ivendell eader 42

eadeR no. 41 Was Mailed in FebRuaRy 2009 and nowits nearly February 2010, and that is why this Reader istwo Maynards and twice as long. in some ways this issue

is rough.

the Reader has never been entirely about bikes, and that isnothing against bikes at all. i have less against bikes than any-body i know, but there is only so much you can say about themin one issue, so some repetition is inevitable.

not everybody who starts with us stays with us, anyway, sowhats old to vets is new to rookies. back to not everybody whostarts with us stays with us: When you come upon Rivendellearly in your education as a cycler, theres a tendency, as you gainexperience and knowledge, to explore new territory, discovernew worlds, and associate the old friend with grammar school,so to speak. orvis suffers from this, to a certain extent. anorvis bamboo fly rod is or was more accessible to more people,and got to young fly fishermen before, say, they found out aboutleonard, Paul young, and Winston; and it cost less, though notthat much less. so youd start with an orvis, get good with therod and at catching trout, and at that point orvis would be yourstepping stone on to rarer, less-well-known and therefore moreprestigious rods that seemed to offer the same thrill at thatstage of your fishing career as the orvis did earlier. i dont know

the name of this phenomenon, but i believe it is one. its rareto marry the first girl you date, and for the most part thats agood thing, although once in a while you should.

in the late 70s when i was working at Rei in berkeley, wesold Madshus birkebeiner cross country skis, which at about$70 a pair, were the most-expensive light touring skis at thetime. they were also the best-looking, with no paint or varnish,just an oil finish that showed all the wood at its best. googlethem and see for yourself. but despite their good looks, or ontop of it, they were great-skiing, high-performance skis, and be-fore the age of specialization set in, they were used for every-thing from groomed track skiing to week-or-two back countrytreks equivalent to a fully loaded off-road bicycle tour.

then Madshus quit making the birkebeiner, and Rei boughta bunch, maybe hundreds, and blew them out for $29.93. inthose days, all sale items ended in $0.93.

Whether the sale was successful or not depends on how youdefine success. We sold out in a few hours, and it seemed thatevery fourth person in the store that saturday was walkingaround with a pair of Madshus birkebeiners. People who hadnever owned cross-country skis found out about the sale andbought them, and everyone was shrugging their shoulders and

Published erratically ever since 1994

Winter 2010

When Kids had Pea-shooteRs & slingshots & Played MuMblety-Peg

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saying, at this price, you cant go wrong.they were starting at the top, thats forsure.

Preparing wooden cross-country skismeant brushing pine tar onto the bot-toms, heating it up with a butane torch,and then, when the pine tar got thin andbubbly, rubbing it in with a rag, and re-peating. it took about ten minutes perski, and you had to be careful, because ifthe flame was too hot or too close ordwelled too long at the same spot, youdburn the wood. its the old trick of run-ning your finger through the candlesflame fast so it doesnt burn you.

about twenty people got the skis andcharcoaled the bottoms black. they re-turned them, and were refunded their$29.93 plus tax.

on a darfur scale, it didnt matter. ifyou like to laugh at stupid mistakes wherenobody dies, it was a good chance. on anoil spill scale, it was a trivial hoot.. but ona ski scale, where you think of the de-signer and the makers, and all of the po-tential in those plain-looking woodenskis, it was a disaster. those skis hadsomething like 36 laminations of wood,finely fitted together and glued and madeinto skis, and they had thousands of milesin them never skied, never would beskied.

back then and i bet still now, Rei hada return policy the was referred to inter-nally as smiling Jack. it meant Jack orJill could return anything for any reason,and you did whatever it took to make himgo away smiling.

under smiling Jack, abuse was impossi-ble. the birkebeiner incident pushed afew buttons too hard, though. the tribewas on the warpath, and we had a recov-ery pow-wow to get back into the spiritof smiling Jack.

Within a year of the birkebeiner sale,we also blew out some mountaineeringboots, a model called the habeler su-perlight (named for Peter habeler, amountaineer buddy of Reinhold Mess-ner), made by Kastinger. Peter habelerwas at the peak of his career back then,and was well-known for his quick, oxy-gen-free himalayan ascents. the bootswere made for sub-zero temperatures,

and were a light double-boot, with a re-movable reflectorized liner. the outerwas full-grain leather, and it had the nor-mal norwegian welt, and speed-lace andhook lacing arrangement. it came out justat the onset of the plastic boot age, andto borrow a term from another industry,it was a last-gasp leather mountaineer-ing boot, made with the best materialsand every crafty trick a boot cobblercould throw at a boot in an effort to sur-vive and stay relevant as the plastic ski-boot style mountaineering boots wereadvancing in force.

Rei blew them out at $3.93 per pair, nolimit per person, and there were guyswalking around with four and five pairstacked in their arms over their heads, as-sorted ballpark sizes. it made us employ-ees livid to see day hikers and car campersscamper to the register with armloads ofthe finest mountaineering boots of theirday, at $3.93 a pair. i am ashamed to say ibought a pair, but only to rescue themfrom somebody far less likely to needthem than i. Keep in mind that this wasbefore ebay, so the chances of resellingthem was slim. how this incident fits inwith this editorial is unclear to me, but itseems to fit.

i remember a 60-Minutes story severalyears ago about nordstroms return pol-icy, also famously lenient. it was rumoredthat you could return something to nord-strom that you didnt even buy there.this was tested and proved correct, andin the show, as i recall, the 60M reporterwas interviewing the return departmentperson, who acknowledged that she knewthe thing wasnt bought there, but thatwas oK, she wanted to satisfy the cus-tomer.

our policy is to treat you the way wedlike well, its pretty much goldenRule-like. everybody who works here hasthe authority to do what it takes to han-dle your problem without checking withanybody else. it doesnt come up a lot,but just so you know, thats the deal. still,if you didnt buy it here, you cant returnit here. i think that would be doing youand your circle of contacts in the future adisservice.

We regularly write or say that we dontlike carbon forks, because weve seen toomany of them shatter and snap. anythingcan break, and not all breaks point to de-fects. the concept of wearing thingsout has fallen out of favor in the pastcouple of decades, but it used to be com-mon.

When something breaks you have tolook at the reasons and the conse-quences, and the repairability of it. Wevehad dropouts break on our bikes. theyarent defective dropouts. they are well-brazed. but sometimes riding puts a lit-tle too much stress on a place that wasntsuper reinforced, and a crack developsand grows over time-many months, al-waysuntil the dropout suddenlybreaks. and it breaks where dropoutshave broken for scores. its always theright side dropout, just behind the chain-stay.

hindsight is a good teacher, and wevemade small changes that reduce thechances of this happening to virtuallyzero, but now and then one breaks, and ablogger puts it on the web, and it makesme sad, and we take care of it. the fix isnot difficult, and the fixed dropout isstronger than the new one. but it is abummer.

at least it is not a life-threatening bum-mer, or an unrepairable one. in a pinch,in any town of 400 or more people, thereis somebody who can weld the steel backgood enough to last another 10,000 milesor so. the same cannot be said of lessermaterials.

Many years ago friend henry Kingmanwas riding an old steel mountain bike inthe afghanistanish mountains of nevada,five or so miles from town (as i recall hetold me), when his fork, which had an un-usual stress riser about three inches downfrom the top of the crown, broke. it did-nt suddenly go until it suddenly went, buthenry hadnt noticed the crack. What-everhe was in the true blue boonieswith a broken steel fork. this was beforecell phones, but he might not have hadcoverage anyway, and anyway at the timehe was living with his mother, and wouldyour mother be able to help you if youwere stuck five miles from a paved road?

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henry found a stout stick of the rightdiameter, and stuck the stick down thebroken-off lower portion of the forkblade, and then stuck the sticking outpart of the stick into the upper stub ofthe blade still joined to the crown, andmade it out fine without duct tape or bail-ing wire. Who among us doesnt wish weddone that? not me. i do, for sure, but imnot sure id have thought of that. i thinki would have, but im only 70-30. ourforks lack the feature that made that hap-pen, so ill never know, but i think its awonderful story, and henrys not a blabbybraggart, so im happy to tell it for him.

Most of you are aware of the bill andMelinda gates Foundation, which, iveheard, donates more money to charitythan the entire u.s. government does.thats a great way to be rich, i think. Ru-pert Murdoch, inspired by the gatesFoundation, has upped his contributionsa lot, too. and googles sergy brin seemsto be following. Wouldnt it be nice to bein that position?

and wouldnt it be difficult to be a par-ent when you have so much familymoney? im not saying it would be bad, orthat money rules out raising good chil-dren. of course it doesnt. but it changesthe game some, im sure.

Picking charities is not that hard; cross-ing them off your list is the hard part.there is an organization, i think its nameis Charity navigator, that evaluates theefficiency of various charities; an efficientone being one that gives a high percent-age of the take to the cause, as opposedto paying the staff a lot and having just alittle left over for the children or women,or whomever. We think hard about theorganizations we give money to. theretruly are so many good ones, and pleasedont send in your personal favorite. iknow its every bit as worthy, and yet, ifwe were to give to it, wed be taking awayfrom one of our other five. the CarterCenter is the biggest one, and is alsofunded by the bill and Melinda gatesFoundation, which dwarfs our contribu-tions ($2,000 or so). but the Carter Cen-ter, even if big, tackles small,unglamorous, ugly tasks that no othergroups take on, and they get in there

quick, are effective immediately, and de-serve everybodys support.

