Sheldon Brown and the givers and takers

The world is made up of givers and takers, not everyone of course, and some not all the time.

If someone gets recognized as a giver, the takers will call on that same person time and time again to give, give, give.

I have become reluctant to give to charities, because I have learned that if I give to one charity, my name address and phone number is sold to other charities, and I am called upon to donate over and over.

Givers don’t just give money, some share knowledge they have for the benefit of others. One such man was Sheldon Brown, a bike mechanic and somewhat eccentric character. (Picture above.) He had a vast knowledge of bicycle specifications. He shared these on his website, where anyone could go for free and look up standard thread specs, for different countries, ball-bearing sizes, and spoke lengths, etc., etc. Information necessary if you happen to be restoring an old bicycle.

When Sheldon Brown passed away in 2008 way too early at 63 years of age, the bike shop where he worked sponsored and maintained the website. When I read an article stating that the bike shop hosting Sheldon’s website was closing their doors and the was concern about the future of the site. I thought this was information I should share with others on the Dave Moulton Bike Facebook Group.

Now my timing was not good, it was Saturday evening, my wife was preparing the evening meal, and I needed to shut down the computer, go wash up so we could eat. The first comment back was, “You do it Dave, you would be the ideal person for the job.”

No.... That was not what I was thinking at all, and I wrote back. “I can’t do it, I am 85 years old for Cri-sake and have enough on my plate with my own blog, and bike registry.”

Then someone asks, “Where can we donate money?” I don’t know, why should it be the one to find out? I do a quick Google search; find a Sheldon Brown Facebook page and I post there asking for info on how we can donate to preserve the website.

Meanwhile, my wife is calling me to come eat, as I post the link to the Sheldon Brown FB page. Now I have a response back from the first poster. “85 is no age at all. My mother is 87 and she’s a powerhouse.” I responded to that with a post that basically said, “Fuck you.” When someone else pointed out that the FB page I had linked to was for a young girl named Sheldon Brown. Not Sheldon Brown Bicycle Guru.

Now as well as being thoroughly pissed off, I am embarrassed that In my haste I had made such a stupid mistake. I went back to the FB page and deleted my post there. Then with my wife still calling me to come and eat, I said, “Fuck it, I’m done.” And deleted the whole original post on the Dave Moulton Bike page. Shut down and went to eat. It did not ruin my whole evening, but did leave me to wonder, “Why do I even bother?”

I think it is safe to say, “I am a giver.” I have left a legacy of several thousand bikes, that will still be here long after I’m gone. These bikes will continue to be bought and sold, collected, ridden, and enjoyed for many years to come.

This leaves me with a warm, fuzzy feeling, and little else. A feeling of pride, but not so proud that I am going to fall for a line like, “You do it Dave, you would be ideal for the job.” Then when that failed, he came back with, “85 is nothing, my mother is a powerhouse at 87.” This is how people try to manipulate givers, flattery first, and if that does not work, try shaming them.

It has been a while since I had a good old rant, feels good to sometimes get it out. It would be a pity if Sheldon Brown’s site were to disappear, but I doubt that will happen. Someone with a giving nature will donate time and money to keep it up and running. But it ain’t me, I have enough on my plate.

I have simply drawn attention to the issue, now I am done.

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If Necessity is the Mother of Invention, who is the Father?

Have you noticed how simplest things in life have become high tech when they don’t really need to? For example, the paper towel dispenser.

What was wrong with just pulling on the paper, or operating a simple lever at the side?

Every one of these devices is different, so you stand there like an idiot with your hands dripping wet, trying to figure out where the “electronic eye” is.

Is it on the front, is it underneath? Shouldn’t there be a little red light somewhere? You wave your hands all around this abominable black plastic box. How about one that delivers paper towel when you punch it? Dry your hands and relieve your frustrations at the same time.

Invariably someone will come to your rescue and show you how it operates, making you feel like a total retard. (That used to be a politically incorrect term, but no one ever uses it to refer to a mentally challenged person anymore, it is only used when referring the type of person who can’t operate a stupid paper towel dispenser.)

Why make the simple things in life high tech, when there is no good reason other than we can? Or because we have the technology. The makers of these “Black Box” towel dispensers will argue that by eliminating the handle, they eliminate a source of germs that could re-contaminate our clean hands.

Now wait a minute, every person using the towel dispenser has clean hands. They have just washed them, that’s why they need a paper towel. And, anyway after sterilizing our hands thoroughly, we grab the filthy door handle as we leave. 

Why do we need electric can openers? One of the times we really need a can opener is during an emergency when the power is out. And the bicycle, one of the simplest and most efficient machines man has ever invented, is being made more and more complicated.

To be honest, it took me many years to get over index shifting in the late 1980s. At the time, I was in step with the European cycling community who scoffed at the idea, as did Campagnolo. This was tantamount to a violinist needing marks on the neck of the fiddle to show where to place your fingers.

Of course, the engineers at Shimano knew better. They knew that in America there were people who actually did not know how to operate a friction shift lever. Maybe they had great foresight and could see this same nation of people, who in the future, would not be able to operate a paper towel dispenser.

