SEPT-early OCT BLAHG

SEPT-early OCT BLAHG

That up there is a rampant Cheviot, with wings and crown. It'll show up here and there for a while.

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Up the steepest hill on my way to work, I had to stop and shoot this. 

Maybe it's not about pedals, I don't know. It would help to see his or her other license plates, if any.

I's all fine. I don't care. This is only a BLAHG. Clip in, baby. The bicycle people say it's good. Maybe "CLIP IN" isn't even a bicycling reference, but how can you be a rider and not think it is?

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I KIND OF care about this. Lights and a helmet could have saved this life.

more on it, no need to open both.

Uh-huh.

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I'm not trying to go "all Eastern" on you, but I've eaten tons with chopsticks for the last 53 or so years. Every salad that's not in a restaurant that doesn't have chopsticks. Lots of meals at home or in camp when chopsticks work even if I'm not eating chopstick-type food. When I lived in the woods for 3 months straight two years in a row, I made my own chopsticks, but Liu Wenhung makes better ones. I've eaten with them for about 15 years now. I don't take them to friends' houses when I eat dinner there. Sure I'm tempted, who wouldn't be? But I draw the line, as I expect you do, too.

Over the decades we've sold many of Mr. Wenhuang's bamboo creations: Trick boxes, normal boxes, and banks. Will has a chair made by Mr. Wenhung. I have two, currently being weathered in the back yard. Harry has a storage box. John has a few banks, filled so tightly with coins that they don't make noise when you shake them. I have lots of these chopsticks, and now WE, Rivendell, just imported some chopsticks to sell. We are the only North American source for any of Mr. Wenhung's products, and it's likely to be that way for a while, because they're a pain to get.

When Will and I were at his shop in Taichung several months ago, when Will got his chair, we bought a few chopsticks and wanted to bring in more to sell. Let me make something clear: We don't make MONEY on these. We sell them at a profit on paper, but we don't factor in freight, tariffs, time, all those boring other things. I just want to make them available AND I'm looking for ways to raise money for certain causes, and so...if you buy a pair of chopsticks for $10 even tho you can get them for free when you eat at Panda Express, we'll send ALL $10 of that to Single Mother of Three, a woman we're help out in NYC, even tho she's not an official tax-deductible 501c3 charity.

These come in two lengths:

About 8 1/4-inches, and about 9 1/2.

 

They're square, so no "roll-away." They're smooth, so no splinters. They're fine-grained, so they don't get stained or absorb food orders. The FDA, those dirty Feds, wouldn't allow them into the country until they were fumigated, so we paid the $35 for that. It's not poison. We could sell them cheaper than we do, but we are truly raising money for somebody, and if you want cheap chopsticks, you can probably find them for less than a dime a pair somewhere, and "thank you for your service." 

These will run you $8/pair. We have 470 pair, and and we'll pretend it's 500, which means we'll be able to  send the lady $3,760....which will go further with her than it will with any of us. We're not going to WAIT until we sell them to send her the money. We'll do that now, and then just count on you buying some. If you eat with chopsticks, you will really like these. I've had a pair for ten years, still good. I don't oil them, but I also don't scrub them with steel wool and harsh soap. Don't buy them unless you'll use them. Don't get them and then always go for the Panda Express freebies you keep in the same drawer. These are for dedicated chopsticks users, and we're the only source for them in the country, and all $8 goes to her. Cynics call this virtue signaling. We just want you to know how you can help. We can't justify selling chopsticks just for fun, so this is our reason. 

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A Rubber Story, sad but true. Kind of a bummer, but we're all adults here. There is "bicycle content," so it's not totally out of the blue.

Belgium’s King Leopold II was born in 1834 and must have had a messed childhood, because he was messed up his whole life. At the age of 18 he married a woman named Marie Henriette, who, coincidentially, was Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph’s grandmother. The same Franz Joseph that Gavrilo Princip assassinated; the guy whose assassination was blamed for WWI, but that is a simplistic explanation of it. It's not like some guy nobody's ever heard of gets shot and killed and the next thing you know, World War I. 
King Leopold II and Marie had four children.  Leopold really wanted a son, but had bad luck in that regard. The couple’s first two children were daughters, then they had a son who, at age nine, fell into a lake and soon after died of pneumonia. They tried again for a son, but got another daughter instead, so Leopold, frustrated and sad, separated from his wife and had lifelong sexual issues. He forced his daughters to marry much older men, and ultimately disinherited them both.  
 