We give to Mercy Corps and somalyMam Foundation and nepalese youthopportunity Foundation, anti-sexualslavery organizations in asia, and com-bined, its about $6,000 to these three.

one of the charities we give to is smiletrain, the cleft palate surgery people, thepeople who place those ads with the biggrids of twisted-lipped children. last year,a documentary on smile traincalledsmile Pinkywon the oscar. its only 39minutes long, and you should see it,somehow. anyway, we donate about$2,500 a year to smile train, and this yearwere trying to supplement that by do-nating 100 percent of the profits fromsales of smile train t-shirts and flyingdiscs (think Frisbee, except theyre madein the u.s. by discraft). it costs $250 persurgery. imagine if you had a horrendouscleft palate and no money to get it fixed,and your family was shunned because thelocals thought you were cursed by godwith the funny mouth. so, $250 to fixonenot a bad deal, and when the shirtsand discs come in, please buy one.

i know many of you read the new yorktimes, because im often emailed storiesfrom it. i get it online and on driveway,and it is a simple pleasure in my life.about three years ago there was a shortpiece in it written by book author harlanCoben, called Will Play For Food.sometimes we pay to reprint previouslypublished stories (daniel steel, Wendellberry, ian Frazier and others have been inthe Reader), and i really wanted WillPlay For Food, too. but the price forreprints had increased oer the years from$150 to $250, and i offered $200 and theydidnt go for it, so its not in the Reader,but you can read it anyway online fornothing. google harlan Coben, WillPlay For Food. it appeared on october27, 2006, new york times, and you canfind it both on harlan Cobens site or theny times site. its a shortie, and even$200 seemed extravagant for it, but itscertainly worth your time to find it.times have changed, for sure.

nicholas Kristof is a nyt columnistyou must like if you read him, and will like

if you havent but start to. he writes a lotor mainly about hard life in third Worldcountries, but with hope. he finds andwrites about heroic people helping thesad sacks, and theres always a link to asite where you can learn more and donatemoney. of course all over charitable do-nations are off, and im sure that nicholasKristof s columns help them. a late oc-tober column was about fistulas in africa.heres fistula: a 13 to 14 year old girl getspregnant before her hips are wideenough, so during birth, the emergingbaby damages her down there, and as a re-sult a hole forms between her vagina andher anus (sorry if this is too graphic). soshe leaks feces and urine and stinks all thetime. naturally the entire community fig-ures god has cursed her, so they shun herand she lives a sad and lonely life, maybebeing cared for by a mother or somebodywho just cant let her go.

to find the story, go to nyt.com andsearch new life for the Pariahs. it wasthe halloween day column. there aregood links in it, including one to ayoutube video which tells the story of awoman who has a third-grade education,but is now a fistula-repair surgeon. a fis-tula repair takes only about twenty min-utes. thats about as worthwhile as atwenty minute time span gets.

i know what it feels like to read thirdhand accounts about these kinds ofthings. the writer seems to be horning inon the worthy deeds just by passing onthe information, like hes part of the goodpart. im not part of the good part, buthere we have this bike business, and busi-ness is hard, fair to good, not good togreat, and it all has to do with what thebusiness means and what its supposed todo.

Many of you have lost your jobs or hadyour hours cut, and its normal these days,and still sad. We havent had to cut any-bodys hours or jobs yet, but some of yousometimes ask, and yes, the economy isaffecting us, too. and the weak dollar,which i oft whine about online. it feelslike Koufax is the exchange rate and gib-son is the economy, and we have to betony gwynn to even bat .275, and some-

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her texthoefler text is an antiqua font designed

for the computer age. originally

developed for apple in 1991 by Jonathan

hoefler its one of the first fonts to

incorporate and encourage the use of

complex typography for use on computer

screens. hoefler has been included in

every version of Mac os since system 7.5,

is used in the Wikipedia logo, and is the

official font of obamas whitehouse.gov.

in designing this baroque-inspired text,

hoefler took advantage of apples

advanced typography which allows

automatic ligatures (Judo-Chriian

aliated golalls), sMall CaPitals, and

swashes (ivendell Reader). hoefler text

also features old-style figures, meaning

that numbers can have acscenders (like

6,8), descenders (like 3,4,5,7,9), or none

(0,1,2). 0123456789 as opposed to the all-

caps 0123456789 of helvetica. Weve

tried to use these features conservatively

throughout Rivendell Reader 42, without

going overboard.

1. editorial

5. Mail letters

6. establishing limits. someopinions

7. herschel's broken Crank

8. electronic shifting

9. broken spokes & Wobbly Wheels

10. goofing around With bikes

11. Freddie hoffman

15. Richard schwinn & Freddiehoffman

16. the Make-do Mechanic

18. blogs & beausage

19. Cars, helmets, Fido

20. a Modern Presidential history ofthe Road bike

21. eric Karo's netsket & nanniers

22. alaska to argentina 1973 by Junesiple

37. too big bike and a Wooden toptube

38. Waterbury leather Works

41. Chainstays, sidewalls & triangles

42. Corner like a triangle

44. Re-perking saggy saddles

46. sackville barsack

47. shimano's new 9-speed, don'tbrake with Rocks

48. Roadside debris

49. new 650b tires

50. the Roadeo

51. shimmy shimmy Coco bop

52. six Poems

56. silver shifter Washers & anasymmetrical Rig

57. bag Rigging and Cycling shoes

58. two of Mark's bikes

59. strangest bike incident

60. two scooters

61. Kickbikes

62. speculation about the Future ofbike Parts

63. how to not get Fat & Make yourFamily hate Riding

64. steel Replacement Forks

65. Who Rides a betty?

66. Who Rides a homer?

67. Who Rides a sam?

68. the only Cyclist in town byMaynard hershon

69. twenty dollars, two tubes and aCoffee by Maynard hershon

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times were gus triandoswhich isntbad, im a gus triandos fan, but come on.

lets see..what else is happening? theRoadeo is pronounced rodeo, and de-spite what you may think, calling it thatdoesnt glorify animal cruelty. its not bull-fighting, and the deo at the end may belatin for god, but not in this context.the Roadeo is a road bike, and thats justa descriptive and easy to say name with abit of flair at the end. this spring we havesome new bikes coming around, and asthings settle down and solidify, well spellout the details on the site.

this editorial is the ramblingest oneever and wont be repeated. the Readerplan from the start was four issues a year,but it hasnt worked out that way. theplan this year is to tighten up and bemore regular, Reader-wise. Congratula-

tions, i think, if you read this sectionend-to-end. the main thing: look intothe Fistula story. Find that youtube videoof the surgeon lady with the third-gradeeducation. Well, here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2005/06/12/opinion/20050612_Fis-tula_audioss.html

------

i recently visited my oldest daughter,whos away at college, and i had a fewminutes to kill one morning, and therewas a big covered outside bike parkingarea, so i thought id take a survey. hereswhat i found:

total bikes: 124total steel bikes: 62, exactly 50%total lugged bikes: 26 (21%)total of our bikes: 1 (a Rambouillet)

i know its because they were boughtcheap, not because the college kids likedthe slender proportions and the underly-ing toughness, but it even so, it was goodto see 30- and 40-year old bikes still inservice. todays $6500 carbon bikes wontbe still in use even in six years. theirlegacy will be landfill, until somebody fig-ures out how to recycle carbon fiber. di-vide the cost by years of use. divide thecost by years of safe use. divide the costby the risk. Multiply that by pi and divideby four.

What will fill the campus bike racks in2040? some surlys, for sure. now andthen a betty Foy, a sam, and someplace,in some campus rack, theres bound to bean a hilsen, a hillborne, atlantis, bom-badil, Roadeo, and so on.

grant

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To sell or use?theres that great free-market legend

that the market is a perfect engine, that itwill efficiently produce what the greatestnumber of people most want and need.that isnt true, of course, for one simplereason: Most products in the consumereconomy are not designed to be used,theyre designed to be sold. its a bit likethe fact that evolution has efficientlyeliminated most fatal childhood diseasesbut not the common diseases of old age:because evolution is only interested upuntil the point of reproduction.

once they do, it hardly matters if theyget heart disease or dementia later on.similarly, the overpowering focus of prod-uct creation only goes up to one very im-portant point: the point at which theconsumer forks over his or her money.

People argue that customer satisfactionand service are also important, yaddayadda, but the point from the sellers per-spective is that they just dont want cus-tomers with bad experiences and lowsatisfaction polluting future sales. Pureproducers actually hate things like wordof mouth, because it can subvert their ef-forts to make the sale to others. a goodexample is the movie industry, which hasgone to herculean extremes to aVoidword-of-mouththeyve structured theirbusiness so that they can control thebuzz by constructing artificial buzz inadvance of release (prerelease promotion)and then doing half the pictures businessin the first weekend or two, avoiding thenegative effects of word-of-mouth andensuring a certain level of return on in-vestment. never mind if anyone likes themovie or if its a piece of crap.

