Good gear pedaling!

August 4, 2015

Hello goodlings and goodwinkers.  Well, the month of July has sailed and ‘tis onwards towards August waves of golden splendour.  It is now national immunization awareness month.  I am celebrating by enjoying some chilled Merlot avec accente, merci boucoup with something gritty, probably playground sand.

Here is an exciting video clip of the most fascinating moments of my last July commute of oh so long ago. 

It was also back in sweet July that I received my last issue of Outside magazine, which was one of 12 issues that I had won by flying on airplanes for enough miles to get a magazine, but not a free flight. 

It is the Encyclopedia of Gear issue.  If I participated in an outdoory activity besides bicycling, I might be enthusiastic.  However, I don’t and I wasn’t.  Gear seems so impersonal.  If I want gear I can look at my Campmor catalogue, through which I recently purchased some delightful mesh briefs, to make sure my package is delivered intact and fully fairly functional.  Or I could talk to a gear-oriented bicycle technology enthusiast.  One who spends many hours reading about new-fangled fancy options like pink slime tyres, one-forked-up suspension forks, compact disc brakes, and wireless shifting.  Well, let me tell you fancy smarty pantsies this – a little less conversation, a little more action!

While you were reading about the new X.0 short shifter, I was out pedaling laboriously up a hill on a heavy bike with a Sette avec accente chain tensioner.  It’s not that I don’t care.  Safety bicycles were pretty damn good when they started out shortly after the invention of the locomotive back in the 1880s and they were perfect by 1990.  The rest of the stuff is just bells and whistles and access to dangerous speeds.  Why some of these machines are hardly worthy of the name safety bicycle!  Harrumph!  John Kemp Starley would roll safely over in his grave if he were to see some of these modern speedy diamond frames of death!

So what else is happening in the modern worlds?  Music and lots of it!  

Hey, let’s all bicycle around and find some music to listen to once we get somewhere where we hear some music!