OCT BLAHG, early this month
I lost the first part of this Blahg, and it was long enough ago that I forget what it was, so I'll just start here, with some "technical stuff." That's one of my furry-gripped bikes up there. I like the cable housing OUTSIDE the grip. There's no drawback, it's easier to change if I need to, and I'm generally against hiding things unless they're really ugly. I'm not saying copy me, I'm just saying it works for me... You may notice that I also like the right BES on the left, and vice versa. If the tension comes loose on a ride, it's easier to snug it up that way. To quote Debbie Boone: It can't be wrong when it feels so right.
This question comes up regularly--will Bar-End Shifters (BES) work on my handlebar? or I just got some and they don't...'dup widdat?
Minimum handlebar inside diameter (ID) for BES: 18.8mm. To measure the inside of your non-drop handlebar, get a metric caliper. There are lots of options. Hi-cache brands include but aren't limited to Mitutoyo and Starrett. There are different styles: Vernier (read the scale, like reading a ruler); dial (like reading a normal watch face); and digital (like you're used to). They cost from $6 to $250. For home occasional use for cheapskates or budget-conscious, get a cheap one and trust it.
Amazon alert: Get one here.
All of our swept-back bars are BES-compatible Joe Blow or other brands probably aren't, but this is where a caliper helps, and as the late, great, and forever quotable Rear Admiral Grace Hopper once said and I've repeated this many times, and continues to be useful:
"One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions." So although it's easy to ask by email or phone, hearing an opinion or a "fact" from somebody else is a lesser grade of knowledge than finding out for yourself. If you doubt this, think about it.
Shimano BES, yes, it works will all of our handlebars, and any drop bar, but if you get a garden-variety mtb-style bar, it probably won't. Well...we know it won't.
Microshift BES. It fits any of our bars.
Below...
in the above image caption, "bit" should be "fit."
Silver2 BES. Also fits all of our bars.
=======
We continue to work on a line of organically grown cotton clothing. You might not believe the hurdles there are. Slight progress.
====
We have many project on the stove, mid- and front-burner. Fun hardware, good stuff.
======
We'll soon have French bicycle tires, made by Hutchinson. I don't in general trust French anything-to-do-with-bicycles, sorry Francophiles, but I have too much experience with them to trust them. There are exceptions. Modern TA cranks, good. Hutchinson tires, good. Maybe the best. Not widely available, they're not on the mainstreams radar, but we've deep-dived them and learned a lot and have mounted and ridden them for a while now, and holy cow. It's not "ride quality" that sticks out. THey ride great, which for all practical purposes is better stated as, "just fine, like most other modern tires." Tire makers and sellers and certainly tire reviewers describe ride quality with words in English, but in doing that, they end up attributing insensible qualities to tires.
Tires have to cushion, grip, be mountable and dismountable, stay on the rim, resist punctures and cuts and degradation by sunlight, and they should mount straight without a wrestling match followed by a massage, and that's about it. It's a long, demanding list, but none of those qualities is difficult to achieve, and all but the supplest and lightest or totally rock-botton cheapest ones check most of those boxes.
Skinny tires that due to their skinniness require high air pressures to resist flats and protect the rim from getting bashed...don't make sense for non-competitive riding. And yet, those tires are plenty popular.
The things about Hutchinson tires that won over all of us are not exclusive to Hutchinson, but ONE sticks out. They, noticeably more than any other tire we've used, have the rare quality of being tubeless-compatible (TC) AND YET are easy to mount and remove without tools, on a TC rim. You can't appreciate that unless you've been frustrated by so many other tire trying to do the same thing.
It's hard to buy a NON-TC tire or rim these days, and yet if you sanely insist on inner tubes instead of goopy sealant that sometimes works and sometimes dries out and doesn't---if you try to mount tubes on TC rims and TC tires, then you know the effort required. Don't write in and tell me your tricks; I already know them. But Joe BLow doesn't, and so it should be easier. If Joe Blow has both poor technique and weak hands, he may have to use tire levers. But Hutchinson tires are still easier.
They have really strong and light sidewalls and thorn shields. The knobby ones ride smoother than they look. Not that we care, but YOU might: They're light for their volume. All good stuff.
They will be affordable. I'm not saying all this praise to soften you up for $100 tires. We'll see what they land at after Trump Tariffs, but expect them to be right in there with the others.
James's tires, street/trail combo?
Calvin's tires, kind of a light combo deal here.
Worst photo we'll ever post anywhere. My fault. Sergio's road tires.
Mine. They're knobby 45s, not something I'd ordinarily ride, but when the sample table was picked clean, it's what was left. These are the basis for my "the knobby ones ride smoother than expected" comment. And I've taken them on really rough trails, and they seem fine.
We'll have a good assortment, maybe by mid-November.
=======
OM-1 derailers? Still coming, expected later this month.
====
YOU know how we're sincerely on a Green Kick? We now, for the first time in ten years or so, have water bottles. You can read more about them here, and they look like this:
===
I got a ti-railed gray-leathred B.19 in about 1996 and here it is now. I wanted to get it re-uppered by Simon Firth at Transport Cycles, but he can't get any uppers right now, so I put on a B.68 and all's well. I doctored it up with a knife an assorted foams, and I frankly saved it and gave it a second life this way. A normal saddle eventually sags into the air beneath it, but if you stuff it with foam, it won't sag and it still cushes. Pool noodle foam is good. A breadknife is handle, and practice helps, but it's all do-able. This isn't pool noodle foam, but I usually use pool noodle foam.
