Scary January, so far.
January 9, 2026 – Grant Petersen
Kind of low blood sugar. Probably not recommended, but I feel fine.
Forgive all typos.
This is a long Blahg. It wanders, maybe it'll seem irrelevant to bikes in a few spots, but it's all KIND of relevant to bikes, even when that's not obvious. Give it a go, and try the links. Maybe mo more long ones after this.
Last month you got to read about those big weird mystery heads on Easter Island (Rapa Nui). This month, it's Harris Tweed, and this time there is "bicycle content." Kind of. The Cheviot bicycle was named after the Cheviot sheep, some of which used to be Merinos, but then they landed in the Hebrides Islands, where Harris Tweed is made, and mated with some of the sheep that were already there.
====
Following up on last month's TRUSS topic, somebody emailed me this:
It used to be that all bicycle frames were trusses, but with the variety of shapes and things now, not sure that's true anymore. What's interesting is that a bicycle frame that weighs 6 pounds FOR INSTANCE, is asked to carry a rider weighing up to 300lb, and yet the 6 pound frame is still considered heavy. Most squawks about frame and whole bicycle weight are exampls of pots calling kettles black and all that, but still.
======
I was at a BART station last week, and from a distance I saw a bike that looked like a Homer, but no. It was a Centurion Accordo. I remember that bike from 1983-4. I remember working at REI, sometimes in the bike shop in the late '70s and earliest '80s (until we got a new bike shop manager who told the store manager that he didn't want me working in his department anymore)...and we did't sell Centurions, but there were plent of them around. The BEST year for VALUE...of ALL TIME...for low to high-mid-priced bicycles was 1984. I can state that like the fact it is. I was in the thick of it, paying attention to all bikes, watching the yearly upgrades or changes, comparing everything, and there's a reason for 1984. The ¥ was weak, so the dollar went far. It was like going to Mexico for dental work, which my sister does. Don't think her teeth are bad, they're just fine, but she's a 1952 model and all. Anyway, the Centurion Accordo below probably cost a bit less than $300 in 1984.
From a distance, head tube and frame color could have been a Homer. This was a typical-looking midpriced road bike in 1983/4/5.
The head tube close, and the lugs are lined, and there'a s nice fork crown. Not our current quality, but solid, basic, and to look tood, and with a lined epaulet on top.
Better look at the lug lining. Hm, Tange "Infinity" tubing...I think this is a 1985. In any case, low-$300s at most. The unlined and uncovered brake cable housing wasn't as stupid as you might think. It flexed but didn't compress, and the inside was low-friction, because there wasn't much contact area. Modern cable housings are easy sells (waterproof! lined with lo-friction sleeves!), and they work well, but ultimately they will muck up before this one will. This kind rubbed on the frame over bumps and left stripes of worn paint in the wear spots. It wasn't horrid, it just showed that you rode a lot.
Here's the crown. The steel headset is rusting, but it that's on the outside. It doesn't look bad...big deal.
Kind of a squeeze for 32mm tires and a fender, but it works. This bicycle, made brand new today with the same quality and details, would cost $3,500. A Homer is a much better bike and sells for just under $4,000--but we sell mostly direct. If we sold thru dealers and everybody got their margins, it would be $4,900 or so.
=======
Many of you read Ted Costantino's obituary of Tom Franges last month. His wife (widow? I've known Sky for almost four decades, so it's hard for me to call her a widow)--Anyway, Sky Yaeger, Tom's wife, ex SunTour USA employee and Bianchi designer and all-around marketing person...sent me some of Tom's papers that she didn't need and thought I'd want, and she was right. I asked if I could put them in the Blahg, and she said sure.
Tom was president of SunTour's U.S. division. Among his job was to promote SunTour, stay on top of trends, have his finger on the ol' pulse, an so on. At the time, 1986, Shimano was starting to dominate, entirely due to its indexing working better than SunTour's. There are a few reasons for this, none of which was due to incompetency. And ironically, Shimano's superior indexing wouldn't have come about without a Japanese SunTour engineer, Nobuo Ozaki, having developed the slant parallelogram derailer in 1964...his FIRST YEAR AT SUNTOUR. Pretty amazing, but he was too smart too early. SunTour's patent ran out in 1984, and Shimano pounced. While Shimano was working on how to make it easy for rookie riders to shift perfectly without having shifting experience or skills, SunTour was developing new cold-forging processes that made its mid-priced derailers better in every way than Campanolo's best that sold for 4x as much. Shimano's derailers we fine, too, but from purely a beauty and strength and value, nothing could beat SunTour's Cyclone derailers. SunTour's Cyclone went head to head against Shimano 600 (later, Ultegra) and I remember Bridgestone engineers explaning to me in great detail how much better it was...metallurgically, polish, design, and value---it sold for about 20 percent less than Shimano 600. That was SunTour's strategy to fight Shimano's better indexing, but partly because the Cyclone stuff was cheaper, people thought it was worse.
