UP: Post WWII SunTour derailer, prob 1947 or so.

This is a long one, but I missed last month. Skim quick! Sorry, thanks.  Grant

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Kids bikes are a problem FOR ME, not for you. We made (had made for us) three prototypes. It was the original plan for "Rosco Bubbe." 

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CrMo frame and fork, 20-inch wheels

Coaster brake rear. This this tried-n-tru/we all grew up with them technology is under fire these days, and one force—with a patent on an alternative— is trying to make them illegal. How else is a weak-handed kid supposed to skid?

There are long-reach sidepulls that'll work on this. We made sure. Same for the rear. But IF we do this, we'll shorten the fork and make it about the same reach as a Platypus. But still--too much clearance. Way more than in back. We need clearance for 2-inch tires, no need for 2.4-inch WITH FENDERS. 

It's our version of Cyrillic spelling of Rosco Bubbe. The English way is on the other side. 

 

This Rosco Bubbe never left here (other than as local loaner bikes. We had three, and one we lent was never returned, and I forgot who we lent it to.

The bike as you see it in green up there would sell for about $900. It doesn't have all the parts of a CLEM, for instance, but it has most of them (and a more expensive rear hub). The shorter tubes cost about the same. Material cost is a small factor in a bike's retail price. I should have foreseen that it would, but in any case, the cost killed this Rosco Bubbe. 

A while ago we met with a guy who has connections in China. We're sticking with our Taiwan suppliers for frames, but I pitched to him the kid's bike, and he asked if he could photograph it and measure it, and I said sure, so he did, and that was in mid-June. night Aug 7 I got this back from him. After not hearing from him for a month, I figured OK, that's not going to happen, but then on the night of Aug 7 I got this back from him.

It's like the green one, and close to perfect by our standards, but maybe you have different ideas. The Green bike was fully lugged, which added a lot. Because of the angle of the bottom head lug, the fork had to be too long— (or we could've had a new lug cast for it, but that wasn't going to happen. Kids should be loved but not overindulged).

This tigged one copied the fork length, but by going to tig, we can shorten the fork and even-up the clearance front and rear.

 

 

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This is from Aug 24 NYT, a prettty interesting story about a really interesting guy that, if I may speak for ALL OF US, none of us had heard of. He should be famous:

Here's a 15-minute National Geographic-like thing on long life.

At 4:49, the guy on the left seems to be wearing Crocs...or a knock-off.

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I read a story in the Times about maybe PRINT coming back. This is what we did for 45 issues. The thing is, once "content" goes free online, not many people want to pay for it.

You can read lots of our old stuff HERE.

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I am looking for a small or medium Rosco Bebbe.  Not Bubbe; Bebbe. If you have one you'll know the difference. Store credit  or cash for it. If you got one, by now your child has outgrown it. If you're interested in selling either the frame or a complete, PM grant@rivbike.com. Name your price, but just because I sort of own most of Rivendell doesn't mean I'm going to throw too much at it. Let me know. You might have to box it up and send it here. This may be too much hassle all around.

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Here's one. I ride my granddaughter on it for about 100 minutes a week:

We are both paid-up members of the Bicycle Fan Club, by the way. All profits from the sale of BCF merchandise go to 826 Valencia.

The little girl up there wears a helmet customized for her by me. It's far more protective than a standard EPS-lined child's bike helmet:

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Pinky Deras

If you don't open links you can read it below, but the link won't hurt you and it has pictures.

By Cody Stavenhagen 

DETROIT — The cedar chest had been there his whole life. Down in the basement, near the water heater and next to the storage racks filled with all the knick-knacks a person accrues over seven-plus decades. Adam Deras knew the chest was full of Dad’s old stuff, but he had never seen it opened.

Now Art “Pinky” Deras was gone, so Adam and his much older brother, Kevin, cleaned out the house. They came to the old weathered chest. Soon the glorified wooden box was open, and Adam peered inside. He saw a few small trophies, some posters, a scrapbook and a few old signs. There was a brown paper bag, and inside, a red batting helmet from the ’50s or ’60s. Under the brim of the helmet, his father’s initials were inscribed: AD. Inside the crown, there was still a piece of hair.

Adam’s father was once a Little League superstar, widely considered the greatest ever. Deras made it to Double A in the St. Louis Cardinals system and then, beaten down and burned out, he walked away. For many years, he wanted nothing to do with baseball. People whispered about how he had thrown out most of the mementos from his career: bats and balls, photos and trophies.

“I’m sure what they said was true,” Adam says now, “because there was nothing really there.”

That fact may seem odd, but it would come as no surprise to anyone who knew him. Art was humble and reserved. Never talked about his younger days unless directly asked, and even then you’d be lucky to get more than a couple sentences in response.

After his baseball career reached its premature end — he once told the Detroit Free Press he simply never showed up to Cardinals camp, and never heard from the team again — Art settled into a 29-year career with the police department in the Detroit suburb of Warren. At his funeral in 2022, the family made a display with photos from his Little League days, and mourners recounted his legendary statistics: 108 innings pitched and an astonishing 298 strikeouts, an 18-0 record with 16 shutouts and 10 no-hitters for a 1959 team that won the Little League World Series.