The May-December union he forced on his daughters made sense to him in a creepy sort of way. His sexual partner preference was young teenaged virgins—although he didn’t insist: In 1899 when King Leopold II was 65, he married Carolyn Lacroix, a 16-year old French girl who’d been prostituted for years. 
  
By the mid-1800s England, France, Germany, and Portugal had colonized most of the faraway but accessible, navigable land, including the coast of Africa, Australia, and a lot of South America. Leopold, of Belgium, was late to the game and wanted to make up for it. He wanted—not for Belgium, but for his own personal use—the uncolonized interior of Africa, the Congo. He said he wanted to banish slavery and bring religion and industry to the “dark continent,” which required eradicating the natives. But all he really cared about was elephant ivory at first, and later, rubber.  Rubber is the bicycle content here. Rubber was a versatile, essential commodity during the industrial revolution. So many mechanical and technical advancements depended on it, and another source, the Amazon rain forest, was harder to reach than the Congo, and there were already Europeans ravaging it for its rubber.
 
The Congo rain forest was 905,000 square miles; three times the size of Texas, with New York and Pennsylvania thrown in. It was all deep gorges, high mountains, harsh weather, dangerous animals, clouds of disease-bearing insects, many tribes, few trails, snakes, heat, rain, and scary natives who didn’t want them there.  It was hard to tramp through on foot with a machete and rucksack. Raiding its ivory and rubber required assorted equipment, heavy machinery, and boats (to float the bounty out on the rivers).  It was a logistical nightmare. 
 
The task could be accomplished only with an army of thugs forcing the natives to do all the hard stuff. King Leopold tricked the Congolese into signing the usual confusing, one-sided treaties that had proved to be such effective trickery for colonizers all over the world. They didn’t understand them and couldn’t read them, but they were forced to sign them. Then Congo was renamed the Congo Free State, a reference to free trade Leopold promised Europe and the United States. Calling it that earned the blessings of sane countries, including the U.S.
  
 Leopold’s men put all able-bodied men and male children as young as five to work. Although he claimed to be anti-slavery, his army, under his orders, kidnapped the men’s families and held them until quotas were met. Women, children, and unproductive workers were commonly lashed with a rhinoceros hide whip, with edges that cut skin deeper than a normal whip did. His Belgian soldiers amputated hands, sometimes for not meeting quotas, sometimes just to keep the workers on edge. Women and children were raped routinely, often in front of their husbands and fathers, and held hostage until quotas were filled. 
 
Starting around 1892, after Dunlop’s pneumatic tires became widely available and the demand for rubber bicycle tires surged, more than half of the Congo’s rubber came to the United States, to make bicycle tires.  
 
 Over time, missionaries, writers, and good people who we now see as the first human rights advocates spread the bad news to rest of Europe and the U.S. Four were William Sheppard and George Washington Williams (both Black Americans), and Roger Casement and Edmund D. Morel (both white Europeans). They exposed Leopold to the world, but Belgium had a full-time propaganda machine refuting the claims. By 1908 Leopold had made enough money and built enough posh homes and palaces in Belgium to secure his legacy, and he didn’t want the criticism. Most estimates are that Leopold’s army killed about 10 million Congolese, and he’d made about $1.1 billion. Others, primarily Belgians, say it was closer to 5 million dead, and half that amount.His second marriage—to Carolyn (the teenager) lasted ten years, until he died in in 1909. She inherited money and property—a small portion of it, but worth millions—and then married her first love, her original pimp. 
 
Leopold didn’t want to deal with the increasing public relations scandal. He had no sons to leave it to, so he left a few million to Carolyn (who by now was 26). Leopold died and left her a few million, and she soon married her first pimp. He gave the rest to Belgium.

 From 1908 to 1960 his former empire was known as the Belgian Congo, was renamed Zaire in 1971 (thru 1997) and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. It may be technically a democracy, but it still suffers from civil wars and human rights violations. Feel free to google it. 
  