Rivendell is an interesting business, be-cause youre both producer (and seller) ofbikes and also a connoisseur of biking.

normally, those two impulses are almostopposites. in your case youve done whatsome small sellers do and tried to enlistyour connoisseurship in the service ofyour sales, by educating your consumer,soliciting his or her trust, and transpar-ently looking out for his or her post-pur-chase satisfaction. its not the best modelfor sales, although its much more ethicalin the long run and no doubt much moresatisfying for the connoisseur side of yournature.

of course the bicycle industry as awhole couldnt care less, except insofar asits composed of small connoisseurs,which it is to some extent. i mean, whichwould the industry rather have:

a bike which is 50% more likely to selland then 50% more likely to sit in thepurchasers garage unused; or

a bike which is 50% less likely to sellbut 50% more likely to be ridden and en-joyed after it has sold?

some people like to argue the meta-view, which is that its good for the indus-try in the long term to turn a pedes-trian/driver into a cycling enthusiast. andof course it is. but thats not somethingthe industry can reasonably focus on.theres no way to track the benefit. that,and the fact that the benefit is intolera-bly diffuse: turning a pedestrian into a cy-clist doesnt reward any one companysefforts to do so, it just rewards the bicy-cling industry altogether. industries liter-ally kill themselves all the time. a goodexample of what happens when long-termeffects are ignored is the high-end stereomarket, where the interests of an increas-ingly smaller pool of increasingly exclu-sive dealers and producers have conspiredto choke the whole broader enterpriselike a mad strangler. its both funny andpathetic to read a stereo magazine in

which a forlorn editorial plaint about thedeath of the high end sits cheek-by-jowlwith a review of a $66,000 Cd player. itslike a giant 2 + 2 = ? its a subject that fas-cinates me. Mike Johnston, Wisconsin

The Point of Sufficiencyi thought for sure i'd already written a

post called "the Point of sufficiency," buta search doesn't turn it up, and i can'tseem to find it under another name. so ithought perhaps i should just write itagain, at the risk of repeating myself. thiswas triggered by one of eolake's com-ments to the "high iso high noon"post, in which he said that when it comesto iso speed, we always want a littlemore, and then a little more.

that's trueuntil it's not.the idea is one that i've at least men-

tioned many times, for instance here. it'sthat in the history of photographic equip-ment and materials there have been vari-ous "competitions" or "races" to seewhich company can provide themost/fastest/best, but then in most casesa point of sufficiency is reached and cus-tomers decline to pay for further im-provements.

this happened with film formats (filmbasically got down to 35mm size, whichwas small and convenient enoughfur-ther efforts to popularize still smaller for-mats all failed); lens speed (/1.4 wasdeemed sufficient by the market, withfurther increases in maximum aperturebeing rare and not especially popular*);telephoto reach (the "olympia sonnar"for the 1936 olympics was a widely ad-mired and popular achievement, but now,1000mm and 1200mm lenses are merecuriosities); shutter speed (consider thatthe nikon n8008's 1/8000th shutterspeed was a big selling point, but the Mi-

Ma i l le t t e R sMail is mainly email and gets answered promptly. Some questions are of general interest, but most are, Heresmy situation, lend a hand? which were happy to do, always, forever, lets get that straight. Our letters areoften off-topic, but have something to say thats worth sharing. The first of the first two letters here was a real letter. The second was a post on theonlinephotographer.com,my downtime hangout. Its repeated here because it is relevant to bikes, too. Both are written by Mike John-ston, the online photographer at theonlinephotographer. Grant

nolta 9xi's 1/12000th was met with ayawn); fine grain in b&W films(Panatomic-X was enough; only a fewfanatics followed the tech Pan craze);reducing the size of slRs was a briefrace in the '70s (the Pentax Me wassmall enough); even build quality incameras and lenses (the current marketsupportsbarelyone carriage-tradebrand. beyond that, better build qual-ity has not been rewarded with sales).

and so on.note that this is not a technical mat-

terit's a marketing matter. it has to

do with meeting the need for what peo-ple want for as long as enough of us arewilling to pay for it. the trend is for therace to continue among the manufac-turers for as long as the buying public isrewarding the improvements. butsooner or later the buying public haswhat it needs, and has had enough, andstops wanting to pay for further im-provements, and the manufacturers(save perhaps for one or two nicheproducts in each case) basically give upthe chase, and go try to find some otheridea that will sell.

My prediction (which i've mentionedmany times) is that this will happenwith iso speed in dslRs, too, andwith megapixels in bayer-array sensorsof the current type**. i don't knowwhere the end point of either will turnout to be, and i don't know whether wehave arrived at those points yet (is 24MP enough? is iso 12,800 enough?),but history predicts that sooner or later,you will have enough and won't want topay more for more.

Mike Johnston

How many rear cogs?

Racing doesnt answer this, be-cause racers are paid to ridewhat they ride. theyre up toten, eleven...nutty. For normalriders, seven is plenty, but un-available. so stop at 8 or 9. nomore. no double-digits.

How light a road bike?

twenty wispy pounds, andthen only if you live for yourfast club rides. even that in-volves some compromises, butnot necessarily any dangerousones. For non-clubbies, dontworry about weight. Period.

How expensive a bike?

Pinarello has a $17,000 bike.there are scores of $6,500bikes. theyre ridden lightlyand replaced soon, making thecost-per-year about $2K. theprice becomes the status. its aweird world out there.

How many bikes?

seven is good. a beater, abomber, a single-speed, a tour-ing bike, a lightish road bike, ado-all racked and bagged bike,a mixte, a loaner, and a work inprogress. seven? Make it nine.

How many miles, or hours?

if youre single, unattached,working full-time, and its sum-mer: twelve hours a week,dont count the miles. Married,children, job, winter in Min-nesota or north dakota: threehours a week. do other stuff.

How much touring weight?

Weekend tour: 30lb.

Weeklong tour: 45lb

Month-long tour: 46lb

in wet weather: add 5 to 7lb.

Carry more if you want tobutyou dont need to. unless youneed to carry water.

How hard the tires?if you dont race: 70 psi.

if the tire needs more thanthat to keep from bottomingout, its too skinny. Want to becomfy, want long-lastingwheels? Ride fatter, softer.

How skinny the tire?

even racers stop at 23mm, andother than maybe some worldrecord attempt on the track,theres no reason for anythingskinnier. non-world record at-tempters should ride one sizebigger than the smallest sizetheyre comfortable with.

How few the spokes?

anything less than 28 is imliving in fantasy land land. ifyou weigh 200 to 215, 32 frontand 36 rear is your min. overthat, 36 both, and wide rims,big soft tires.

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es ta b l i s h i n g l i M i t s. so M e o P i n i o n s.

Heres the backside of the crank. The frontside

has the bike brand on it, and its not the bike

brands fault (wasnt one we sell, by the way),

so were just showing this side.

he R s C h e ls bRo K e n CR a n K, no t on e We se l lyou can look high & low till the cows come you know where & hell freezes you know what, before finding a bet-ter example of a fatigue failure.

The bright area is the overload zone; the dark is

the fatigue zonedark because during the months it

took to do this, crud had time to get in there and

make it dirty. You can see how the lower right corner

(marked by the arrow)darkened by exposure

cracked before the whole arm ripped apart.

Same break, mating faces

When people look at a broken window, they blame the

rock-thrower or the ball-hitter, not the window-maker.

When bike parts break, they blame the part, not the rider,

or not the circumstances. theres this notion out there

that no part that costs good money should ever break, but

of course perfectly good parts do, sometimes after years of

normal use, sometimes in an accident, and sometimes

(rarely) because theyre defective.

a failure analysis expert can almost always determine

why something broke and where the break originated, and

how long ago it all happened. Metal doesnt separate with-

out writing down its history in the cross section of the

failed piece.

herschel W. was riding along and didnt notice that hiscrank was cracked. For months he didnt notice, and dur-ing that time, the broken surfaces rubbed against one an-other, dulling the surfaces. the gap between the surfacesincreased, and the months provided the time for dirt andoxidation to discolor the metal.

When the crack had grown sufficiently, the crankcracked anew at point X in the upper left photo. enoughtime elapsed for this to dirty, and all the while, the maincrack was growing. eventually the rest of the crank could-nt shoulder the load, and it ripped apart suddenly, leavingbright, clean, crystals in the cross section.

to herschel, it seemed to happen all of a sudden, but thecrank says otherwise, and herschel understands.

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ust because something has beentried and found unreliable beforedoesnt mean it shouldnt be triedagain. if that were the case, your

next cross-country business trip would beon horseback. no, make that on foot.no, make that a mix of lying on yourback and flailing like an infant, androlling.

so dont rule out electronic shifting justbecause suntour (in partnership withbrowning) and Mavic swung and missedat it in the 90s. i rode them boththesuntour/browning for about 20 days, andthe Mavic, about 300 yards. after about aweek of riding (15 hours?) it shifted when-ever it felt like it. the Mavic worked finefor a few laps of the bstone parking lot,but others must have had problems, be-cause it didnt last. no doubt shimanoknows those failures inside and out, andlearned from them.

by the time you read this, you may alsohave read glowing reviews of shimanossystem. it is one thing to bet against alast-gasp suntour effort to stay alive. itsa similar thing to bet against a French ef-fort to get an electronic drive train tomarket quick. but youd have to be a nutto bet against shimanos entry, given thattheyve been working on it for well over adecade, with fear of failure and a huge cul-tural-based fear of loss of face at stake.

on one hand, i want it to succeed, be-causebeing a normal person, i want the

vaulter to stick the landing, and the jug-gler to keep on catching the firey batonswhile hes riding the giraffe-like unicycle.When shimanos electronics succeed, itwill have earned all that applause by mak-ing the first ever commercially successfuland reliable electronic shifting.

but heres the thing you knew was com-ing. im afraid of the consequences of atotally glitch-free shimano electronicsuccess. shimano has always trickleddown high-end technology to everythingelse. then everybody else follows shi-mano, and the next thing you know its aworld with no manual/cable shifting. yes,that would be bad.

electronic shifting, to virtually every-body except the developers, is a secret in-side a black box. every time somethinggoes into a black box, it becomes less ac-cessible, understandable, and scarier. ifyoure walking on the moor and yourshoelace comes untied, you can fix it. ifyoure driving along the moor and yourcar breaks down and you know as muchabout cars as i do, youre out of luck. youget the picture.

granted, if you dont know anythingabout bikes and you shift into the spokes,youre also out of luck. but at least youcan see wuzzup, and when you can see it,your brain kicks into gear.

theres no equivalent with electronics.if electronic shifting were a revolution-

ary boon to all, that would be one thing.

but shimanos own cable shifting is soeasy and so good that theres no room fora boon. For there to be room, the benefithas to be huge. Were the first electricwindshield wipers a boon? id say yes.Was the first snowplow? yes again. thefirst elevator? (Consider skyscrapers andpeople in wheelchairs, not just the lazy).yes. and dont lets even talk about thefirst flush toilet.

but what about the electric can-open-ers, vegetable chopper, and carvingknives? in a one-handed world, theyre aZeus-send. in a two-handed world, theydowngraded to conveniences.

