Lots of stuff going on in this one. Take a few days, read it segmentally.
This came up the other day: They don't allow songs like this to be pop hits anymore. Will (b.1988) had never heard of it, and he generally does well with the old ones. Or is that Vince? Anyway, this was far out there even for the late '60s or early '70s or whenever it was. It drove me nuts (I didn't like it) when it was current, but a NYT word game puzzle reminded me of it, and I really like it now.
Only a dozen or so people notified me that Rolf Harris, who sang Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport -- another song the kind they don't do no more-- has had some problems lately.
Only related to that some, and keep in mind that I hate any kind of people sexual abuse 10x more than anybody reading this does (to make a point), this column in today's NYT is worth reading for anybody.
Today was a terrific day for me here. There was a technical challenge-problem with the Silver2 shifter that Vince and Mark figured out. Not the shifter, but the mount. Anyway, big burden lifted.
It's hottest here in the late afternoons, and we've been working in 95-98 degree heat, so Mark thought hey what about new summer hours, like California time 7:30 to 3:30? But UPS pix up at 4, so...well, not everybody'd need the same exact hours. We're thinking on it.
Maynard, do you read this? Contact me if you do.
Darryl S.--same thing, OK?
Ken Bechtol?
(Sorry about that.)
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HERE'S a thing about carbon. The article, says somewhere that some carbon can be even tougher than steel. "Tough" in the vocabulary of materials science is a material's ability to resist crack propagation. Like, cracks in glass tend to grow fast, but cracks in wood or lead or putty don't. Carbon isn't tough, and there may be some ways of making frames and forks that are less likely to fail than other carbon frames and forks, carbon is still is not tough.
Metals can fail, too, but they don't fail as suddenly or as often.
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When I was in sixth grade it came out that one of the other 6th graders in the class, Randy Wilson, well, the rumors were that his family invented white-out or liquid paper or something, and that explained (to us) why his clothes were always so good. But then I read this, expecting and hoping to see the name Wilson in there.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/obituaries/bette-nesmith-graham-liquid-paper.html
The Times is doing some retroactive obituaries of women who did neat stuff and didn't get a proper obituary when they died. I think this is one of them. There's a rock-and-roll component to it, too. As obituaries go (I don't regularly read them, so I'm not an expert)--I BET it's one of the more interesting.
In the Sunday paper there was this story that, the only reason I read it, since I don't usually read the Arts & Leisure section, is -- it was on the cover of the section and I liked the lamp.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/arts/hannah-gadsby-comedy-nanette.html
If you want to see the movie of it, it's right here.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80233611
I'm apparently late to the party, but it's still good. I bet there are few adult gay women who have NOT seen it, but if you're one or know one, get on it. It's more important, I'm sure it's more important for non-gay males to see it, and one famous comedian (formerly comedienne) said everybody in the universe should see it. In the broadest sense, it's stand-up comedy, but if it's that, it's a new kind. It's only an hour.
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LOTS of recent hubub here with the Silver2 shifter. I don't know still when it'll be ready. There are really good alternatives to it now. The stock (as of the last year) CLEM shifters are that. You get a SunRace thumby on the left and a MicroShift on the right, and you're all set.
So on one hand, the S2 shifter is having its thunder stolen already, and on the other, it's still going to be a satisfying contribution to have had a hand in, and especially now. Most riders want automatic pushbutton perfect shifts and would rather gripe about the mechanism in the event of a mis-shift, than to balance the spinning plates on top of the sticks themselves, and that's how they see it, but it's so easy.
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Will finally got his Big Rosco assembled. He'll post the pix on the BLUG soon, I'm sure,
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About 24 of you have responded that you're interested in the Bosco Bebe bike, the purpose-designed and built Ultimate Tot Carrier of the Universe. Of those 24, I'm guessing 8 will end up getting one. We'll get samples, try them out on Dave's Li'l Hank, and see where it goes. If you're new to this project, go back two or three BLAHG posts and get the information.
