Sept Blahg late September
Is this bad or neutral or just nothing--that this ROADEO bicycle followed ours by many years?
I googled ROADEO bicycle and got this.
Trademark law isn't something I know either a lot about or next to nothing about, but my understanding is that you don't have to pay money to register a trademark; you can get one by first use and public display proof. But now I'm thinking we probably weren't the first, anyway, and that this is nothing to even think about. Done.
Here's ours from a few years ago. I THINK we made the first ROADEO, meaning OUR first Roadeo, around 2013.
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Our non-insulting, unpsychological game-playing No-Nines pricing policy since our first sale of a dixie cup of beeswax on Jan 4, 1995, has been everything is priced to the even dollar, and none of those even dollar prices ended in a 9. It's a pathetic bragging point if I brag about it, but mostly I've always been bugged by "insulting pricing" — the idea that $24.95 sounds closer to 24 than to 25, or that $199.99 would sound like wow, it's not even $200, but as a matter of fact, we've never done that, and so we're either tricking you out of your pennies and nickels, or we're costing ourselves sales. We have and have had, even recently, our share of financial stresses* over the years, but none has been directly attributable to this.
*about ten years ago our cost on Pine Tar soap increased "more than it should have" when a big company bought out the small company that made it, and then our buyer increased the selling rice by $0.95. I caught it and fixed it within a week.
**about three weeks ago wire payment of $152,000 to Taiwan was, with the help of AI, intercepted and ended up in a scoundrel's bank account in China. Our local bank, which typically has four people working there on any given day, apparently has several people behind the scenes and off site, and put twenty of them on this case. Several of us here had our own roles to play--reporting to Kash Patel's FBI, the local police, and our insurance company to see if they'd cover the loss (at max, $25K, and our rates would increase enough to make filing a claim not worth it.
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I really like the bike gizmo below for getting around with kids too young or untrustworthy to ride solo, but too old not to pedal certain places and distances on their own. My two daughters have spent, collectively, more than a thousand hours on the back seat of one. I know there are competitors, but this is the one I know and have now bought twice, this time for a granddaughter.
I used this nearly daly for several school years, commuting to school and then back for my then five to eight-year old daughters. There are other "trail-a-bikes" out there, I'm not saying this is far and away better--and it's on the expensive side, like $400 or so--but back then I did some research and settled on this one. There will not be a Rivendell version.
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I wrote Eat Bacon, Don't Jog--a book with a title that will turn off vegetarians and joggers and so on, but it is seriously a good book, tho now out of print. You can get it used. I'm not trying to pump my book here, and I mention this only to re-announce that I and undoubtedly many of you have a passing interest in not dying of a heart attack, and maybe you're on statins, maybe your doctor is scaring the living daylights out of you, maybe your worry is worsening your life and emotional health, and if any of those things is true, read this--and consider subscribing to Gary Taubes's newsletter, once a month or so. They're always long, always good.
https://uncertaintyprinciples.substack.com/p/lowering-ldl-surely-a-heart-healthy?r=rtlhg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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Aside from the oddness of the wooden track surface in an ad for a gravel bike, I'm wondering about the apostrophe. I know the rule, but given the copy and the photo, it seems it came one letter too late. If there was another rider in the photo, then leaders' would be more clear, but as it is they're asking us to fill in another rider, probably a bike length ahead of this guy. This is part of my ongoing self-torture.
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In my pre-teen years I did try to shoot birds on wires, but I used a slingshot, and I never hit one. That reminds me of this worthwhile four-minute slingshot video that I've put up here at least twice before, but maybe not in the last seven years. It's about Rufus Hussey, the slingshot phenom in North Carolina, I think. THere's a reference to "Asheboro," which may be a typo, but it's somewhere in the lower right portion of the country. There are other Rufus Hussey links, longer and all, if you want to deep-dive him.
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This is historical, old-guy-looking-back stuff. When we were a week or so old I mailed this out, announcing plans. A short read.
It will take you nowhere and from that POV is pointless.
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SILVER FRONT DERAILER UPDATE
The samples already work perfectly, but there is an aesthetic and somewhat technical issue to fix to make it just right. The lower radius of the front of the outer cage currently rises up too much, so it doesn't follow the radius of a 44t ring the way it ought to. Nothing bad results, but we (meaning Microshift) are fixing it. This will result in a delay of about two weeks, and we still expect to get them in six months. Since that will overlap CNY, we're thinking 7 months. By March. Things take time, nobody is a member of the Keystone Cops, most product development takes place behind closed curtains, but in the interest of filling up BLAHGs and giving you something to chew on in Will's email updates, we tend to lay it all out there for you.