Longtime coworkers were stunned. “I partnered with your dad for almost 20 years,” one person told Kevin, “and I had no idea.”

His accomplishments fell out of focus over time, but the ghost of unmet potential always lurked in the background of Art’s life. In 1974, Art was only 27 years old when the Free Press ran a story with the headline: What ever happened to baseball phenom Pinky Deras?

In the article, Art mused about the pressures of pro ball and the weight of all the expectations he carried. Then he said this: “At least when my two-year-old son, Kevin, grows up I can tell him I played catch with Stan Musial.”

Fifty years later, at a sports bar in another Detroit suburb, Kevin is discussing his father’s life and legacy. He hears the question: Did your dad ever tell you about playing catch with Stan Musial?

He laughs and says no.

Like with so many things, he wishes now he could go back and ask.

No one ever figured out exactly why he went by Pinky. They just knew his grandmother called him that one day, and for whatever reason, the nickname stuck.

What they did know was he was the greatest thing they had ever seen. At 12 years old, Deras was already nearing 6 feet tall, bigger and stronger than everyone on the field. He happened to be more talented, too.

“What I used to compare it to was facing Nolan Ryan from 48 feet, then having to pitch to Mickey Mantle,” said Tom Paciorek, a Detroit native who went on to play 18 seasons in the major leagues.

Deras was a dominant force on the team representing the little Detroit enclave of Hamtramck. That team captured the heart of the area, and its title went down as one of the crowning moments in the community’s history. In the celebratory aftermath, Dodge paid for the tweens to travel across the country, where they appeared on the Lawrence Welk show in primetime.

Two years later, Deras was teammates with Paciorek, and the pair helped lead a Pony League team to another championship on the national stage. The city still commemorates the achievements with signage at its border. There is a street named Pinky Deras Way near the hallowed ground of Hamtramck Stadium. The sign’s subtext reads: “The greatest little leaguer there ever was.”

As the Little League World Series gets underway this week in Williamsport, Pa., and as Deras’ beloved Detroit Tigers prepare to play the New York Yankees Sunday in the MLB Little League Classic, the absurdity of Deras’s youth statistics come into greater focus. Deras is remembered the way he is because many of his records will never be broken, especially with today’s pitch-count restrictions for young players. On two occasions, he threw six-inning perfect games in which he struck out all 18 batters. They clocked him at 71 mph off the Little League mound, the equivalent of a 100 mph fastball from the major-league distance. At the plate, he hit .641 and smashed 33 home runs. He hit a grand slam in the Little League World Series semifinal, then threw a three-hitter in a 12-0 championship win against a team from West Auburn, Calif.

“I have the Little League playoffs on right now,” Paciorek said recently from his home in Georgia. “Unfortunately, there’s no Pinky Deras in there. If there was, you would know.”

Deras’ dominance did not end with Pony ball. As the years went on, other kids grew and began to catch up to Deras’ physical profile. His growth plateaued at 6-foot-2. Most still did not come close to matching his talent.

As a senior at Hamtramck High School, he hit .478 and was drawing the attention of scouts near and far. He played football and had a scholarship offer from Michigan State. In baseball, the hometown Detroit Tigers were interested, as were the Cardinals. The legendary Branch Rickey, by then in his 80s and confined to a wheelchair, arrived in Detroit, ventured to a field and emerged from a black limousine to see Deras play. The Cardinals eventually offered Deras an $80,000 signing bonus, big money for the time, and viewed him as a third baseman.

In Rickey’s papers, now housed at the Library of Congress, there are two scouting reports filed on Deras. The first, dated June 5, 1964, hints at his potential.

“I see nothing (sic) whatever wrong with his form,” Rickey wrote. “His head goes toward the pitch with every swing. He should be a good hitter, and his form supports his record for power.”

The second is dated July 14, 1964, soon after Deras began his pro career, and hints at what was to come.

“In the game tonight he looked like he had a case of cramps — came out of his shell late,” Rickey wrote. “Showed no power. I believe he will become a good hitter, a power hitter, someday. Surely he will come to be a bit (more) relaxed. I hope that management will not advise about his batting or change him in any respect until, per chance he gives up.”

By the numbers, Art Deras’ professional baseball career amounted to this: A .243 career batting average and 32 home runs over five seasons in the minor leagues. He spent all of 1966 and 1967 in Double-A Arkansas, before a demotion to Class A the following year.

“I couldn’t understand why he never made it in the major leagues,” Paciorek said. “I said that. ‘If Arty can’t play in the big leagues, there’s no way I can.’”

Done with baseball, Deras served in the National Guard for a few years, then headed home to the Detroit area. He applied for a job at the police force and settled into a quiet life. He got married and had two children. Kevin was the first. A few years later came a girl, Deb.

In the years after his baseball career ended, Deras had a fractured relationship with the sport. He battled depression and wanted nothing to do with the game.

“People come up to me even now and ask why I quit,” Deras said in 1983. “I just tell them it was because of personal reasons. … By the time I was 21, I had already had a full 14-year career — playing every day, two amateur championships, a room full of trophies. I should have been reaching my prime and I was exhausted. Looking back on it, I guess it was just a problem of getting too much too soon.”