The same year, SunTour came out with its Sprint series, one notch above Cyclone. The Sprint downtube shifters were exactly like our Silver 1 dt shifters. We got the drawings from SunTour and by 1999 or so they were not a functioning SunTour, so couldn't make them...but said if Dia-Compe wanted to make them, they'd help with the details and little bit suppliers. In 1986, Bridgestone's Mod. 600 road bike was a SUPER value, but it didn't index, so after 9 months we'd sold only about 10 percent of the inventory.
Our sales reps--either independents with accessories and shoes lines in addition to Bridgestone bicycles--they worked wholly on commissin (6 percent, I think), and they hated SunTour bikes, because dealers wouldn't buy them. House reps--Bridgestone employees who sold only Bridgestones--got a base salary plus commission, and some, not all of them, hated SunTour, too...same reason.
Anyway, it was important to Bridgestone Japan that they support all of its suppliers. SunTour, Shimano, SR, MKS, etc. So we at SunTour USA had to split the models, half SunTour, half Shimano. For example, in 1989, the MBs-1/3/5 were Shimano, and 2/4/6 were SunTour. SunTour appreciated the spec, and Bianchi was big on SunTour, too. The big companies were almost all Shimano--they were born in the U.S. and needed Japanese parts and labor (until 1985+ when everybody went to Taiwan)...but they didn't drink Sake with SunTour or have any relationship issues that would make them want to help SunTour, so they basically didn't.
The following short report is Tom Franges's report to SunTour-Japan about the why SunTour, with better parts, was getting creamed in the spec battle by Shimano. What was top secret and all internal back then is free reading now for you. Tom was super smart, sharp, on top of everything, and never a bullshitter. You can believe every word.
This is worth reading, and it's short, and the unlikelihood of anybody being able to read it, to have access to it in 2026 is...high.
Some things are the same, as you've no doubt recognized.
=======
Another trout fly. I wind down by tying. I'm tying for friends, too, so I'm tying a lot. This uses pheasant, dyed-orange rabbit, duckbutt feathers, and partridge.
=====
==========
On the road down Mt. Diablo....
The TO, the ?, and the ! are an improvement. But it's still flawed, because it assumes there IS a crash. I'm glad somebody took it upon himself to do this. Way to go, guy!
This one is better.
FLASH: The edits were gone the next week.
========
Customer Reese fixed his Honda with zip-ties. This is becoming a thing. I like it.
====
Phone-copies of parts of an old Rivendell Reader. Blahg-like, I think.
=======
Fifteen years ago plus in the Rivendell Reader, there was a story on how bikes changed with the presidents and pop culture and science and songs. This may or may not be interesting to you. The home prices probably will be.
======
=====
Maybe you remember this, or her:
Today is Dec 18, and a lot has happened in the last five days, and today...a ton.
A woman in Seattle identified her with an Ancestry.com search of her image. Her name at the time of the portrait was Patricia Parkinson.
She died at 58 in 2004.
Ancestry listed the names of relatives
Another guy contacted her daughter-in-law, told her a bit about the mystery story, and she contacted us by email. I could tell the story, John could tell the story, but her daughter-in-law knows it all and can tell it better. Maybe in the next Blahg. Don't forget about her.
======
======
Our current bottle selection. No plastic, 95 percent sugar cane, made by MountainFlow. Why NOT get a no-plastic water bottle? Yes, it is still high performance. AVAILABLE in a week, or if you come by in person, sooner. The two on the left are new. As long as we HAVE them, they'll be part of our thank you goodie bag with bike purchases.
=====
Tariffs are killing us. What used to cost $4.5K now costs $15K. All of our costs have gone up because our suppliers are raising prices like mad because of tariffs. We are not relaxing, we're concerned. As you need stuff, please buy it. We're not panicking, but this is worse than we'd expected. We're minimizing price increases because we still are naively believing tariffs will be rolled back--they have been on some things, but not many bike things. And if we don't hold back, if and when they DO go away or back to normal, it'll bum out people who paid the higher tariff prices. So..that's our situation. The last month has been PRITTYBAD. Getting Appaloosas in will help. And the OM-1 derailers: By end of the month. Yay, whew.
