Health:
In Sunday's NYT, and probably not fake news, and sadly, not surprising:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeeding-ecuador-trump.html
The issue isn't pro-or-con breastfeeding. It doesn't always work. Even when mom is producing all the milk, the shape of the breast can block baby's nose-holes and make it hard to breathe. The issue is whether the U.S. is picking a good fight and why they're battling this.
Photography:
My friend Dan on new Atlantis 59 in local hills. This is the kind of dark and grainy, blurry photo you never get with digital, but often comes with film when you don't get everything just right. Photo notes: Olympus OM-1 x 135mm lens, HP-5 film pushed to 1600, late in the evening, poorly metered (underexposed), and I should've used a tripod:
Film photos, at my skill level, are always full of surprises. It's part of the deal. It's a good area to ride. If you're out here and bikeless and want to borrow a bike, we have them to lend. Not to your friends, but to you. OK if your friend is with you, but you can't text your friend who's out here anyway and say Rivendell lends bikes for free. No, that's not exactly it.
We have good riding, easily accessible by a 15-minute easy paved ride with hardly any traffic. If you want to get to where these pix are taken, it's a lot of climbing, but you could be in this exact spot in about an hour from HQ if you're used to hills.
Poetry:
When I was up to about 10, my dad would read poetry to me, and I'd read some back, out of this book:
It's a great all-purpose poetry book, it separates poems by themes "Humor and Whimsey," "Poems That Tell a Story," "Childhood and Motherhood," "Patriotism and War," and so on.
One of the poems that disturbed me the most, maybe the only disturbing poem in the book, was this one:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44433/abou-ben-adhem
It bothered me because my dad liked it, but my mom wouldn't have, and I wasn't sure what the message was. It's a favorite now, tho.
Another one, by the same author, Leigh Hunt, is less "controversial," and I totally love this one, and anybody but a farmer or law enforcement officer would:
I wondered about this Leigh Hunt guy, so I looked him up, and found this story about him really fascinating. I had no idea he was a contemporary of Byron, Coleridge, and the other English Romantic poets. What an interesting life he had. It'll take 6 minutes to read it, and if you hate poety, don't bother, but otherwise, yes:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/leigh-hunt
Not that it matters, but I have, in fact, memorized all of Ulalume--it took me only about 3 weeks and maybe 30 hours, which makes me all the more mad at customer Collin A., who took 3 days, working no more than 8 hours on it. He proved it with a video of him saying it all blindfolded, and won some kind of discount off a future order. He'd just bought and paid for a CLEM, so it didn't count for that.
Bikes:
I de-2speeded my 59 Clem L so I could try it luxuriations out on the steepish trails here, and I won't switch it back to 2, but I want another 2speed, so I don't know what to do about that. I can't afford another one. The CLEM is strickly not a mountain bike, but it works so well on trails. We're going to do a real mountain bike (by our standards; it won't be even close to "real" by modern standards) next spring.
I've been riding the SILVER2 shifter sample with the sample mount. It's getting there. The lever shape is great, the inner ratchet is the same great as always...but there are some other minor bugs to work on. We still don't know when, if that's what you're wondering. At this point we have no control over that.
--More bikes:
Dave and li'l Hank, with Dave squozed between Hank and Saddle. Due to a something not worth mentioning here, we have some CLEM forks we somewhat need to build frames around, and we're going to take this opportunity to design, under our catchall groovy brand ROSCO BUBBE, frames for bikes for carrying infants and toddlers, maybe tots. Dave needs/wants one now...too later for others, but I used a variety of baby carriers in the late '80s to mid '90s, and we're not out of the needs/desirable features loop. It'll be a neat bike, nearly single-purpose. It won't be convertible to anything else when tot is tall, but of course it'll still be rideable, and maybe lend it out or sell it or keep it for the grandchildren. It won't squeeze you between. Basically, a lengendarily long top tube, with parts to not make it feel weird.
More on this later, but we'll probably offer an $incentive$ to $commit$ early. If you're interested, save some money. Not much—it'll be Rosco-priced. We'll tell more later, but if you are maybe interested, send an email to grant@rivbike.com, with Toddler + Your name in the subject field.
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Plug for friend. This is a company co-owned by my friend, Chris Watson, the guy who helped me get a job at Bridgestone (where he was a sales rep). He also encouraged/supported 100 percent of my not-always-popular ideas there, and "taught" me to drive a stick with a quick parking lot demo, then sent me solo onto a 20-mile trip somewhere on the freeway saying "good luck" or "it's easy" or something like that. After Bstone, Chris moved back home to Ft. Worth, had a variety of rep-ing jobs, and then went his own way with Arundel. He's not INTO the lugged-steel/leather/twine-shellac/friction shifting/non-drop bar+ride in sandals or Vans thing that generally but not overwhelmingly happens here, but I'm glad to see he's got bells, and cleverly named ones, at that.
If you order, tell him Rivendell sent you. We don't keep in touch all that much, but I'm ordering a few bells myself. I doubt they're made in Japan, but I don't doubt they work well, and man, I owe Chis a lot more than that. Help me pay him back with some orders, OK? Yeah..thanks.
Chris is the lavender-shirted guy on the home page with the video-filming stuff around.
Grant