Eventually, baseball’s idyllic rhythms drew him back. He played rec softball and began watching the Tigers every night. He even ventured to Tiger Stadium to see Pacoriek play when the White Sox were in town.

Kevin has faint memories of going to a reunion for the Little League team one year in Hamtramck, but even then he didn’t quite ascertain how big of a deal it was. Kevin also played baseball growing up. His father didn’t push him into the sport, he says, but he didn’t hold him back from it, either. As for the subject of Art’s own Little League career? It just wasn’t a topic that came up very often.

Truth was, Art could be closed off to a fault. Kevin and Deb both speak highly of their father, but Kevin acknowledges a certain emotional distance. He pieced together more about his father’s career over the years, and one year before his birthday, he called the Little League Museum in Williamsport, Pa. He told them his father had played on a championship team, and he was hoping to acquire some film to give his dad a special gift.

“Did you say ‘Deras?’” a worker asked over the phone.

“Yeah, my dad was Art Deras,” Kevin replied.

“Like Art ‘Pinky’ Deras?”

“Yeah.”

“Hold please.”

Kevin split the costs to help the museum convert old 8mm reel tape to DVD. He presented the rediscovered film to his father, including the ninth inning of the championship game and the ensuing celebration, when eight kids mobbed their bigger teammate as he walked off the mound.

“It was really hard to judge his reaction,” Kevin said. “You could tell he appreciated it. He was intrigued watching it. But it may have brought back some bad memories.”

Jane Chupailo was a waitress at a Ram’s Horn restaurant off Dequindre Street, and occasionally the police officers who came in would point to Art Deras and ask her: Do you know who that is?

“No,” she might say. “I just knew he had nice biceps.”

Art was 12 years her senior, divorced with two children of his own. One day he swung by her house anyway, and soon they were dating. It wasn’t until sometime later her father pulled her aside.

“Jane,” he said. “Do you know who that is?”

Jane had a big family that loved sports, and from time to time, she would hear Art discuss his career with her father or brother. But it wasn’t until Kevin got another call from the Little League Museum that all the pieces started falling into place.

Two filmmakers, Brian Kruger and Buddy Moorehouse, had inquired about a project they were interested in. Museum director Lance Van Auken gave them another idea: Do something on Pinky Deras. The project turned into the 2010 documentary “The Legend of Pinky Deras.”

The Art who appears in the film is quiet and speaks in a matter-of-fact tone, but Jane says the project energized him. As for everyone else, including son Kevin, it wasn’t until the documentary that they finally realized the full extent of his legend. By then Kevin was approaching 40.

“It took that amount of time,” he said, “to realize how exceptional he was.”

Deb, the daughter from Art’s first marriage, married a man who enjoyed baseball, and they eventually moved out to Arizona. They had three boys who took an interest. Visits back to Michigan soon meant questions, and slowly Deb began learning more about all her father had accomplished. Her youngest son now plays baseball at Paradise Valley Community College in Arizona, and this summer, he ordered a custom glove with the words Pinky Deras inscribed on the glove’s smallest finger.

Adam was the youngest, 30 years younger than his half-brother. The dynamic was unusual. But Jane called Adam her miracle baby, finally conceived at age 40 after three surgeries and three attempts at in-vitro fertilization.

Though Art and Jane divorced when Adam was in fifth grade, they remained on good terms. Art spoiled his son and let him do anything. Perhaps the only thing that ever made him hesitant was baseball. Adam played the sport growing up and says his father was supportive, but Jane says it was her brother who first signed him up.

“I thought Art was gonna hit the roof,” Jane said. “He was so angry.”

Jane called Art’s baseball career “his Berlin Wall.” A line she simply wouldn’t cross.

“Some people … I don’t even know how to explain it,” she said. “You have things you’ll talk about, but there’s things you keep in your heart.”

The children each have slightly different theories on why he didn’t divulge more.

Maybe it was simply his personality, a quiet man who never sought to talk about himself.

“He was happy with the fame he got,” Deb said. “He didn’t care about moving on. It just wasn’t meant to be. … He never regretted it.”

Maybe it was deeper than that. The pain of not making it further as a professional, of not quite meeting all the expectations of greatness others had bestowed upon him.

“It’s a hard thing when people expect something out of you and you can’t produce,” Adam said. “He had some issues with that.”

Or perhaps it went even further, memories of a robbed youth he buried in hopes of forging a new identity.

“Why he decided not to talk about it, I think it was a little bit of the letdown,” Kevin said. “Didn’t want to relive it because of the could-woulda-shouldas. He probably had some regrets. Maybe after leaving, if he decided to go back, maybe he didn’t think people would take him back.”

By the time Adam grew up and moved out, he called his father every morning at 5 a.m.

Adam worked mornings, and Art was religious about his routines. He would rise and drink coffee in a dark house every day at 4 a.m. At night he would sit down with a bowl of vanilla ice cream and watch the Tigers.

By the end he was reclusive. The once-great athlete had stopped exercising after a back injury many years before. He grew inactive and health issues followed. If Art didn’t answer Adam’s early morning phone calls, something was wrong. He had battled heart problems for years. One day after an episode he checked into the hospital, and a couple of nights later, on June 5, 2022, the kids learned he died in his sleep at age 75.