=====
We are way too back-woods for the bicycle industry.
Here's the latest...worth checking out. Notice how it might be hard to see ahead. Years ago, to address this issue, a company made a mirror you mounted on the stem that was angled to show the road ahead of you. That mirror is ripe for a comeback.
======
Oglala Lakota Children's Justice Center is doing the most important work on earth, maybe. It's gross and tragic, what's happened to Natives (in the first place), and the stuff on the Pine Ridge reservation (the poorest in the country) is .. well, the worst kind of stuff. We donated almost $8,000 to them last year, a lot for us but a small part of what they need. It's not a high-profile charity, and ........
=====
I think the NYT could have worked out a better photo caption:
=====
This is the ultimate "all's well that ends well" story. Some of you will remember it.
========
You might get some laughs out of this short Atlantic column about Costco. There are a few good lines in it.
========
PLATYPUS. Rivendell customer and friend Reese Hersey sent me this link-to-footage, and click on it only if you haven't seen a real live platypus recently. It is incredible and way too short: PLATYPUS
If you want more, click HERE and see all the other links.
Thanks, Reese.
========
There's something everybody's heard before, that goes something like if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It's not a Japanese thing.
In most sports there's a concern that modern fancy gear changes the way the sport is played. It's not just in sports, it's not all bad, but it's always true. Then as the tech gear takes over, past a certain point, there's a move back. John McEnroe wanted pro tennis to go back to wooden rackets, because there were too many 120-mile aces happening, and the volleys were getting so short. Table tennis, same kind of thing. Bicycle riding has L'Eroica, a ride where you "have to" ride pre-indexed bicycles with technology and materials that predate 1985. These rides are a big deal and happen every year (I think) in Italy, where they originated I don't know when but I think about 20 years ago, and in California. Friends and customer ask me, every year, whether I'm going to participate, and my answer is always No, which is awkward, because to them it seems right up my alley. But I never stopped riding that way, and the L'Eroica rides to me seeeeem like a look how far we've come, can you believe these used to be state of the art spectacle, and I see it as look how fall we've fallen. Of course in the big picture, whatever does or doesn't happen with bicycles doesn't affect people's lives etc, but when the focus is on bicycles, or transportation and culture, what's happening is huge.
======
This, from the NYT snippet column, is what you've got to expect when you give people free rein.
======
This, from the same snippet section, about another musician:
I can't name one David Bowie song or lyric; all I know about him was that he had a spooky spaceman look and was skinny and English. But...this makes me think he's kind of cool and normal.
=======
A friend and custom knife maker and table tennis (I prefer "ping-pong") fan and player rode more than 14,000 miles on a set of Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires, and once spent more than a week making a spatula—and well, I can't think of him (Tim Wright) without thinking of ping-pong and I was wondering how such an old and simple game--like tennis and golf, in that way--has changed or weathered technological influences. I don't PLAY it, but it interests me, and if "technology and sports" is up your alley, this five minute youtube thing is worth watching.
The name, table tennis isn't the kind of thing I've earned the right to comment on, but it seems it sounds like "indoor tennis for wussies," and doesn't give it enough credit for being its own thing. Ping pong sounds better to me because the ping part comes from the high-pitched sound of the paddle hitting the ball, and pong is the ball hitting the table, and it's a sound so easily identified with the game. It's like the crack of the bat, the thud of a baseball being caught, a basketball swish, the squeal of bicycle brakes, the hum of an eBike. Sorry if I missed a few sports there, but I wanted to make the case for ping-pong.
If you found that interesting, you'll like this, too. I understand that nobody cares about this, but how things are made...come on, you gotta like that stuff, right?
I wonder what genuine PP/TT players--enthusiastic amateurs, not pros--think about the change in the balls. I eBayed some of these 3-star balls. I felt kind of like a hoarder who should have left them up for actual PP players to buy, but I think these haven't been made for almost 20 years (NOS, baby), and they've had their chance, right? The more you know about PP balls and MAYBE the less you use them daily, the more fun you can have with them. Drop them from an inch or so onto a hard surface, let them bounce once or a few times before catching them, and it sounds like Morse code. I assume you're thinking, "holygoodgod, now he's going to pivot into a long thing on Morse code..." He must love the look of his words." No, I promise. I DO love PP balls, and I can't explain it to myself, so I'm trying to figure it out as I go.
==========
That's all, folks.
G
====