Racers will use electronic shifting andwin on it. but what if the second placefinisher is on manual, and electronic shift-ing actually gave the winner an advantage.Was it a fair contest?

at best, successful and totally reliableelectronic shifting is racer and racing-dri-ven race-bike progress. Mostly, riding abike is pedaling, not shifting. at its recre-ational best, its joy rides with friends.electronic shifting wont increase the funof that, and cable-shifting doesnt detractfrom it. all in all, i hope shimano doesntgive up cables. shimano, please dont giveup cables. (i know nobody at shimanoreads this, and all in all, i give cables adecade, but im an optimist.)

el e C t Ro n i C sh i F t i n g

stRuggles aRe bad. easy is good. is too easy Possible?

J

People have been on the warpathagainst work ever since one of the earlyhomos (habilus, erectus) figured outsharp rocks were useful. From thosestone tools (which lets see you makeone in 2010!) have come the washboardand the washing machine, the abacusand the computer chip, the bicycle it-self and now the electronic shifter. dothe slope lines for ease and progressever cross? if im photographingyosemite rocks on an overcast day, ican use the manualest, meterlessest

camera in the land and get good expo-sures. if im shooting Miesha wearing abeanie for the website and the photohas to go up in five minutes, i use apoint-and-shoot digital.

shifting gears in the 70s meant eas-ing up on the pedal stroke and timingthe shift to take at the weak spot.sounds hard, but it was a cinch. index-ing was even easier, until it failed.eletro-shifting lowers the bar evenmore. its now under the surface. isthat low enough?

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28 292 243.6 215.6 8.6/7.6

32 292 278.4 246.4 9.8/8.7

36 292 313.2 277.2 11/9.8

pokes dont break as much as theydid in the 70s and earlier, becausespokes got much better in the

80s, and spoke failures plummeted in-stantly. but not all spokes are good andnot all wheels are well-built, and spokesstill break. i havent broken one in 20years, but ive broken more than 20, andi still see & hear about snappin spokes.

you have to know whats going on inthe wheel. the left- and right-side spokesplay tug-o-war with the rim, and as longas the hub has the same number ofspokes on each side, and the tension isbalanced (no slackers, no ultra muscle-men), the wheel will run true. one looseslacker or broken spoke upsets the bal-ance and causes a wobble. on the road,you can fix the wobble by loosening acouple of spokes on one side and tighten-ing some on the other in the area of thewobble, but who carries a spoke wrench?and if you arent a semi-maestro with thespoke wrench, youll surely do more harmthan good. so you cant just pack awrench and think youre good to go.

a wobbly wheel can shake the bike, andif the wobble is huge, you wont be ableto ride the wheel. on top of that, onebroken spoke leads to more spoke break-ages, unless you fix it. a wobbly wheelcauses jerky braking. (that may seem tobe an argument for disc brakes, but it isnot. disc brakes have their drawbacks,too.)

How rims stiffness affects wobblethe lighter the rim, the fewer the

spokes, the greater the spoke tension, themore magnificent the wobble. a heavy,wide rim is more likely to be laterally stiff,and a stiff rim isnt thrown out of whackas much as a light one. When a brokenspoke is part of the picture, touring rimsdo better than light racing rims.

How spoke count affects wobblethe more spokes the less dramatic the

wobble when one breaks. and on thatnote, when the load is shared by morespokes, youre less likely to break one inthe first place. all things equal, thesmaller the distance between spokes, thesmaller the wobble when a spoke breaks.

How spoke tension affects wobblethe higher the spoke tension, the big-

ger the wobble when one breaks. on topof that, the fewer the spokes the greaterthe tension requirements to make astrong wheel. thats why 20-spoke wheelsare a bad idea.

How rim size affects wobblea smaller rim is laterally stiffer. its

harder to twist. and for a given numberof spokes, the smaller rim has a shorterspoke-to-spoke distance than a larger rim.With the same cross-section, a 32-hole650b rim is stronger than a 36-hole 700crim; and an even smaller 26-inch rim isstronger still. thats not a case forsmaller wheelsother consideration

trump the difference in wheel strengthbut it is a fact nonetheless.

Why do spokes break, and is thereanything you can do to prevent it?they break from fatigue. Fatigue comes

from flex. Flex comes from looseness andstress. Most decent spokes break, whenthey break, at the bend where they gointo the hub. a less obvious bend, onlynow and then but often enough to men-tion, is where it exits the spoke nipple.sometimes the nipple doesnt seat well,and you get a bend there.

Modern steel spokes are about a thou-sand times better and stronger than thespokes of yore. Modern hollow carbonspokes arent good.

Protecting your spokes & wheelsRide softer tires, which absorb stresses

before they reach the spokes. softer usu-ally means bigger usually means widerrim, and then you have all of these factorsin your favor.

Conservative recommendationsRide the widest rims you can tolerate,

with as many spokes as you can stand, andprotect the rim with the biggest softesttire your frame will fit.

last Words on Spoken Brokestheyre not a big deal, and its some-

thing every rider should experience atleast once. theyre easy to replace; thewheel is easily restored to new-like con-dition, and off you go again, smoothly.

bRo K e n sP o K e s & th e i R Wo b b ly Wh e e l s

s

sit down on a chair and lean yourtorso forward 25 degrees, so thattheres about a 65-deg angle betweenyour thigh and your orso. now pullup your shirt and look at your belly. ifit looks like something youd behappy to display on your bellybookpage, then the following spoke-weight information may be useful toyou. otherwise, it is purely academic,but theres nothing wrong with thatevery now and then.

ad d i t i o n a l no t e s o n sP o K e s & We i g h t

# of spokes How long mm 14ga. plain 14 ga. butted Oz. per wheel

the weights assume brass nipples. you save an ounce a wheel with each four-spokesubtraction.. but as you go to fewer spokes, the spokes get longer, saving you lessweight; and fewer spokes creates less wind drag; but with more spokes, the spokesdraft one another better. this is a problem with this kind of meaningless detail. thenonsense kicks in and it can go on forever. if you simply want strong, reliable wheels,youll simply ride more spokes, heavier rims, and bigger & softer tires.

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the longest stems in history were the 17cm Ritcheys, madein the early 90s for mountain bikes. the longest road stemive heard of is a 14cm Cinelli, another available but not pop-ular length. the normal range of road stems is 8cm to 12cm,and the big sellers here are 8cm to 10cm.

the most common want is an easier reach to the drop han-dlebar. a shorter stem is the most common way (but not nec-essarily the most effective way) to get it. if that doesnt work,a sweepy-back bar, such as the albatross certainly will (inwhich case, use a longer stem).

stems affect handling, but how much, and under what cir-cumstances, and can they wreck handling or improve it? thisis a good question. When you ride drop bars on super longstems, beyond 12cm, the bike steers funny, kind of slow (myopinion, since its a feel thing). i used to think super shortstems quickened steering, but the 7cm stem on my hillbornecertainly doesnt make it too quick, so i just dont know.

ex-framebuilder dave Moulton once said, at least i thinkhe did, that he thought the brake levers on a bike should bedirectly above the front hub; and this was typically bestachieved with a 9cm stem. Maybe the size of the bike affectsit. i wondered how a bike would feel with a reverse stem onit, so Jay here set up this ol schwinn high sierra that way.

the handling is normal. the bars are too close for me, buti could ride fifty miles like this, because it feels less odd thanit looks. it makes me want to experiment more, but its atime-consuming experiment.

this may come in handy for somebody, and in any case, itis nice to know that reversing the stem to bring the barscloser doesnt guarantee odd handling. i suppose if you hadsuper long legs and a short torso and arms and wanted drophandlebars and couldnt afford a custom bike and didnt mindwell-meaning strangers pointing out the mistake in set-up,then this might be a solution. as it is, i think its just inter-esting to know that it causes no harm.

gooFing aRound With biKes:

ReVeRsing the steM

This Schwinn High Sierra (modi-fied) rode fine with a normal bar,but when we mounted drops on ashort (DirtDrop 8cm) reversedstemit still rides fine. It seems itshouldnt. Physics can probablyprove that it cant. and yet it does.

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a typical american cyclist rides when its convenient for his orher schedule, and usually just on the weekends with friends. theequipment is often new, serviced by the local bike shop. dis-cussion centers around work, family, bills to pay, vacations taken,the economy, and politics.

For Freddie hoffman, the bicycle is more important. its al-most all he has. the 51-year-old janitor from River edge, newJersey was born oxygen deprived, and as a consequence, sufferedsevere learning and basic compre-hension loss. local educators wrotehim off as a lost cause, but it was hismothers determination to teachher son how to speak, walk, read,and enjoy a quality of life many takefor granted. she was his advocate.