In the days after, they all heard stories they never knew before. Old friends and teammates reached out. The best stories always involved Art’s days playing baseball. There was happiness in stories like that, but there could be a certain sadness, too.

“There were so many unanswered questions,” Kevin said. “So many questions not asked. And some of those questions I tried to ask and never really got a lot of response on. That’s part of it. I guess I missed out on some closure. … My regret is not getting into enough detail and trying to drill deep as far as his mindset and the pressure.”

Many of those answers will remain forever elusive. But if those closest to him looked hard enough, there were sometimes the smallest hints at the feelings Pinky Deras kept locked inside.

Every year around the time of the Little League World Series, he would take his usual seat on the couch and tune in. More than once, after a kid made an amazing play or after a new team got crowned as champions, Jane would look over. And if she timed it right, she would catch Art Deras, the greatest Little Leaguer to ever play, with tears welling in his eyes.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. All images courtesy of Adam Deras)

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This is next milestone in cycling innovation; it's what's going on out there, folks. It's kind of required reading.

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Will, Antonio, and Roman have been in Taiwan for a few days and have a few more to go. We're getting reports daily.

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It just raises some questions. Spoiler: Fancy hand-painted fancy shoes.

IF you're "anti-link" and just need a taste:

There's a lot of talent going onto theses shoes, and my own nephew paints sneakers two at a time, so I'm used to this. I think sneakers are a more appropriate canvas, but it's one of those "no skin off my nose" things, so I guess I don't care. Do cyclists really want to stand out this much? Maybe many do. The first paragraph above seems like kind of a reach, but I'm the last person to consult about cycling fashion..but I know what works for me, and it's this (apologies in advance):

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I know what cycling shoe reviewers would say: Dangerous, inefficient, stupid. The industry wants you to "believe in the importance of" rigid soles and click-in pedals. Click-in pedals require rigid soles, because there's not enough support otherwise. The hard plastic sole keeps the tiny metal pedal from digging in. This is as close to a conspiracy theorist that I can get, but all of you who ride biggish platform pedals and normal shoes don't need convincing.

My sandals of choice, because they're cheap and work well, are Teva Hurricanes, which reminds me of this song, which  lead to a re-investigation that eventually let to Carter's conviction and sentencing being overturned...after 10 years in jail.

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A fellow came by with a 2004/5 custom, which he's ridden across the country, and on a 4,100 trip in Europe, and is now headed to NZ. He's 65, retired, likes to travel and ride, and "is not much" for upkeep. His wheels are original, built by Rich. The rims are...well, decent for sure, but I think they were discontinued, and we wouldn't necessarily recommend them now. I'm still riding a pair. But he needs new rims. He's never "felt the need" for touch-up paint. His bike color is magnificent.

Anyway, the bike looks great. I might lightly sand off the rust, then. put. coat of clear Sally Hansen's nail polish over the bare areas. But ...no biggie.

=the Bob Gazette was all over the map, here's some other stuff in it. The song-quiz thing was: I picked a pop song that most people back then had heard of or should have, and changed one word in it's title to a bicycle part or reference. Then you had to name the original song and the bike part reference. Not sure if you had to name the artist, too. I cut off the 2 in the 243, which was a perfect score:

This was the last BOB GAZETTE, I wrote it in September 1994, and Bstone closed for good on Sept. 30.

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This is not Roger Federer's commencement speech at Dartmouth, but it's a story about it. Short & fun.

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Two speed world relief may be fine, who'm I 2 say? I don't know how necessary the two separate cogs requiring two separate chains is. Seems suspiciously patentable.

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I'm sure the people behind this are fine, and this is just part of doing business, but when bicycle business do this kind of b*llshit, I get bummed. The phallic imagery has nothing to do with it:

"Limited special edition" means what? That they'll stop making them if they sell out?   "aesthetic" is unnecessary; let the viewer decide. "Lightning green" is nonsense. "Futuristic and stylish touch" for an orange you can't see  inside the tire and a green you can see only when the bike is parked is a stretch. Is this really an expression of somebody's personality, and an absolute must?    

I know I don't have to point any of that out. A curse of being me is that I harp on things that others ignore. I'll work on that.

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FUN TIME! In last month's BLAHG I solicited anagrams of ROSCO BUBBE for possible, not promised, use as a name for a future bicycle that, if it happens, will be a de-detailed (plainer) version of the Susie W. Longbolts/Wolbis Slugstone. I picked ROSCO BUBBE as the anagram starting point because we have tons of Rosco Bubbe head badges, and I thought anagraming that name would be the only way to justify using them. That sort of stretch doesn't make a lot of sense. It's hard to justify, but the badges are terrific (designed by Olivier):

This one was flattend with a rubber mallet so we could stick it to a door.

In any case, we got fewer entries than I'd anticipated, a bit of a bummer there, but as you'll see, there are lots of fun ones. "Fun ones" doesn't mean they'd clear my personal hurdle for a bike name. I know we have unusual names, but none of them are pure jokes or head-shakers. The thing is, with the combination of letters available, the fun quotient of the list is really high--regardless of their suitability.

We/I was hoping we'd get one that would make a good name for a model in development, but not quite. Lots of fun names here, and my vote would've been for Borus O'Cebb, but I dunno.

