifts while you learn to operate your bike, but that's exactly how Shimano, SRAM, and Campagnolo see it. It's how lots of manufacturers of lots of things that aren't bike things see, it, and they and a lot of the media that depends on their advertising and the news it creates...well, that's their oxygen. If you don't go along, you're quaintly "retro," or a grump. Like, you can't like the alternative without BEING a negative adjective or noun, or an adverb+noun. They see it as "personality" and charming and all that. ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz...., I know. 
Here’s a solid bike foundation, stuff you’ll never hate and stuff that’ll always be good.
Shifters: Friction or Friction-with-Index option
Casette: 9sp. Get the high and low you need and fill in gaps with cadence and muscle.  You can do that with 8sp, too, but it's harder to get certain highs and lows with 8sp.
Chain: 9sp. In friction, you can use it with an 8sp cassette. Maybe even better than an 8sp chain.
Front derailer: Any clamp on style, so you can go up and down with chainrings.
Rear derailer: Any, period. Make sure it shift in and out far enough for your chainline. 
Brakes: On the rim, the biggest rotors in the kingdom of bikes.
Rims: in order of skinny to wide: Velocity Dyad (24mm). Alex DM-18 (24.7mm). Velocity Atlas (25.4mm). Velocity Cliff Hanger (30mm). Alex DM24 (31.5mm). In the spring, Alex is coming out with some neat rims between 26 and 30mm. We have them on order. We’re stocking up on the ultra-good stuff.
Tires: Road tires no smaller than 32mm. All-around tires, 40 to 50mm. Trail tires, 52 to 65mm. Don’t avoid heavier tires with tougher sidewalls.
Pedals: Double-sided platform style.
Crank: For most riding, a square taper. It’s easy to get bottom brackets for it, it always works. They’re easy. Two-piece cranks are excellent, too, but they are no better.
Stems: Quill style is easiest. For big riders and harsh trail rides, clamp-on stems for threadless steerers are fine.
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The Queen's Gambit is a book we used to sell, and now it's one of those miniseries things, and is worth watching.  It's about chess, which I don't play, because you have no idea what my life is like outside of work here, but there's no time. Anyway, the movie is really good even if you're a chessophobe, which I am not. 

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REMEMBER THIS SONG? No. 3 for 1967, which was a big music year.

Here's some background.  This will lead to something, hang in there. Scroll down after you've seen the likes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We're going to do a T-shirt based on this and the platypus. These are the elements, but not the final art:

But then there's this, after exhaustive market surveys:

 If YOU are interested, let me know.  info@rivbike.com with BGPLAT in the subject field. Or something close. Anything with BG or PLAT, whatever. It won't get lost amid anything. I'm going to order the minimum amount. All profit will go to le fund. THAT one. This one:

See you.

 

 

 

 

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