Meanwhile, don't hesitate even for a millisecond to equip your Rivendell with our famously meh-looking / fantastic-working Skeleton Key derailer.
A note on front derailer function: ALL THEY DO is de-rail the chain. On the downshift (from bigger ring to smaller ring), they just nudge the untensioned chain off the cliff, and it falls onto the smalll ring. On the upshift, it hoists the chain up and moves it outward until the bigger ring's teeth engage the chain. It pushes and it lifts, there is no magical complex trickery going on. You can downshift with a stick, your finger, or your shoe. Upshifting super analogically is harder, but Will can do it with his Converse All-Stars, using the side of the toe cap to chain on the lift-up. Tangentially related, at best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlnunL1WTI4
A pivoting, cable-tension controlled simple mechanical front derailer pushes the chain off the cliff and lifts it back up again so easily and nearly beautifully. To use a battery-powered electronic front derailer to do this is the nadir of gear shifting. And yet this is what all of your pro bike heroes do.
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We can learn something from the pros. This is not a knock on the fastest pro road racer in the world and maybe of all time; it is a reminder from him about when to not drink:
related:
The LATEST thing I've read about pro racing--and I don't seek out anything, but in my position things come to me--is that following this crash and I guess an increasing number of crashes—some absolutely related to the whole pro-racer package—is that pros are now asking for air bags. If they happen, what a commercial opportunity that will be for everybody in the air bag chain. There will various types at assorted price points, and the graphics will be all over the map. There will be stiff competition, and then the gear reviewers in the media will, you know, have to test them out---that will be the only fun part. Air bags will lead to lots of air bag accessories, and they'll cost a lot, because what's your life worth? There will be kids models--and there will be injuries, deaths, and lawsuits. When people trust air bags to save them, they'll ride more recklessly—the "I'm jumping out of this airplane because I trust my professionally packed parachute to open" effect.
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Always good reading, BSNY column. Today's (Sept 4)
https://bikesnobnyc.com/2026/09/04/its-my-cloud-and-ill-yell-at-it-if-i-want-to/
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He not busy being born is busy dying. --- (Bob Dylan, of course)
On that topic, there's a new book out that you have to read:
I mean "have to" only if you're a regular reader of obituaries. If you think reading obituaries is weird, nothing that follows will pull you over the line. But here's a free morsel, anyway. Sam Roberts is writing about the challenges of getting accurate information on the dead person. Asking the right questions, and so on:
And in today's NYT, there's this obituary of a guy I'd never heard of, but after reading the book-book up there, I have a new appreciation.
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Today, still Sept 18, is my first day back after some fishing. I can't talk about fishing..but it's fun and good for me, and I'm making up for lost decades. Anyway, I really look fwd to going in today (I always do, anyway) because I think there may be a final prototype of the SILVER front derailer...and maybe some Indian-made T-shirts. Will is in France till the end of the month. FLASH: We'll have the front der late next week.
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The big news, still, internally, will be that we averted a magnum-sized financial disaster related to a Chinese AI fraud-scam thing. For two days, Sept 9, 10, we thought we'd been kind of sunk when I wire was redirected to a bank in China, instead of Taiwan. Our local bank put twenty people on it, and ... saved us. It's one of those, "this is such a relief that nothing bad that happens from now on will notch down our mood one iota"- kind of thing. Like oops, it's not cancer after all/sorry for the scare, you're as healthy as a horse.
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Maybe my ego is spinning out of control, but I fancy myself as fairly well-versed in the ways of the bicycle, and so I'm troubled by what you're about to see, and if all goes well, you will be equally troubled by it.
A customer was riding his Appaloosa with Velocity Cliffhanger rims. He ran over a stout but rusty nail about an inch and a half long, and it punctured not only the tire, but the rim, too. He called up inquiring about a new rim or wheel, and I said sure maybe we'd have the rim even tho it wasn't listed on the site as available (we keep some off-line to build into wheels). I'm interested TO A POINT in freaky bike mishaps--like a nail puncturing the tire, tube, AND rim, so I asked for a photo. He mentioned that he'd already sent one to Vince, but we were talking after hours and Vince wasn't here, so I asked him to send one to me, and he said sure. He mentioned that the hole in the rim was in the shape of a cat's head:
closer look:
If people who don't know anything about bicycles heard this story and saw the pictures, they might say, "Yes, that does look like a cat's head. Way to go!" But you might be wondering more about the red things. I was, so I asked the Cat's-head-hole guy about the red. Here's what he said:
I should have known about the Veloplugs, and now I do. We'll look into them.