Ruth elizabeth hoffmans dedica-tion to Freddie included the gift ofa tricycle when he was five, and thedark haired child immediately setoff on a path that would not onlysave his life, it would later gain himaccess to all lower 48 united statesand meetings with more than 30state governors.

but it took him a million miles toget there first. this is Freddie hoffmans story.

life SaverFreddie, one of two children, was a social outcast in every

sense of the ugly label. he never had a friend come to his houseafter school, never enjoyed a sleep over, never dated a girl, norenjoyed the childhood like most of us did. the bicycle was hisoutlet, and his five-year-old legs intuitively carried him the thirdof a mile around his tear-dropped new Jersey neighborhood, upto 15 miles a day, according to his logbook. hes kept meticuloustrack of his daily mileage in a several dog-eared notebooks. hemay have a one-track mind, but his ironclad attention to detailis astounding, as is his endurance.

he racked up 3,000 by the time he was 7 years old, graduatingto a schwinn stingRay. he did his first century when he was 10,proceeding to do 18 more that year.

in time, his legs, lungs and heart were conditioned like an eliteathletes, but his mind was still abnormal, a condition hes ac-cepted.

he learned how to maintain his own bike at an early age, froma father who worked in the automotive repair business after

wrenching on airplanes during World War ii. Freddie is quiteproud of his late father, who was strict but fair. the elder hoff-man was part of the team which installed the turbo boosters onb-25 Mitchell airplanes for Jimmy doolittles infamous doolit-tle Raid on Japan in 1942. While Freddies mother was the onewho worked hard to help him read, write and run, Freddies fa-ther gave him wings to fly, allowing the youngster to venture outbeyond their River edge neighborhood.

Freddies herculean efforts on thebicycle didnt go unnoticed in cy-cling mad new Jersey. Mike Fraysse,who was team manager of the 1976and 1984 olympic cycling teams,gave Freddie two Paris-sports bicy-cles, one for criterium racing andone for the track. the former racersaw potential in the young cyclist,and encouraged Freddie to race.

Without any formal training,Freddie finished third in his firstroad race, but his slower way of pro-cessing things and one-track minddidnt mesh with the need to judge arace situation as it unfolds. soFraysse suggested time trialing.

Freddie and his father drove to Wisconsin in 1985 for the unitedstates Cycling Federation (usCF) national time trial champi-onships, where Freddie finished ninth behind Kent bostick. hestill has the yellow road bike and blue track bike in his new Jer-sey basement.

To the Moon and BackMost of the world watched neil armstrong land on the moon

on July 20, 1969. Freddie was captivated by that moment, andwas determined to pedal the equivalent mileage between theearth and moon 239,592 miles each way on his bicycle. For 17years he rode for himself, compiling mileage that would hum-ble eddy Merckx or any pro racer whos ever lived.

as Freddies bicycle trips gained distance, it was important todo proper planning and map them out. he used basic esso gasstation maps, always taking the roads less traveled to reach hisdestination, a practice he uses today.

then his world turned upside down in 1986, the year hismother, Ruth e., died from leukemia.

Freddie felt indebted to his mother, and wanted to honor hermemory in the only way he knew how, by riding his bike. he or-

FReddie hoFFMan

Pe da l i n g F o R ot h e R s, Pe da l i n g F o R h i s li F eby Gary Boulanger

Cyclers can be divided into those who know about Freddie Hoffman and those who dont. We covered him many

many issues ago, and it was time for an update. Gary knows Freddie, and was the right guy for the job. Grant

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ganized a solo fundraising ride with allproceeds going to the leukemia & lym-phoma society, Freddie style.

he worked as a custodian for a localchurch, and had flexibility in his workschedule. attempts to work in local bikeshops only led to failure because mostshop owners couldnt handle his slow andmethodical work style. in the late winterand spring, he would ride his bike up-wards of 15,000 miles, going door-to-door, collecting pledges for miles riddenon trips westward. he christened his bi-cycle Ruth e., and rode west.

his mileage during the 1980s was colos-sal: nearly 507,000 miles. that amounts

to nearly 139 miles perday. he caught the at-tention of local televi-sion stations in theearly 1990s, rightaround the time themovie Forrest gumpwas popular. by then,Freddie resembledthe actor gary sinise,who played lieu-tenant dan in themovie, as video takenfrom that era shows.his new Jersey ac-cent, coupled with

an occasional stutter and almost elmerFudd lilt, made him an endearing hero tomany, but his solo effort continued, andhis fame didnt really spread beyond newJersey or his local leukemia & lym-phoma society chapter. Freddie rode on,continuing to rack up the mileage, whileraising an average of $25,000 a year forthe chapter.

The BikesFreddie customized his bike to fit his

needs. eschewing a standard road posi-tion and something hes not deviatedfrom since he modified his bike withsteel Wald swept-back touring bars, front

and rear racks with panniers, horns, gen-erator lights, bar-end shifters, black foammattress touring saddle, fenders, and agaggle of gadgets on the bars, includingthe same Japanese odometer hes usedsince his stingRay days.

sitting nearly stock straight, Freddieslegs propel his bike weighing upwards of100 pounds with necessary gear to rideacross the country self supported with aspin Polish cycling coach eddie bory-sewicz (eddie b.) called the smoothesthes ever seen. this, from a man whoscoached greg leMond, Rebecca twiggand a host of superstar cyclists.

in the summer of 1994, the head tubecracked on Freddies schwinn Voyageur Ruth e. ii (see sidebar). he calledRichard schwinn, co-owner of WaterfordPrecision Cycles in southeastern Wiscon-sin and this chance meeting led to a Wa-terford sponsorship. Waterford build hima stout frame to carry his stout body andstout, 100-pound load. For three decades,hes ridden these miles with 100 lbs.

in 1996, Freddie showed up at the Wa-terford factory, where i was working asRivendells production coordinator. achainstay on Freddies bike needed repair.i, like many, had never heard of Freddie,who was referred to as 50,000-a-yearFreddie by then. grant asked me to graba quick interview, which appeared in anearly Rivendell Reader. i, like Richardand the others at the factory, were equallyimpressed and perplexed with this newJersey cyclist with a memory like an en-cyclopedia. We said goodbyes as Freddierolled off west.

a Million MilesFreddie pedaled his millionth mile in

last Chance, Colorado on august 8, 1996.he was alone, as he has been for morethan 45 years as a cyclist. his accom-plishments have garnered personal acco-lades from Presidents bush and Clinton,30-plus governors, and a legion of fans,thanks to articles in Bicycling.

but Freddie never set out on this jour-ney for himself. his fastidious approachto raising funds and awareness for severalcauses, including the leukemia & lym-phoma society, alzheimers association,and a native american school out west,have benefitted thousands, many of

The Dataman likes instruments, and keys.

It was a bummer to learn Freddie pedals well over 300 pounds of body and gear (only partof which is shown here) on a 28mm front tirea size we recommend only for lightweights.

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whom hes never met, many of whom have become his friend.ive seen the photo albums bulging with evidence.

all told, Freddie has raised more than $1 million for variouscharities, living on a part-time janitors salary. his effortamounts to nearly a dollar a mile.

His Secret?Freddies everyday gear doubles as his cycling gear: cotton t-

shirt when its warm, with polyester gym shorts and K-Mart ath-letic running shoes. a well-worn and faded yellow lightwindbreaker with an old trek sticker is his jacket of choice. hewears an orange/gold giro helmet, and when it gets cold he addscotton sweatpants and workers cotton gloves. he doesnt wearprotective eyewear, and does all his maintenance in his one-stallgarage, where his parents bikes are stored on the wall behind aboat and other items.

he maintains his bikes often, squeezing out every ounce ofperformance, and builds his own wheels. he doesnt waste any-thing, as evident by the old dish towels and t-shirts he uses towipe everything around the garage and inside his home. his tinyworkspace spills out onto the broken asphalt driveway, wherehe props the garage door with a pole. he flips the bike on itsbars and seat, setting the bars on a wooden block. Zip ties, rub-ber bands and bread ties hold many things in place.

his diet consists of whatever food he wants. his 59 frame iscarrying about 215 pounds, and hes been known to lose 30 or sopounds during his summer trips across the country. he enjoys

pasta and rice, and realizes, like many of us, when the cold, win-ter months roll around he tends to overeat. hes also a calorie-burning machine.

The Future?his father died from alzheimers in 2007. Freddie dedicated

four years to caring for his ailing father in the four-bedroom,red brick cape cod, cutting back on his training.

i was Freddies first visitor since his father died, and the clut-tered home groans from more than 50 years of accumulatedmemories, much in the form of memorabilia and hobbies frompast years. Freddie is thinking of selling the house his fatherbuilt in 1954 and moving to Charlotte, south Carolina to livenear his cousins.

Freddie regaled me with stories from his travels. he never hada bike stolen, and usually stayed at campgrounds or hotels alongthe way. as his financial supporters grew with his fame, he oftenstayed at their homes. a highlight of the past few years wasmeeting childhood hero neil armstrong in dayton, ohio dur-ing the 100th anniversary celebration of the Wright brothersfirst flight in 2003.

Freddie has never flown in a plane or driven a car.Freddie hoffman remains the soloist, churning the pedals at

80 rpm, always riding. he may be a square peg in a round-holeworld, but his accomplishments are the stuff of legend, some-thing few of us can fathom.

once you know Freddie has a learning disability and has ped-aled more than you and your five most pedaly friends have com-bined, its easy to think hes got nothing else going on, so herides. Wrong. Freddie is a human thunderegg.

telephone conversations with Freddie tend to be long, be-cause hes loquacious. last spring i called and asked if he couldarrange a photo for the story, and once he said yes, the conver-sation got interesting. i found out thisedited to fit the space,and with some of the humbleness removed:

Freddie saved his cousins life. his cousin had a heart attack,and Freddie applied CPR for 11 minutes, called the ambulance,and pedaled to the hospital. Recovery time was about a month.Freddie assured the doctors he could take care of his cousin inhis cousins home without a professional home care provider.he cared for his father for four years, so this was nothing.

he described in detail the surgical procedure performed onhis cousins heart. he uses big words in proper context (at least,i assume it wasi could barely follow the conversation).