Eventually the rubber harvest abated, and other countries with rain forests and suitable climate had started growing their own rubber farms from seeds smuggled from the Amazon. This modern rubber is more humanely harvested, and is now used mostly for car tires. Both car and bike tires are made with a mix of natural rubber and butyl, a synthetic form. 
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 1909: Arthur Conan Doyle, in the preface to his book The Crime of the Congo, wrote: 
 
There are many of us in England who consider the crime which has been wrought in the Congo lands by King Leopold of Belgium and his followers to be the greatest which has ever been known in human annals. Personally I am strongly of that opinion. There have been great expropriations like that of the Normans in England or of the English in Ireland. There have been massacres of Spaniards or of subject nations by the Turks. But never before has there been such a mixture of wholesale expropriation and wholesale massacre all done under an odious guise of philanthropy and with the lowest commercial motives as a reason. It is this sordid cause and the unctuous hypocrisy which makes this crime unparalleled in its horror. 
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In more modern news:



This
The above ad is terrifying to me. I can usually think of a Bob Dylan lyric that sums up whatever, but this time it's Neil Diamond that comes to mind. From "Crunchy Granola Suite." —

"...like a man with a tiger outside his gate, I not only couldn't relax, but I couldn't relate."

SHOULD I be able to relax? It helps that I'm not starting out. I just ordered some chocolate pies for the crew here (holiday stuff, I try to make it "fun" here)—and I was having a conversation with a customer service representative at 11:45 last night. She seemed fresh and awake, and I was wondering wow.....but her responses to my questions were eery, like a smart, thorough, friendly, conscientious robot. Maybe most of the world is used to this by now, but I'm just getting there. For the record, it won't happen here. We'll TAKE the time, we're OK with money as it is and aren't trying to figure out how to make more of it, and if we can't expend the "mental energy," it's time to quit.
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We're getting some water bottles made with sugar cane, and some non-petroleum grease and chain lube. (Boeshield T9 is going to be hard to beat, but the new chainlube will come close, is more than good enough, and at this stage of the game, why not use something considerably less nasty?

Bicycle grease has an easy job. It's "barrier" grease and "low-speed revolution" grease and "generally clean working conditions" grease, as opposed to the kind of grease used for heavy, filth-and-gritty out door industies and automotive and submerged wheel grease. "Overkill" brings comfort, but pure contact uses, like seat posts and stems--you can do that with butter or margarine. Crank and wheel bearings are more demanding, but they fall into the "low-speed revolution" uses, and a ride in the rain isn't, by bearing standards, filthy. 

Anyway, we're getting grease--and a new chain lube--that's not quite edible, but is more than up to the task of lubing your chain and bicycle. We don't count on lube sales to pay for anything, it's just too small, so we're going to be really picky. Same with the water bottles. You may disagree, I know four people who will, but I'm "confident in my stance" on this stuff, so...save it :)

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We're also working on some organic cotton clothing. And one or two front derailers. Our multi-year V-brake project is taking a new, positive turn. These aren't frivolous or unimportant projects. They're all good, and at this stage of MY game, at least, I'm going to hammer them on through. The clothing won't be MUSA. I tried hard to fine organic cotton pocket-T's made in the U.S., and ... failed. I found a source in Bharat, and they seem to be working with us. 

It's not easy to come up with a brand name that's truly legally available in the field of clothing. If you think it is, please try. Google "___________ brand clothing." Fill in the blank. So...this is what we got. Obviously, it's an anagram of Rosco Bubbe, courtesy of Ana Candela, whose own name sounds like an anagram of something. 

The clothing maker is in the country formerly known as India. Little-knowngst to most, India make some of the best fabric in the world. Ghandi himself made fabric, no kidding:

 

So there is a tradition, and so often but not always, where there tradition, there are high standards. 

An earlier version of the label said

                                         Organic cotton made by Indians.

But that seemed a little dangerous and weird, like I was baiting people to call me out on "Indians" instead of Native Americans or Indigenous or whatever...then I'd have an answer. But it still seemed a little naive, invasive, disrespectful, and possibly offensive. So I ran it by a friend I saw in the local dog-and-kiddie park a few days ago. He's from the country in question, and I happened to have the artwork with me in my pocket all ready to show, and there he was, and I wasn't even thinking about him. He saw it and said, "I didn't make it...not all Indians live in India, and how do you know the people making this fabric aren't from Bangladesh or Myanmar? Don't do it. And you know, people in India don't especially like "India" or "Indian." Do you know why it's called "India"?