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THIS IS ABOUT RUNNING SHOES, and it is a phenomenon that affects most sports equipment; maybe all. Two-wheeled sports, for sure. It's like there's a competitive instinct in us (traceable to sexual selection, I'm sure the scientists would say) that we can't help but see other people doing the same thing whatever it might be, as competition. Then, throw commerce/fame/sponsorships into the mix, and we're all more carrots than chums out there. Trying to break free of all that is like trying to erase a pencil goof with a bad erase without leaving palimpsest. ALMOST ALL bicycle stuff is designed and marketed to make you beat your friends and strangers. Back to the running shoe thing: If shoes make running easier on your joints or nerves, that's all cool; and if people can spend $300 on running shoes without wincing, go for it and it's nobody's business but theirs. But it's the marketing trickery and the undefinable weirdness that bothers me. It could be that I remember when U.S. Keds cost $6, P.F. Flyers cost $7.50, and the most expensive sneakersk were Converse All-Stars at $10 (1964-ish). The game has changed, and modern sneakers ("trainers" in England, "running shoes" here) are loads better and more comfortable than the old All-Stars. The house I grew up in cost $12,000 in 1953 (I was born a year later), and now, after some remodeling, it would sell for at least $2 million--I don't live there anymore, btw).
These are the Adidas shoes referenced.
End of this dreadful ramble, sorry.
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THIS story came to my inbox just now:
These hats weren't just found along the road. They were fished out of geysers.
For more bad news that isn't political, you can read the whole geyser-trash story here.
There's a link that describes the extraction process. It's worth clicking on.
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Maybe you know that Schwinn closed a few years ago. Whenever a formerly successful company dies, Monday morning quarterbacks go to town, and that has certainly been the case with Schwinn. If we died, I know what people would say. They'd say, "Grant stuck with the retro thing too long. He was inflexible, he didn't take advantage of all the improvements in materials and components. He was too old and stubborn to change, and he thought he could pull down other people with him. Pride goeth before a fall--something he didn't recognize. SAD."
That isn't how I see it, and we're doing well-ish.
But back to Schwinn. Richard Schwinn, who gives hour-long this presentation, is one of the nicest, friendliest people I've ever met or done business with. Super guy. I've spoken with him hundreds of times for thousands of hours on the phone and in person. Without Richard's support, we wouldn't be here today. EVERYBODY at Waterford was super. They built a few thousand bikes for us over the years, and our reasons for branching out and eventually leaving them had nothing to do with their friendliness or integrity, and our drift away did NOT put a nail in their coffin, because our low volume with Waterford was only a drop in their bucket.
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I'm sorry, but here's another super duper BSNYC post about front derailers and shifting. Warning: He mentions his Roadini in a good light, but that's not the point and don't let it distract you. Please read this. It's good, it's right, you'll be glad, you'll feel affirmed.
By the time you read this we should have our final SILVER front derailer SAMPLE.
Flash: Got it, and needs one more small change. This may delay it a month or two, but when we get it, you'll know it's dialed.
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We got in HappiSacks after being out for a year. The name was inspired by Happy Jack, a song by The Who. Story here, followed by song here.
The HappiSacks are big, but we have had bigger saddlebags. Still, big enough. Made in Vermont to the the highest standards we've seen. The gray ones are made of slightly lighter fabric than the olives, which makes them better for racing. Both are fine all-purpose, high-capacity bags. They're obviously good for bike camping, but if you shop with your bike like I do, big bags like this are super handy. Various view below. The David Ogilvy style is to give every photo a caption, and in most cases that's a good idea. The New York Times doesn't do it anymore, and that kind of bums me out, but their caption-less photos could benefit, and these below truly don't need them. Except one,
Above: Most of our bike mounted bags and all of these saddlebags have an all-cotton waterproofed tongue that not only adds an uneccessary layer of water protection, but also lets you overfill the bag and still protect and contain the stuff that would otherwise get wet or fall out.
Each bag has an extra layer of fabric underneath as a wear-pad in case it rubs on the tire and you don't notice. A rack or fender will prevent that, and you need it only if the bag is deeper than the distance btw the tire and the saddlebag loops.
The bags have lashing points that allow you to tie or zip-tie it to a rack to befuddle thieves or to stabilize the load (usually not necessary).
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All for now.
G