Freddies out of pocket costs on his trips are covered by acharitable contribution to the leukemia-lymphoma society,

for whom he raises about $60,000 per year. he says, after aday of riding in 95F with 85 percent humidity, i want air con-ditioning and a shower. he stays in the cheapest hotels he canfind, and will spend $100 only if he gets into town late andnothing else is available.

he shoots film, not digital, and has a technical vocabulary.

he owns five pair of binoculars, with different powers fordifferent conditions, and knows binoculars inside and out. hehas what he describes as a passing interest in astronomy, buttalks in depth about the atmosphere on Jupiter, the moons ofsaturn, the width and thickness of saturns rings, the speed ofradio waves and the time it takes for them to go from here tothere, and the Cassini spacecraft. i like astronomy, and ive readmore books about it than Freddie has, but he seems to haveheard many facts about the cosmos, and doesnt seem to haveforgotten any.

Meteorology (weather) is also a fascination. Freddie is in-terested in the natural world, and learns about it. since he liveson his bike, im sure it serves him well. -gP

anotheR side oF FReddie

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1975 Schwinn Collegiate 5 speed, made in Chicago

Crank: schwinn ashtabula one-piece steel crankset, 46t

Pedals: Platform rubber block

Rims: 26 x 1-3/8-inch steel

Tires: schwinn 26 x 1-3/8-inch

Handlebar: Wald steel

Stem: Forged steel, probably Wald

Shifter: stem-mounted schwinn single-stik shifter

Rear brake: sturmey-archer hub

Front brake: schwinn-approved sidepull

Front generator: union

Saddle: black foam mattress cheapy

accessories: Front and rear Vistalites blinkies

original Japanese speedometer/odometer

air Zound & Rubber squeeze horns

sKs silver plastic fenders

58cm 2001 Waterford 1900, Reynolds 531 fork

Crank: 1989 Campagnolo euclid,170mm arms, 49/38/26 Pedals: specialized with plastic toe clipsRear Wheel: Mavic a719 rim; Phil 40h rear; avocetCross ii 700x32c tireFront Wheel: Mavic a719 rim, Mavic 36hhub, avocetCross 700x28 tire Handlebar: Wald steel tourist handlebarsStem: 90mm forged steel stemShifters: suntour friction bar-end shiftersFreewheel: shimano 14-28 6-speedDerailers: shimano deore F; deore lX R Brakes: shimano cantis, dia-Compe leversHeadset: Campagnolo 1-in. threadedaccessories: greenfield kickstand clamped directly tothe chainstayssteel seatpost with no setback; shimmed to fit seat tubewith reversed clampsKs black plastic fenders with custom front flapbemis digital temperature and humidity gauge,archer Road Patrol radio on the down tubesigma cyclometerunion front generator headlightgrabon foam handlebar coversair Zound air horn, Rubber squeeze hornaxiom rear rack bagold Man Mountain custom front and rear racksoriginal Japanese speedometer/odometerFront and rear Vistalite lightsblack foam comfort saddleZefal hpX3 frame pump

Freddies Main Bike (Ruthie E. IV)

Freddies Wet Weather Bike

FReddies tWo biKes

Freddie Hoffman pedaled his one millionth mile onhis first Waterford 1900 (Ruth E. III), which was de-stroyed by car in 1999. His latest 1900, built in 2001,was built with Reynolds air-hardened 853 steel, silverbrazed to Henry James lugs and dropouts. The fork ismade from Reynolds 531 blades, with a Henry Jamesfork crown and dropouts, with cantilever studs. Hehas ridden more than 200,000 miles on the yellowRuth E. IV.

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Freddie called me on a Monday inearly July 1994. he had just found acrack in the head tube of his schwinnVoyageur (also known as Ruthie ii,after his mother). he called to see if wewould fix it. i told him that we gener-ally didn't work on schwinns becausewe were too expensive for the basicschwinn owner.

he was his usual persistent self, and ifinally told him that we'd have to seethe frame in order to work on it. hewas calling from Pennsylvania, so i sug-gested that he box it up and send it toour Wisconsin factory so we could lookat it. then he explained that he was al-ready on a tour. i suggested that he bet-ter get home before something uglyhappened, adding that since it was avertical crack, maybe several hoseclamps would hold things together untilhe got home. i hung up and forgot allabout him.

thursday afternoon, Freddie rolls upto our front door on his Voyageur, hoseclamps and all. i did the math: -- 3 days,800 miles -- and Freddie was ready toget started tearing down his bike andgetting it fixed. our ace framebuilderJohn sotherland worked on the bikewhile Freddie told me his story.

he was riding to raise money for theleukemia society, something he didevery year in memory of his mother,who died of the disease. i learned allabout the Freddie story: how he wasborn with about 30 percent of his cere-bral matter dead; how he could barelywalk by the age of 4 or 5; how he dis-covered at age 7 that he could ride a bi-cycle, which he rode for hours aroundthe cul de sac in front his house (essen-tially a 150-foot circuit) for hours onend; how he spread his range such that

for most of his life, he was riding50,000 miles a year, year in and yearout.

by the time of his visit, he'd ridden900,000 miles and had the logs toprove it.

Freddie shows all signs of being a sa-vant. he says there's no way he can op-erate a computer. it's totally beyondhim. then he'll launch into a totallylucid description about how cystic fi-brosis progresses at a molecular level.one thing i found quite remarkableabout Freddie is his sense of symbolismand the meaning everything he en-countered had in his life. though attimes he sounds like a religious skeptic,i've met few people with his spiritualintensity and his sense of personalmeaning.

it took us until saturday to get the re-pair complete and to send him on hisway. We were just developing our 1900model, the adventure Cycle, so itseemed like if there was ever a ridermore deserving of a sponsorship, Fred-die was the man. i asked him to writedown what he wanted in a bike so wecould build it for him. it took a coupleof months to get it, but i received afour-page, hand-written letter filledwith technical details of what hewanted. in all those pages, he'd crossedout only three letters.

in one of our many long conversa-tions, he told me one of his dreams. hesaid, "one of these days i'm going tohave a big party to give thanks to youfor all your help and i'm going to pres-ent you with the chainrings from mymillionth mile." he waxed on for 20minutes on the details of the celebra-tion: all the people he'd invite, how we'dbe sitting together at the head table and

so on. it sounded like yet another sceneout of Forrest gump. no shrimp boatsthough.

over the winter, we built Ruthie iiifor him, which he was riding when hereached his millionth mile a year-and-a-half later. he was somewhere in themiddle of nowhere, west of the Missis-sippi.

at 183,000 miles on Ruthie iii he hadhis big first accident, totally tearing uphimself and his bike. he could only do28,000 miles the following year (1999)while we built Ruthie iV, which he'sbeen on for more than 200,000 miles.i'm proud not only that it's got moremiles than any other Waterford wevebuilt, it's got more miles than any bikeFreddie owns. it may even be moremiles than any single bike has ever beenridden, though i've never researchedthe topic.

oh yeah, and 10 years after we met,Freddie invited me to his town innorthern new Jersey. the Chamber ofCommerce was honoring him for all hisfundraising work. there were 250 peo-ple there - quite a feat! there, in frontof all those people, just like in hisdream, he took the opportunity to giveme those chain rings, mounted on amarble plaque with his trading cardsand all.

Fred's been one of the great inspira-tions in my life at a level you just can'timagine.

~ Richard schwinn,

Waterford, Wisconsin, april 4, 2009

RiChaRd sChWinn & FReddie hoFFMan

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th e Ma K e - do Me C h a n i C

We as much as anybody and more than any of you (well) are fans of the clever, tidy, elegant solution (to add to the clich); and

when we assemble your bike, we go to extreme lengths to find them. but when a problem presents itself on our own bikes, the

winning solution is usually the quick-n-dirty one, as this impromptu March 23 survey shows.

Heres the bar to start. Nothing wrong with it, but I like the mir-rors on my other bikes, and wanted one on this one, my main bike.

Peel back the lever, get a knife and cut and unwrap until its like this.This is equivalent to the stage of open-heart surgery where theyvecut open the chest and peeled the bones and skin away with clamps,to give access. The big difference being, no clamps necessary, here.

The clamp is attached, the end is snipped. you can see thecork beneath the cotton. This is equivalent to the stage ofopen heart surgery where the bypass is complete. The maindifference being, no actual arteries involved.

Surgery complete, and all sewed up. This is totally, one hundredpercent comfortable, ergonomic, out-of-the-way, no problemo. Theextra tape and twine there are equivalent to waking up from openheart surgery and discovering they threw in a Mohawk, no charge.The long strand of twine gives you something to doodle with, andwe all need that.

Problem or challenge: Vaughns fender wasnt long enough in front. Hewanted a few extra inches.Solution: He cut up a plastic yogurt container and put a local coffee shopadvertisement on it, and secured it with twine to two holes in the fender.This is about as low as we go around here.

Problem: The thermos didnt fit the water bottle cage,so how does he keep his coffee hot?Solution: Cut the top and bottom off a large water bot-tle, slip the thermos in. The rubber band is thereforlooks.