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By Sept 10 we'll have sample NEW MTN BIKE frames. We'll assemble them and ride them and take one to the InterBike trade show and show it. Then they'll be around here for locals to pedal o the local hills.
We won't submit it to magazines for review. Their standard isn't ours. Almost all mountain bikes are designed for racing, not for traveling. Well, traveling OK, but racing is traveling at faster than practical speeds. Racers and the Racing industry like to say, "Let us develop and shape the future of bikes, let us test what works, and then let the stuff we thumbs-up trickle down to everybody else, you're welcome." And "racing improves the breed." At some point in the distant past it worked kind of like that sometimes, but as racing became more radical and bike makers got into an arms race, racing bikes have become more extreme and less relevant to travelers, and our mtn bike is 100 percent for travelers.
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I am just so happy with everything about this bike and around it. I like its social statement. I like the timing, the graphics, the likely colors and how they stack up against others, and the design seems really, really good. It's not radical for us, so we have reason to expect it'll work. It's one of the most-fun things in a long time. I really want people to like it, but the real world out there won't make any good stink about it, and will wrap it up as a retro bike, and that'll be so far wrong.
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ETHIOPIAN SHOE UPDATE:
OK so it takes a while to get them. So--send me pic of your shoes by --you'll have them by August 22, so make it then. For the $20.
I'll post mine when I get them.
This is the LINK that tells the Abyssinian shoe story.
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Many of you remember the Hail Mary cry of several months ago. It seems like three but it must have been four. We've been really lucky and grateful and careful. Last night we dontated $1,000 to a good local cause that's one of those. Richmond, California has never lived up to its name. The native Americans lived there way back (not too far back), and it's right near the bay and they'd lived there for 14,500 years or so and ate a lot of shellfish and, not wanting to cut their feet or moccasins on the sharp shells, they told everybody to put them over here, let's make a mound of them. Here's the info right of the InterNet:
There is, in fact, a Shellmound Street or Avenue. There used to be a freeway exist for it, commemorating where it used to be.
There are other Richmonds in the country, but we've got the most...hardscrabble one, I bet. First they screwed the Native Americans and made some white guys rich, but as long as I've been alive it's always been (as T.S. Eliot said, not about Richmond, but it fits) one of those "muttering retreats / of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / with sawdust restaurants with oyster shells." <--a reference to the shellfish husks!
In the summer of 1975 I worked at the Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall—you may know it as "Juvie"! — and half of the kids in there were from Richmond. Years later I was watching the news on TV and saw one of "my" kids from Richmond jump out of his chair and leap up at the judge. He was the most heavily muscled 15-year old I'd ever seen back then, with Louis Armstrong blowing hard on the trumpet eyes even when he was trying to relax, but he must have been 22 when he jumped the judge. I think the point is made now, about Richmond. It IS coming along now, getting to be way less scary. They're trying so hard, and good for the City of Richmond.
Bicycle-related: It's never been a town you'd ride through, and it has a large African American population that has never—never ever—had good access to bicycles or been welcomed into our sport. Yes, I know about Major Taylor—more than you do, unless your name is Andrew Ritchie—but bicycles and black peoples have never really meshed (white people are to blame, sorry to say) but there's this ray of hope in Richmond:
We've already donated to it, and we'd like to ask you to, too, and not to devalue at all your humanitarian efforts OR to use the cause to jack up our business, but just to help them. But we can make it fun, too, so if you go the the Dirt World GoFundMe page, right HERE.
...and donate $50 and sign your name and zip code and RBW to it so we know, we'll give you $30 in store credit.FOr instance Russ Harrison-Jones 80298 RBW.
So your $50 contribution costs you $20, assuming you'll ever buy something from us again.
Let's see if the groovy and benevolent and generous BLAHG-reading RBW crowd can fill the gap from where it is now to the goal. By August 15. Then we'll tally and issue the credits.
You can donate any amount, and we'll credit you 60 percent of it, but a meek plea?--spend at least twice your credit, to lessen the financial burden to us, one of your favorite bike places. You don't have to, but just consider that in it all. OK, Thanks.
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