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Here's a thing.

Businesses get desperate when sales are flat, there’s lots of competition, and they’re still trying to grow. It doesn’t matter whether they’re making kitchen gadgets, cars, music-playing devices, computers, sling shots, backpacking stoves, running shoes, fly-fishing and fly-tying gear, cell phones, pocket knives, bows and arrows, or bicycles. When there’s more demand than supply, they don’t invest in changes; they sell what’s working—like in the pickleball explosion (which is may be a response to declining sales of tennis rackets, the cost of lessons, and bickering over public court space).

In the bicycle industry, when sales slow down and the trick is to get current participants to replace their perfectly bicycles, one- to thirty-years old, or persuade walkers and motored wheelers to take up the sport . . . the sales staff screams, “more technology!”

That’s predictable. Modern technologies, mostly electric and electronic, make our lives easier and better so often that we’re caught with our pants down and don’t even notice when they shove us aside like a bossy robot and makes our skills irrelevant. We still inject it into even the simple, refined, beautiful things that have been essentially perfect for decades or a century, and call them upgrades. Look at the inside of your car. Could a car thief in the winter find your wipers? Could you, easily, on a rental?

The best technologies give more than they take, but they all take something. New technologies pass from culture to culture all the time, and often replace old ones, with mixed results. The Lakota Indian’s experience in the mid-1800s at Wyoming’s Fort Laramie is an example. The fort was built in 1834 to re-supply the westward-ho land seekers, gold miners, and Mormons*, and protect them from the indigenous people who saw them as treaty-breakers, trespassers and buffalo slaughterers.

There was a trading post on the fort, where the Lakota went to trade pelts, hides, and buffalo robes for beads, tobacco, whiskey, and matches. The beads spruced up their ceremonial wear, and the tobacco and whiskey got them hooked and coming back. The matches were such a hit that the next generation never learned to start fires the way prehistoric people had for almost 2 million years, and their indigenous ancestors had for at least 15,000 years. Tweens in 2045 might not know how to strike a match, and by 2065, some won’t know what a match was. They won’t need to.

Technology is best when it shortens mind-numbing tasks, like hundreds of calculations, and when it allows precision views and cuts in medical care, like MRIs and arthroscopic surgery. Shifting gears on a well-tuned mechanical bicycle isn’t in either of those categories. Maybe it’s satisfying, maybe it’s too challenging, maybe it’s fun, but it’s definitely optional. It takes practice to do it well, but hardly any practice to do acceptably. Shifting gears on a bicycle is improved by electronics only if you consider the less you matter, the better; and that on a scale from zero to 100, results matter 100 and skill matters zero. Like in surgery (apologies to skilled surgeons everywhere).

No matter what your age or physical condition, it’s fun to fiddle effectively with gadgets that require more than pushing buttons that trigger electronic movements. It’s fun to shift a bicycle mechanically, and there’s no shame in flubbing. Just the opposite: Your flubs are proof that you haven’t thrown in the towel. The point of so much bicycle technology is to get you to lose that fun, and reduce bicycle riding to purely physical extreme, large muscle aerobics, with no fiddling skill require.

Bicycle makers promote technology in a way that makes you feel that anything less than the most and latest technology is holding you back, and people who don’t blindly embrace new technology are often labeled Luddites. Sometimes hippies wear that label as an honor—“proud Luddites,” and that perpetuates an error. Ned Ludd’s squawk wasn’t with progress. It was with machinery replacing people and making dangerous working conditions—chopped hands, toxic fumes—for those, including young children, who operated them fourteen hours a day. Today, Ned Ludd would be a human rights advocate, and “Luddite” would be a compliment. 

For most bicycle riders there’s a sweet spot between a bike that’s frustrating to operate and one that is so technologically advance that they don’t matter. Maybe your is to the left of mine, maybe to the right. It doesn’t matter. You probably like using some skill to control your bicycle. That option’s disappearing.

Electric and electronic parts are winning not because they’re better, but because they’re cheaper to make and customers will always pay more for boxes with buttons and hidden magic inside than they’ll pay for visible mechanical movements.

The current bicycle market isn’t big enough to sustain the growth that big companies require, so manufacturers use the most, and the most advanced technologies to eliminate all barriers to attracting new riders. They use professional and other high-profile riders to promote these technologies, so current riders will want to replace their metal, mechanical parts that often have a realistic useful life of thirty years.

 

*The Mormon Trail, as you may not know, connected Ft. Laramie with Salt Lake City

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These are all over Japan. Neat story. In the early '90s they were $150.

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Cartoon by Ian Boothby and Pia Guerra. From The New Yorker:

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Here's a fortune my son-in-law got a few weeks ago. 

I am familiar with the history of the fortune cookie, how it was invented in Japan around 1870, then made it to the U.S. and was still being made by Japanese people until we put them into concentration camps during World War II, and while they were there, Chinese people took over production. I would love to meet and interview the person who wrote this one.

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I am either predictiing or just telling you that my world-view of small things is changing. That's a bad sentence, but what I mean is that the way I am responding to small things in the world, or in my world, are more intensified than they were even a year ago. Small things are more important. Things that were always in the background, as "important or significant and worth exploring, but who's got the time for that right now?" are surfacing to me. I think this must be a common thing, but it's just coming on for me, and there's a big difference between getting washed over by this kind of clarification that's demanding I act on things that have been under-prioritized long enough.