Me: "Something to do with Columbus and the West Indies?"

He: No, because it's on the other side of the Indus River. "India" is a colonial name. It's not respectful of the people and the country's history. It may be too late to change in the western world, but in India most people prefer "Bharat," (the Sanskrit or Hindu name for it." Most in America won't get it, but "Bharat" is the preferred name by most of the people who live there.

and he showed me THIS

and I looked up this, and maybe the Indian Ocean needs fixing, too. I wonder what they call it in Bharat.:

So that's how we went from Made by Indians to Made in Bharat in one easy step.

It's still possible that the company in Bharat will not follow through, or something else will foil the effort, and if that happens I'll feel dumb for telling you this background....but at least you'll be one of the relatively few who know why it's called India, and why, ideally, it wouldn't be. Stay tuned for Boubec Bros. news. I hope it's good and soon, but 

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We have a great inventory of both Banana Sacks and BagBoys, our two most popular bags, and I use at least one of them seven days a week, and both of them at least three days a week. I think either one is good for 25 years or daily use, and we're extremely proud of them. They're made in Vermont.

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Call me a sucker for a gumball machine, I won't deny it. We have a Pro Model gumball machine here. I got it 15 years ago, and the plan was to fill it full of macadamia nuts instead of carb-heavy gumballs. I bought fifty pounds of macadamias. THe plan was a quarter for six macadamias, but it turns out the macadamias weren't round enough to roll out consistently. Sometimes you'd get zero, sometimes you'd get five—and whose idea of a good time is THAT?

We still have the machine, and it's full of anti-paint sleeves the painter uses to cover the canti-braze-on bosses on frames, so they don't grow in diameter , so cantilevers and V-brakes can fit right over them.  Here it is:

This isn't interesting, I know.

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Sizing by Standover Height (SOH). Especially bikes with low standovers.

It makes more sense than sizing by seat tube length, top tube length, or stack or reach or any other way you can think of, because you have to be able to straddle the bicycle. Sizing by SOH makes even a hair more sense than sizing by our sacred Pubic Bone Height (PBH). But sizing according to PBH is still pretty damn good.

SOH isn’t relevant unless you know your PBH. But once you do, the bicycle-fitting world is your oyster, at least here at Rivendell.

First, let’s take some pot-shots at the usual sizing criteria, to see what they can and can’t tell you.

Frame size, when measure to the top of the seat tube, determines only how low you can get your saddle. Typically, that’s seat tube length + 11cm. On a 54cm frame you can get the saddle 65cm above the center of the crank.

The Consumer Products Safety Commission, a group of government fuddy-duddies that does way more good than harm but is wrong about some things, requires at least an inch clearance at the crotch. Baggy pants seam, scrotum, vulva, or pubic bone—it doesn’t say, but we go by Pubic Bone.

You want to be able to raise or lower the bars to your happy height. Getting the bars low enough is never an issue; getting them high enough usually is.

You may or may not want to ride a variety of handlebars (drops, flat, swept-back, raisers). Anyway, when it comes to sizing a CLEM or Charlie or Platypus, it’s often better to go by standover height thany by seat tube length.

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In 2006 my family went to Sweden, and after doing some normal Swedish things, of course I looked at every bike I saw. The Clem's connector tube, from the diaga tube to the downtube, came from that trip. I noticed it on a bike locked outside the air bnb and thought hmm, that makes sense. It kind of compensates for some triangulation loss. So we did that for the Clems.

Then later on I came upon a kind of motherload of ancient bikes, some with flat tires, but with proof that whoever made them gave a flying fig. I didn't know who did it, but I thought, hey man...way to go! Here are some images:

Crescent is an old Swedish brand. Here's the whole bike:

 

Somebody cared, right?

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Another "somebody gave a fig" bike...and its head tube here:

Now, imagine one of today's $13,500 carbon bikes in 60 years (these bikes were about that old). They will have been landfill for 45 years minimum, and even they're preserved in a block of plexiglass, there's just nothing to se.

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We have several hardware projects. It's all expensive and exciting. Thanks for supporting us and trusting that when we say this or that is good, it will be.

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Everything is far-out there, everything. It's hard to know anything, it's hard to count on anybody, it's just hard and far-out. All's well, just a lot going on.

G

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