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Problem: He shifted his fenderrearward to give more coverage backthere, but it left a gap on this otherend.Solution:He happened to have an oldfender scrap he could use, but just aseasily could have cut up a water bot-tle, or used the remainder of the yo-gurt cup Vaughn used for hisfront-fender extension.

Robert - Problem: He shoulders his bike a lot in cyclo-cross and taking the bike up long flights of stairs. Thepump inside the main triangle would get in the way, would get pushed out.

Vaughns version uses lED light bracketand hardware found around the shop.

Solution: a pump clip mounted to the seattube. The business end of the pump nestsin the crook of the chainstay-seatstay-dropout. It holds fast.

Problem: His handlebar griparea was too short for normalgrips. Solution: Bar tape.

Solution:adhesive dots. These are green.

Problem: His rims aredrilled for Schrader valves,but he lives a presta-valvelife.

Solution: He used a valvethat didnt fit the hole. Toosmall. He should have orcould have wrapped thehole-heigh of the valve withtape to fill in the gap, butthe no-tape method worksas long as the tire pressureshigh enough.

Problem: His plastic Simplexdown tube shifters broke, and hisbars (on this old, low-end Peugeot)didnt have enough room for thumbshifters, and wouldnt accept bar-end shifters.

Solution:He mounted SunTour shifters tothe Simplex clamp.

Problem: He rides at night, his crank fitsFrench-threaded pedals, but his French-threaded pedals dont have reflectors.

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Friend Gino and I were talking, and the conversation led to him telling me, a friend of mine coined the

term blog. One thing led to another and heres the story. Peter Merholz is his name. Take it away, Peter

around May 1999, i was among a small group of people who published what were then called

"weblogs." We were link scavengers, annotating the web one site at a time. on a lark, i placed

in the sidebar of my site, "i've decided to pronounce the word "weblog" as wee'- blog. or "blog"

for short."

among my internet friends at the time were the good folks at Pyra labs. their business was

building software for project management, but, on a lark, over a weekend they built the first ver-

sion of a weblog publishing tool. they called it "blogger." and as the success of their tool grew,

and the web genre that it supported, my word entered the common parlance. in 2000, the

new yorker published an article titled "you've got blog," and i knew the word had arrived. by

2004, it was selected as "Word of the year" by Merriam-Webster. Peter

th i s Fe l l oW in V e n t e d t h e Wo R d bl o g

its pronounced byoo-sij, not bow-sawzh, and its beauty through usage. its not patina. Patina usually refers to environmental

degradation of metal that happens without use. age and environment may contribute to beausage, but beausage requires use.

beausage happens in high quality things generally made of natural materials; in high quality goods suffering for you but staying

in the game. sun-baked plastic and worn out polyester dont have beausage.

old boots and blue jeans do an old hatchet handle, or pocket knife, or wear marks on an old camera are beausage. beausage

isnt dangerous. a the crack in an axe handle is not beausage. the darkening and polishing of the axe handles wood is.

beausage makes things look better than new.

here are some place it can show up on a bike:

tires that have been ridden in the mud and maybe

quickly but not fastidiously cleaned.

leather saddles darkened with lubrication and cracked

with age, yes. Cracked vinyl saddles, no.

Crank arms polished by shoes.

Rims that show brake pad marks.

bar tape thats fraying and faded.

superficial scratches in the paint, torn decals.

Chromed baskets rusty at the bends.

bike bags faded and dirty, and curled leather straps with

buckle-marks.

beausage is a useful concept that can help cure you of an

obsession to keep the bike spic-n-span. use it, dont abuse

it, and youll get beausage, not abusage. Remember, its

pronounced byoo-sij; rhymes with blue midge, goo-ridge. get it out there in the air.

Re V i s i t i n g B e au s aG e

Peter Merholz

tape-beau saddlenose-sage

beau-rustydecal-sage

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If a dog chases you and you cant escape it 1. look it right in the face and shout like youre the boss.2. spray with water from your bottle. 3. use loud air-horns right in their face; and dog-spray. 4. if youre off the bike, use your bike as a shield. 5. Climb. i had to climb up a big cement fence post once to

escape two dogs who wouldve gotten me otherwise. a guy ina truck stopped to shoo the dogs away, and barely made it backinto his car before they got him. the whole thing is: dogs cantclimb, and youd better be able to. onto a car, even.

The classic dog-fender offer is a frame pump. i dontknow of anybody whos ever actually bonked bowser with one,but its comforting to have. When its between a small-brainedanimal with big canine teeth and you, a little spray can eventhe odds. For the record. nobody loves their dog as much as ilove mine, so dont write and say im anti-animal.

Consider this, too: if its a little nipper or an old grizzled dogacting out his final fantasy, go easy, even play along. but if youhave a big fresh dog biting your loins or your face, youre deal-ing with its inner wolf, so use your inner monkey-man.

Fe n d i n g oF F Fi d o

theres an old bicycle-safety saw that says be pre-dictable, but its not a slam dunk. your first task is to stayalive, and unpredictability can help.

When youre riding on a bike trail and theres a wobblychild on a bike ahead of youor an unleashed puppy or tod-dler, youre extra careful passing, because its unpredictable.

When drivers arent sure what the cyclist was going to do,they were more careful around them. Wouldnt you be morecareful driving around a wobbly rider?

british psychologist, cyclist, and traffic researcher ianWalker has done the most comprehensive studies to date onhow motorists and cyclers interact, and he says motoristsgive more space to helmetless riders, women, and riders incivilian clothing.

he speculates that unhelmeted riders get more space be-cause drivers figure helmeted riders are more experienced,and less likely to swerve or freak out when they pass close.

Maybe women get more space because theyre seen asmore vulnerable, or society will hate you more if you hit one.Maybe its the women driver stereotype. Maybe guys dontwant to be scolded by a woman for passing close; or maybefemale drivers like to see other women out there on bikes,and dont want to do anything to scare one of their own.

The Safety Swerve & Saliva to the rescue? as youre riding down the road and you notice a car com-

ing up about two or three seconds back, wiggle a bit, orswerve just for an instant out toward the car lane. dont doit so close to the car that youll shock the driver, dont do itif there are cars coming toward both of you in the other lane,and dont try this if you arent the captain of your bike. or,if youre uncomfortable with the safety swerve, give yourself

a little shake, as though youre shaking out the stiffness andare totally unaware that youre in traffic. or spit to the left,but not at a car. you may not be the spittin type, but un-derstand the spirit of this notion, and tailor it to your ownsituation. spitting too late and too high at a car full of thugsis not tailoring it properly.

as for the civilian clothes: it must be that riders in civilianclothing are, like unhelmeted riders, regarded as less seriousand less predictable. Maybe drivers identify more with peo-ple who wear the same kinds of clothing they do, and dislikethose who dont. Xenophobia kept our ancestors from mak-ing friends with the predatory animals and unfriendly tribes.Just because a guys behind the wheel of a car doesnt meanhes completely free of those ancient tendencies.

Helmet note that is not anti-helmet, butcould be easily twisted to seem that way

helmets and bike safety are always part of the same dis-cussion, as they should be. helmets are one of the morecomplicated, divisive topics in bikedom, on par with healthcare and the war. on the wear-your-helmet side, theres nodenying that styrofoam between head and pavement helps ina hit, and that is one powerful argument.

but it is not the only argument in town. statistics tell usthat whenever helmet use is mandated, bicycle use plum-mets, and when there are fewer riders, theres less riderawareness from drivers. and then theres the controversialnotion of risk-compensation: the tendency for a person totake more risks when using safety equipment.

if you wear a helmet, wear it level and correctly, and asmuch as you can, pretend that youre not wearing it at all.

ge t t i n g Ca R s t o sC o o C h oV e R; a n d he l M e t s

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Richard Nixon 1969-1974

Headlines: Vietnam Watergate Roe v. WadeTypical rider age: preteens; then teens post e.d.Most bikes made in: us, France, englandMost bikes cost: $65 to $170Popular brands: schwinn, Peugeot, RaleighFrame materials/constuction: lugged steel, or theschwinn way (still mysterious). no tigWhats new in bikes?: ten-speeds were new. drop

bars, gears, and so on. What bike-thing or event shaped the future?: the first eaRth day in1970. teenagers were sick of Vietnam, scared of the draft, most had missed hippie-dom, and earth day filled a need to do something for themselves before going tocollege or war. in the mid-60s, nobody over 12 bought or rode bikes. earth dayrequired kids to get to school motorless, and kids complied, and got reintroducedto bikes in the bargain. Many e.d. participants continued to ride bikes and as theyaged, split into new markets. today, old guys who start riding bikes are influencedby same-aged riders who got into it on the first few earth days.

Top song/artist:

1969: aquarius/ the Fifth dimension

1970: bridge over troubled Water/ simon

& garfunkle

1971: Joy to the World/three dog night

1972: american Pie/don Mclean1973: Killing Me softly With his song/Roberta Flackand the Oscar went to:

1969: Midnight Cowboy

1970: Patton

1971: The French Connection

1972: The Godfather

1973: The stingEconomic factoids:

average income: $9,400

ave. house: $21,300

gallon-o-gas: $0.36

the nixon-agnew era road bike was ageneral-purpose bike with ten speeds &drop handlebars. you could put a rack &fenders on it, and tires up to 35mm. itcould handle any road, any weather, com-mutes, and short, local tours. these dayswed call it a Country bike, just so itwouldnt get lumped in with truly unver-satile road bikes. but back before the ageof bike categorization, it was just a tenspeeder, and you rode it where youwanted to go.

the frame was usually carbon steel,which on the totem pole of bicycle steelsis a notch below the chrome-molybde-num (CrMo) steel used on the bikes onlyrich kids or racers could afford. Mostframes were made of thick-walled highcarbon steel tubes and weighed seven oreight pounds. this grade of steel startsout weaker but are always thicker to com-pensate. the thickness plus the metal it-self means the tubes can take more heatwith less degradation, and the post-brazed/welded strength is plenty suffi-cient for any kind of riding.