Age (I just turned 70) and being a grandparent (she is 21 months old) are the main factors, I think. I want to be healthy long enough to see my granddaughter graduate from college (or, as my daughter says, "maybe trade school, she may be a bricklayer, let her be her.") She lives, with her mom and dad, in the backyard in a small house. Not a tiny house, but a 750-square footer. 

"You've thrown the worse fear that can ever be hurled—

Fear to bring children   into the world"

is a line from Bob Dylan's Masters of War, and it is what I think about when I think about current politics.

Anyway, this is a personal concern, maybe too much for here.

There are business concerns, which for me are just another kind of personal.  I talk about it internally constantly, so it's kind of a blur between what I say at work here and what I've said in the Blahg here...but I really want to get our own, independent sources for those reverse-action derailers, which are purely, absolutely, I will hear no arguments to the contrary, the best idea in rear derailer movements ever. Shimano knows that but caved in to the market's unacceptance of them when they were current options, from about 1999 to 2005. 

The chance NOW for them to make a comback is...non-existent, unless we do it. The movement is to electronics and electric, and beautiful, genius, logical, mechanical designs have no place. We've been working on our comeback model for about seven years, and it's been kept alive by stubbornness and naivete,    Another is a redo of V-brakes. Current models are, to use an expression my youngest daughter came up with in a different context, "fine, not great." They are the best brakes out there, but they all suffer from a design flaw that was solved in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but has since disappeared--mainly, I am sure, because the industry doesn't care about rim brakes anymore. So the capable brake makers of the world, who COULD redesign and fix this LITERALLY in an hour, are not doing it...because they're more sales-focused than design-focused. That is reality, but it also sucks for the kind of progress we'd like to see... The best designed V-brakes ever, my opinion (shared by everybody here who's seen them) are these:

 

 Don't look at the nicely curved arms or the overall aesthetic. That's important but it comes last and it's superficial. It's even distracting. I've talked to Tom about these. He doesn't have the tooling or designs. He's moved on. One thing about Tom Ritchey that maybe you know or realize and maybe you don't, is that — how do I say this most respectfully? It's hard but that's how I mean it it — when he has wanted to, and at his core, he is a genius artist designer. Current market realities don't require that, and I'd even say wouldn't respect it. But I've known him since 1980 and have seen what he has done and is capable of, and it doesn't make SENSE for these abilities of his to have a place in the modern bicycle market. There are parallels in other fields, fields that you're intimately familiar with, come up with them on your own. 

But back to these brakes. Will bought a single arm from eBay, It's all he could find, but it was brand new, $15, sold "for parts only." Here are some photos that still don't reveal the single most important feature of it, but show, at least, some stuff:

 

 

 

 

 

These here have 95mm tall arms, which might mean nothing to you right now, but a normal modern V-brake has arms between 111mm and 116mm, which fit fatter tires better, and make it easier to fit fenders and racks. This brake works fine with no racks or fenders and tires up to maybe 2-inches. If we used this brake and some of its features, we'd change a few things to make it work better with our-and-most other fattish-tire bikes that may or may not have venders or racks. This is a "before I die" project, but I'd like it to happen 15 or 20 years before that day. Twenty.

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This is the current state of innovation in the bicycle industry:

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I have a friend, a fly-fishing, rod-building-plein-air watercolor-painter friend, whose skills in all of those things are way more than admirable, and I have a few of his watercolors of my favorite place on earth, a river that I have a long history with, but there was a 40-year gap while I got married, had a family, made a living...and didn't fish and didn't know  him. I met him on the river, and people who have bamboo rods generally talk to other people who have them, too, and in this case he started the conversation, and things developed from there. He's 84, and I've known him for slightly less than a year. 

One thing I want to work on, especially with him, is how to express friendship and let him know how much I appreciate his and him, without coming off like either (1) My friendship is a compliment; or (2) He's old, so I should blurt something out before he dies. He seems healthy. If I'd known him for years it would be less awkward, but I haven't. I've been to his house (near the river) twice, for several hours each time. I call him and he calls me and we talk for 15 minutes to almost an hour. We're both comfortable rambling and going on tangents, and there are topics and sub-topics related to fishing and painting and families and mutual friends that we can talk about. It probably isn't important that I express any more than that, but I still wish I knew how to.

 Here's his favorite painter.

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Is Japan becoming Americanized?

A father-son team were flying Delta some place and the flight was delayed. Flights GET delayed, but apparently Delta has had more than its share of delays. The F/S team got mad, said the delay cost them $1,000. With I guess no other recourse, they went to the Delta lounge, presumably with other delayed passengers. They lounge had free food and wine, and the two of them extracted more that their "lost" $1,000 in chow and refreshments. Of course they couldn't eat and drink that much, so they wasted a lot of it. The made a video of it, posted it on TicToc and got nothing but praise--for their creative solution, sticking it to the man, and so on. No doubt they'll inspire others, which we should all find depressing. Sorry to even bring it up.