=====
Here's an AI-related thing from cyclist and collector Robin Williams's daughter.
=====
======
--------
This is something I wrote for the bike industry's trade magazine--Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. Every issue is chock full of desperation, fear, complaints, and hopeless strategies, and in this thing I cockily tried to give some advice that might work for scared dealers. I want to make this clear: Rivendell still struggles. It is still hard for us. But over the years we've acquired certain practices that work for us, and might work for others, and that's what this is about. I tried to pack in as much punchy advice into as few words as I had to work with, so the "voice" is kind of ...cocky and know-it-all, but I certainly am aware that what works for us might not work for them. It's just being honest and not weird.
=========
On a ride last weekend (now a few weeks ago), two things: Dan and I saw this guy, way less scary than he looks, way more lefty than he looks, struggling to hoist his eBike into the back of his pickup, so we help, and noticed the shirt:
I don't let opportunities like this just go, so I asked, "What's that shirt about?" and he told me he got it at a thrift store and just liked it. I googled it and found out that "My cat is a communist" is a THING, with bumper stickers, shirts, people talking about it, and all. It's not worth looking into, fine, but now I crave that shirt less. The bike above is setting the new fashion standard in the two-wheeler world: Serious black, lack of frivolity, style, beauty, and obviously oblivious to all those quaint tiny nicities. It seems to have a dropper post, necessary when you're really "going for it." The guy was super nice, so that's more important, and it may be petty of me to comment snarkily on his bike, but we're in the transition zone where bikes the way they used to look and be are being replaced by this kind of moto-look, and that's the challenge.
It's hard to talk-write about subjective stuff like art or appearances or anything that's on the surface and doesn't affect function...without coming off as judgmental. I AM judgmental about bicycle looks, but this Buckminster Fuller quote speaks for me, how I feel about it. I put this in an old Bstone catalog and have said it since a few times, so some of you will have read it before, but it's still good, and I swear that we never rubber stamp something that doesn't pass this test, at least not if it's our design:
Related to this, I was talking to my same-aged/model year buddy Richard Sachs the other day, kind of complaining that when I ride my bike and other bike riders see it, they say stuff like, "Rockin' it old school, keepin' it real!" and I know it's supposed to be come kind of a compliment while at the same time acknowledging that they're in the know historically...and although there are irritating parts of every word of that, it's the "old school" that bothers me the most. I don't dwell on it as much as mentioning it here makes it seem like I do, I'm just telling you. I asked Richard if he got the same "old school" comments or "steel is real" comments when he rode his bike. I think he said that in his area most people know him and so don't say that, but anyway anyway, he told me, about steel and lugs and crowned forks with normal dropouts and all:
"It's not 'old school," it's Graduate School"
I wish I'd thought of that, but it was Richard.
==
Here's another thing from a Bstone catalog. This has made the rounds here and there, and I first read it in the 1972 Chouinard Equipment catalog (pre-Patagonia)
It could be reinterpreted to make a case for Tig-welding rather than lugs, and certainly rather than fancy lugs, and in that way it could seem to conflict with the Bucky Fuller quote. We combine the two and "sort it out" in a way that makes sense here. Anyway, this quote is particularly interesting, and (as we all know, the author was a French guy), and as a matter of practicality, this quote is from a book called Terre des Hommes (land of men), but whose English title is Wind, Sand, and Stars. I read WS&S because of this quote, and I wanted to get the original French book, so I did, and it's not in it.
===
Here's another thought that's worth processing or something, whatever you do with isolated quote that get thrust at you with good intentions, but that can't help but seem heavy-handed.
====
On a lighter and funner note (I know about "funner," but disagree), here's a 32-second video you won't hate.
======
A Blue Lug fellow, Wentz, came by for a ride and visit and too this photo of part of one of the walls in our showroom. The film canister photo was taken off the television (using my OM-1) in 1980, during the bicycle track events. The camera zoomed in on this serious-looking lady in the stands, probably a competitor in another event, and I captured the moment perfectly, Cartier-Bresson style. During my last 10 years at Bstone I had this up in my office, and most of the years here we've had it up. Also shown, in the lady department, is an out-take from the Bstone 1994 catalog cover shoot, with Kim and Robert. Still in touch with both. Robert worked here a long time but retired to Hawaii. Kim's "up north."
======
If you haven't read the Chouinard Equipment catalog from 1972, it's probably because you're younger than 67 and / or aren't into climbing, and I get that and that's all fine, but it is a phenomenal piece of work, and has inspired me, influenced me, given me a target to shoot for, and ultimately makes me feel ashamed for not hitting that target. It is full of climbing jargon and references you might not understand, but to me, it is beyond words, and here it is.
The knickers in the catalog are the ones I'm wearing here, at the top of what for me was an impressive (scary) climb in Yosemite, but these days would be..measly.
That's an OM-1 camera, by the way.
--------
A few years earlier (1972), here's me with a fish. I don't do fish-shots anymore, partly because I don't catch trout like this anymore:
I am still in touch with the friends who were with me and took the photos. Warren Moon, the climbing photo; Mark Niebuhr (future Appaloosa rider), the fish one.
======
Here's another bicycle rider (Lon Haldeman...super famous personal hero not because of his feats but because he's just such a great humble human) with a fish in his hand, in South America:
===