Racers and other high-end bike afi-cionados turned up their noses atnoCroMo steel, but the bikes held upand for the most part continue to hold

up. they werent pounded for 10,000miles a year, but to make up for that, wereoften dismounted on the fly, or carriedanother person on the rack in back.

(about twenty years ago when huffywas still in flower, i was at a shimanoevent and riding a shuttle bus and talkingwith a top huffy fellow. i forget exactlyhow the conversation got steered thisway, but he said, our customers dont re-spect their bikes and so they treat themlike #@&*!. they may not be chome-moly and what-not, but let me tell youthey take a beating and they hold up!)

back in the pre-80s there were lots ofcheap & poorly executed artistic touchesto make the bikes look fancier: thin,semi-fancy chrome caps affixed to plainfork crowns to give them a fancy, high-end look from across the street;chromed lower seat stays, chain stays, andfork blades; painted panels, and headtubes; pin-striping, head badges fastenedwith rivets, and id even say gloriousgraphics. it was as if the staff graphicartist went to town, but then the staffbean counter dumbed down the execu-tion to fit the budget. id say theres anopposite approach going on today, withmore effort applied to things outside the

bikedistribution, marketing, promo-tion, and sometimes brilliant paint, butzero details.

When those ten speeds were all over,and especially once you were exposed tobetter bikes, they were easy to denigrate.now that theyre gone and their equiva-lent priced replacements are fat, loud,and detail-free, its easy to get swoon overtheir skinny tubes and interesting artisticdetails, even if the execution wasnt allthat fine. Cheap bikes have always copiedexpensive ones, and but most of todaysexpensive bikes are poor role models fortodays cheapies. they could learn some-thing about art from the old cheapies.(We do what we can, and im proud ofthe way our bikes look, but the graphicsand detailsnot executionon a 1963J.C. higgins beats our bikes hands down.)

those were the road bikes of the nixonyears. the bike market consisted mainlyof sting-rays and other one-speeds, with afew three-speeds and only the rare ten-speed. Couples in their thirties and for-ties bought bikes for their pre-teenchildren, expecting those children wouldquit riding when they became teenagers,because thats what teenagers did.

a ModeRn PResidential histoRy oF the Road biKe

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a seminal (seminal: of, relating to, orconsisting of seed or semen) evolu-tionary event was the first earth day:april 22, 1970. it may be a stretch tosuggest without earth day, the bicycleworld as we know it today wouldntexist, but it wouldnt be much of astretchand i happen to believe it.

a bicycle industry would exist, ofcourse, but it wouldnt be the one weknow. Maybe old guys wouldnt ridebikes. Maybe something else wouldhave kick-started it in another direc-tion; we just dont know.

the first earth day got tens of thou-sands of non-cycling teenagers back onbikes for at least that day. all of themaged, and many never stopped riding.Maybe youre one of them. but even ifyoure not, you probably owe your rein-troduction to bicycles back to earthday, 1970, because you must have beeninfluenced by earth day participants orthose influenced by them.

earth day 1970 was the first greenday, and it came on the heels of raceriots, the Vietnam War, Watergate &tricky dick, and growing environmen-tal concerns and a highly publicized oilspillall of which miffed peaceniks.they were ready for something positiveto celebrate and defend, and the envi-ronment was it, so earth daywhichwas all about positive solutions anybodycould take part in and not negativeproblems none of us could influencewas warmly received. the bicycle con-nection was that school kids all aroundthe country were told to get to schooland around in general without motors.it was a bigger deal then than it seemsnow, because in 1970, teenagers didntride bikes. (if you were the exception,allow yourself a proud, private moment,and please dont write demanding a re-tractionbecause the statement islargely true.)

if kids didnt have a bike for earthday, they bought or borrowed one. Par-ticipation was high, and many of youtook part. in 1970 i was a sophomore ina high school of 1600. before ed (stillearth day, the seminal event, not theunseminal ed) only one kid at my highschool of 1600, Mike busbee, rode hisbike to school. but on earth day at

least 400 more did, and at least 200continued to for the rest of the year andthe next two years that i attended. thepercentage of repeat customers in myschool may have been higher than aver-age, but all over the country, ed gotteenagers on bikes again, and many ofnever got off. it is key to everythingthats happened since.

earth day lead to new companies anda revitalized industry that now cateredto teenagers who wanted bikes withgears and racks, suitable for riding notjust to school but most places a car usedto take them. bikes such as these werealways available, but they were consid-ered too expensive and largely too largefor kids, so they were hard or impossi-ble to find in Joe blows bike-lock-Key-and Mower shop.

schwinn Varsity sales skyrocketed. at$80 each, they were affordable, andthey lasted forever. Varsity riders gradu-ated to the Peugeot uo-8 riders ($95),and Raleigh supercourse ($100 or so).these euro-brands introduced riders toother bikes from France, italy, and eng-land, and to a better (fancier) world ofcomponents. bicycle riding is an equip-ment-intensive sport (unlike, for in-stance, body surfing or basketball), andi think wed all agree that to a certainextent, passion for parts fuels passionfor riding. the ball was rolling furiously,picking up influences and gatheringmomentum along the way, branchingout here and there.

six years later, in 1976, there were sev-eral thousand bike riders in their teensand twenties ready to ride the firstbikecentennial tour across the country.six years earlier, no chance. this newand huge interest in touring spawneddozens of companies specializing inbags, racks, panniers, mirrors, shoes,helmets, and clothing. Many of themare still around (blackburn, Cannon-dale), many had a nice run and folded orwere absorbed into other companies(eclipse, Rhode gear, blackbottoms).

at the same time and at the samerate, the bicycling media exploded. bi-cycling and bike World, the two mainmags, went color and big time, and hadterrific articlesgeneral, introductory,and technicalwhich in many ways

would shame whats out there today.Rider-technician-engineer-writers in-troduced new enthusiasts to the innerworkings of the bicycle, making themmore comfortable with mechanics andheading out on their own.

the formative years of touring lastedfrom about 1976 to 1980. touring wasaccessible to so many people, and whenyou have a huge gang like that, its onlynatural that some will start wonderinghow fast they can go. american bicycleracing really started taking off around1977 or so, and many of its new convertshad their fling with distance and nowwanted speed.

Frame building blossomed, and withina few years american buildersnotablyalbert eisentraut, bruce gordon, tomRitchey, Matt assenmacher, PeterMooney, bernie Mikkelsen, Mark no-billete, Peter Weigle, Richard sachs,tim issacs, just to name ten quick andoff the top of my headwere creatingframes that raised the world standardand put american builders on top. upto then, the european frames set thepace, but it was an easy pace to set in amarket that was largely ignorant ofwhat constituted a really fine frame,and tended to swoon over anythingwith a foreign name. im not saying theearly 70s Colnagos and so on werentgood; but they werent in the same classas the top american frames. they im-pressed an unsophisticated audience,and still have charm and swoon factor,but they werent as good. they lead tomuch better bikes.

in the years from 1970 to now, bicycleriding has grown from a pipsqueakacorn sprout into a big old oak tree,with factions on every thick branch,and mini-factions on every skinnyshoot. its hard to absolutely nail the be-ginning of it all. you can keep goingback to the invention of the bicycle, oreven further back to the hobby horsethat lead to the bicycle. but the keypoint here is that bicycle riding inamerica, for the most part, was in a rutuntil 1970, when first earth daydragged it out and gave it a push thatslead to everything thats happenedsince. at least, thats my take.grant

The First Earth Day Influence: Not to be underestimated, by a long shot

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as ed-riders aged into twenty-some-things, they continued to ride; and manyof them bought bikes with their ownmoneyfor the first time ever. the wholeindustry was revitalized with the prospectof selling young adult americans decent-to-upscale bikes. bike clubs formed. bikemagazines and organizations were bornflourished, supported by new and oldmanufacturers and new and old distribu-tors reaching out to the new young-adultmarket.

bicycle touring, and therefore the wholebicycle movement and market, got kick-started in the summer of 76 when around4,000 riders pedaled coast-to-coast onthe new bikecentennial routeinspiredby the countrys bicentennial. some ofthe aforementioned companies wereready for it, some barely missed it, butwhen one rides across the country, onetends to not be intimidated by ten-milerides after that, and so almost all of thecross-country riders continued being rid-ing their bikes.

My girlfriend and i rode across thecountry that year (i was 22), and of thehundreds of other riders we saw, probably90 percent were between 19 and 26. its asafe bet that most didnt ride bikes seven

years earlier, and were re-introduced tothem on ed; and an even safer bet that ifthey didnt start again with bikes on ed,they were at least influenced by otherswho did.

so many new tourist resulted in so manynew touring bikes and touring gear, andlots of companies sprouted up to fill theneeds. some bikecentennial riders re-peated the next summer, and others tookon other tours and became lifelongtourists. still others had enough of tour-ing after riding all the way across, but stillliked bikes and riding, so got into day-rides, commuting, and racing.

these other inspired more bike styles,including the sport-touring bike, a lighter-duty tourable bike that was zippier on theroad, but still good enough for the occa-sional tour. i guess it was about like ahilsen or hillborne or Rambouillet, inthat way. (ours are better, make no mis-take.