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Oh, the Olympics. Time for nervousness all around, time for four to 20 years of practice to go dissolve into disappointment. This is a Blahg, not an editorial in the New York Times. I have competed, I grew up competing, all thru high school. I won three Punt, Pass, and Kick contests in a row--if you remember them. I batted .538 my last year in Little League. I wrestled and played baseball thru high school, and wanted to be a pro baseball player. I raced bicycles competitively for six year. I have not had a BAD experience in any competitive sport, but for decades now I have (personally) been against competition. I don't think it trains success in life. I think a lot of the time it's parents living thru their kids. I think it's a distraction from more important things. I don't like that the proportion of losers and also-rans to winners is so high. But I like to watch running events, pro basketball, baseball, football. I don't watch much, I'm too busy, but for downtime, sure. I'm inconsistent. I like how sports can train skills and bodies and are generally healthy, except for things like boxing and football. I like to see people who've put a lot of work into a sport do well in it. This is just me, not me telling you anything of value. If you or your child got something good out of sports (as I think I did), GREAT. I know they CAN do good, I just don't like to see people lose and get sad and think less of themselves for it.

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 I would LOVE a little money help with our derailer and brake projects. But that's not where people are  putting their money:

Note to Monte and Olaf:  $50,000 would go a long way here. Nobody would have to know. We'd pay you back in a year with 6 percent interest.

It's just that, do we need more sports nutrition? The hospital stuff, OK, but how complicated is that, really? 

This from today's (July 29) NYT:

I am not advocating chicken McNuggets, but still. I personally, still follow a low-carby thing, but whatever...the $22M "investment" in the sports nutrition thing, whew.

The thing with investors is: Then they feel they've earned the right to control the project. And maybe that's just how it works. But with the OM (opposite-movement/RapidRise) style derailer we're caring about, I can imagine what they'd say:

Are people WANTING them?

a: Yes, a few hundred people are.

A few hundred THOUSAND?

a. No, just a few hundred.

Then why not make the kind of derailers they want?

a. Shimano and SRAM are already doing that.

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PENCIL

Olympics: I want Simone Biles to clean up again. She looks relieved, happy, grateful. Good comeback story. Sunisa Lee has maybe an even better one. Google that.

 

I know nothing about Snoop Dog...other than at one point he went by Snoopy Doggy Dog, I think.. and he's in a different world, but I like everything I see, all the stuff he does. I liked this story, and the 34:40 200meter he ran in Oregon isn't slouchy at all for a 52-year old guy.

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But mainly, Kamala Harris.  She is the big news, and a fine alternative.

PENCIL

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From the current issue of the bicycle industry's trade magazine, FYI:

 

 

"I'll wait and see...I'm a scorecard guy." 

I wonder how DT's scorecard is looking after this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3eCCbVr3EU

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 Here's one of about five projects we're working on:

 It's not an aesthetic masterpiece, and by 1970s thru 2009 standards, it's marginal at best, BUT the bar is really low for front derailers these years, and we've primped it up visually and mechanically in four places. The curved front outer cage, with cutouts. The inner and outer cages are separable, for easier dealing with chains. The lever arm is longer than the parallelogram arms, for lighter action without excess complication. The cable routing is, normal, direct, intuitive, the way all front derailers used to be until the uglifying complication.

 

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We're continuing to work on and be frustrated with our rear derailer, V-brake, and a centerpull. The brakes will get there; the rear derailer is more iffy, but we have plans B and C for it, in case Plan A fails.

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Customer Tom, 75, former college wrestler and weight lifter and you should see his calvesl, and in the image below, you kind of can...anyway, he brought his 3-year old Clem in for a tune-up. He rides it every day or close to it, and he didn't notice the rear tire wear until about a month ago. He loves the bike, he's had it on tours and is planning another one on "the Mickelson trail," in South Dakota, which he expected me to have heard about, but I hadn't. Here are some photos before and after. 

 

I'd guess Tom could've eked out 500 to 1,000 more miles on this tire, but we gave him a new one and said we'd replace that one when it got well into the green, too. 

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Fix For Olympic Swimming Events

I know this is not going to happen, I know it creates problems I can't anticipate, I know, at some level, it's stupid, but on another level I like the idea.

Swimming podium spots determined by fractions of a second are bogus. How about this: At the 400 meter mark, the usual ending for a 400 meter race, if one swimmer doesn't have a two-second lead over the next closest swimmer, then sound a high-tech underwater buzzer letting them know they gotta keep on going until there's a two-second (or 12 foot, or whatever arbitrary time-distance unit that makes sense) between the leader and the next guy.

In a 100m race, require a one-second lead. It may turn a 100 meter event into a 220 meter one, but more likely--based on the effort expended in basically a full-on sprint--it would end at 150 yards or so. But whatever the magic time or distance is, it should be the minimum to clearly define a winner, not some 1/100th second nonsense, where the winner is 6-inches taller anyway. Or measure actual speed in the water. Something. 

Only the top three swimmers count. Fourth at the end of the original distance may be 1/10th of a second behind Third, but that's the breaks. This is exactly why I need to stay in my tiny little wheelhouse.  But still...

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I'd look like that if I could. Who wouldn't? He was happy to pose for this photo.

The name of the building is, actually, The Riv. But that's not why I took the pix.

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Bicycle and more normal content:

Here's a prototype, an actuallly fully functional one, of a front derailer we're working on with Jim Porter of Merry Sales/Soma Fab:

We have plenty of front derailers now. The Microshift Skeleton Key (Will's name for it), and a bunch of Shimano CUES fronts we were forced to take, as part of a story not worth telling. But it works great. The thing is, we're planning for a future in which none of the biggies wants to make front derailers, so we must get out own. This 3D-printed metal one works great, but has an aesthetic challenge we can easily fix, and a tiny funtional glitch only Mark noticed, and you could have it for ten years and never notice, but we'll fix that, too.

Some of the pictures here are a lot alike (but not the same) as old front-derailer pictures. I'm obsessed with front derailers these days, so...skip over if you're bored.

It has the kind of parallelogram and lever arm (the one the pinch bolt is on) design that all front derailers had pre-indexing. It is slightly smarter: The lever arm is a millimeter LONGER than the parallelogram arms, so there's less slipping tendency and theoretically lighter action. Also, it's simple--the rigging of it--like the old derailers were.

But the super genius is all Jim Porter's doing, and it's not in the derailer itself. but the clamp. This is the only derailer clamp (separate from the derailrer) that allows lateral adjusting, so the same derailer will work on narrow or wide chainlines. All separated clamps should be that way. There's no drawback, only benefits.

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I'm a sucker for bizarre advertisements, always have been, always will be. This one, based on it being on the back page of the Sunday NYT business section on June 9, probably cost $75,000. I say that because I know for a fact that in the 1980s the full-page Macy's add opposite Herb Caen's column, cost  $30,000. Inflation, the Times, Sunday, and in color (the Macy's ad was not in color). I'm not suggesting you read it. My wife, her head in a book, refused, and refuses to acknowledge that her husband wastes time on this stuff. Here goes:

The thing is, I still don't know what CANVA does. My sense is that they sell Indonesian-made furniture for upscale vacation homes, which is fine, but it's weird to assume that we know that. Maybe I'm just late to the Canva party.

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Just one person's opinion, but I think this is the most underrated T-shirt we've ever done, although you have to know the song reference to appreciate it and that might have been its downfall:

The song is "Ode to Billy Joe."

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The whole idea of electrifying your gravel experience sums up what is happening in the mainstream market. What does, "Experience a more connected gravel ride" mean? More connected to what? The Cloud? The electronic Bluetooth gizmo? How does that all work? Has Shimano's electronic shifting really reached "legendary" status?  OF COURSE "whatever makes you happy and doesn't harm others" should be fine. But that's kind of like thinking election results don't matter, because we can still go about OUR daily lives largely unaffected....that is, if we are already doing even just OK, and can't get preggers and don't give a fig about lots of other people and things. Sorry. I don't know how I went from electronic gravel bikes to that, but I did. I am a magician!

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Francois Hardy died on the 11th. She was the anti-celebrity celebrity, seemingly genuinely unimpressed with fame and not full of herself, and...just sort of an odd duck in a good way in that way. Nobody is qualified to describe anybody, especially her, but people try. She wrote an interesting memoir in 2018, and I recently started it. Here's her obit. In the photo she's holding a Minox spy camera, and it's possible the book she's reading might be French. To use an expression I never took to even in its heyday and nobody says anymore: I wouldn't put it past her.

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Bummer for Boeing II: Fake titanium?

(Boeing and Airbus bought some fishy titanium from China thru a Turkish middleman or something, and it MAY be fine, but the certification documents were forged or fake or something.)

What is happening, maybe, is that the U.S. is so ... I don't know how to say it, but it has something to do with we're so used to buying from eager-beaver and competent countries who want our business, and so tired of U.S. businesses who simply don't have the skills or experience to make certain things...and maybe they made them in the '50s and '60s, but no more...that it's really hard to find U.S. sources for so many things. The derailer we're working on. Investment castings. Steel. Aluminum forgings. Lugged frames. And, after decades of NOT making stuff, they lose the ability to, in many cases. It happens in Japan with cameras, too. Ricoh bought Pentax and wants to bring back a film camera, but none of the current staff know how to make it, so they're  rousting 88-year old retired technicians from their naps so they can help out. Rollei, the German company, has  similar story. You have to go to the people who care and either know how or will try. We have our MUSA brand of clothing (Made in the USA) because we have a maker, and I think there will always be USA-made clothing. But it's not (as I've mentioned before) Ruth and Harold sewing them up. Still, it's good for the economy in theory, at least; and it's easier for us. but more expensive.  I suspect you'd rather read another NY'er cartoon or see another photo of Francois Hardy than read this whining. OK

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Antonio noticed some things about the ESSA. Kind of weird, from a friction-shifter's point of view, anyway. We'll have to experiment. Could be nothing, shouldn't have said anything. Stay tuned.

rider's view of the best handlebar bag out there. The EZPZ. It looks l ike hell like this, but it's full of stuff and overstuffed, and it works great. I use it every day.

Front view.

View showing how to rig the stem with tape and lock it down.

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special bike, one of twelve.

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There's a lot going on here. Thanks so much for support, patronage, friendship.

G