I always felt that index shifting was developed to cater to the “Instant Gratification” element. Nothing that requires a degree of skill, gives instant gratification. Muffing gear changes on a hill is no fun, but then neither is learning to play a musical instrument. However, the rewards are far greater once you master the skill. The satisfaction of doing something other people cannot, for a start. 

In the case of indexed shifting, Shimano was proved to be right, and Campagnolo spent years playing catch up. I will agree that indexed shifting has developed into something that is useful to all cyclists, including the pros. No one wants to go back to friction shifting, even old farts purists like me.

When I started cycling in the 1950s, racing bikes were the exact same machines as those ridden by the Pros in the Tour de France. It was like that up into the 1980s. What the professionals used, dictated what was sold on the open market. If you were a newbie and wanted to ride a racing bike, you had to deal with friction shifting. There was nothing else.

The mountain bike changed all that. Here was a whole new animal, and a whole new breed of cyclist. They were not trying to emulate the pros in the Tour de France, and they didn’t want to learn friction shifting. So indexed or click shifting came first to the mountain bike, then the road bike. This led to more and more gears. This was not necessarily a bad thing, although I think they should have stopped at 10 gears, no one really needed 11 or more.

Today, it is no longer what the pros ride and want, but rather what the corporations that sponsor the pros want them to ride. And that is, new stuff they can sell to the American leisure rider.

A prime example is Disc Brakes. The pros don’t really want them but they were forced on them. I have never used disc brakes, so I can’t speak from experience. I understand they work better than caliper rim brakes in wet conditions. But I do know enough about bikes, to know that the last thing I need in the wet is more stopping power when the real problem is the tires gripping the road.

If it is raining, I can lock my wheels up without even trying, with my old tech caliper brake. I do not need a brake that will lock my wheels up a split second faster.

There is an old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” I always wondered who the Father was. Today I know the father is the one who takes something simple that works, and fucks with it to make something that is more complicated, costs more, and does not necessarily work any better.

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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

I was recently driving on a busy street near my home. I was first in line at a red light, with a stream of traffic lined up behind me.  The light changed and I moved off. The area was residential with a 30 mph speed limit.

I had yet to reach that speed when up ahead a man with a dog on a leash, walked briskly across the street. Crossing from left to right, looking straight ahead, cell phone pressed to his right ear, deep in conversation, seemingly oblivious to me and the rest of the approaching traffic.

I could have laid on the car horn, but instead I slowed down, estimating that at our current respective speeds, he would be safely across the street by the time I drew level, and we could both be on our separate ways.

I was feeling good about myself. I was driving responsibly. Sure he was jay walking, this was not a pedestrian crossing. But, share the road with a fellow traveler, and all that good stuff. My slowing in the interest of his safety was the right thing to do.

But suddenly the man stopped and turned to face me, I had to brake hard and come to a complete stop. This was not a sudden realization “I am in danger,” stop. This was a deliberate.

Hands thrown outwards, palms out, eyes and mouth open with a fake dumb expression. The universal body language we all know to mean, “What the Fuck?” I wanted to say, "Hey, I'm the one paying attention. I'm the one not talking on my phone. Now suddenly, I'm the bad guy..... Really!"

He stood there for a moment, glaring at me through my windshield, long enough to make his point. (Whatever that was.) I couldn't see his dog's expression, he was out of view below dashboard level. Maybe he was doing a canine WTF too. I just threw my hands up and shook my head, as if to say, “I give up, I thought I was doing the right thing.”

On the rest of my drive home, I noticed almost every pedestrian I saw had a phone to their ear. What has become of our society that everyone has to be on the phone every waking moment, to the extent they can’t take it away from their ear for a brief moment to cross a busy street safely?

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Minimalist

I always took the minimalist approach to frame design and building. Less is more, and why do more than is necessary, especially if it doesn’t improve the end product. My bottom bracket gear cable guides were an example of this. 

On my custom frames I filed two grooves with the corner of a square file, brazed a piece of wire across the groove, and then drilled a hole through. (See picture above.)

When I started production on the John Howard frames in 1983 and the Fuso a year later, I simplified the procedure. I filed two grooves with a small round file, took a short piece of automotive steel brake fluid line and brazed it in the groove, finishing it off by chamfering the edges with a hand held belt sander. Very simple and it did the job. (See below.)

There were always critics who questioned, “Isn’t it a bad idea to have the bare cable touching the paint.” To which I answered:

Unless the frame is chrome plated, cables have always and will always touch paint somewhere.

If I brazed a channel that covered the whole area where the cable went around the bottom bracket shell, it would then be painted and the cable would still run on the paint. It would take longer to produce, look ugly, and not really improve anything.

Throughout the 1970s gear cables were run through cable guides that were brazed to the top of the bottom bracket. These were of course painted along with the rest of the frame, and the cable ran on the paint, which is why I knew it would be okay. The cable runs in one position and the constant movement of the cable prevents it rusting. (See below, a 1972 Italian Masi.)

The cable guides on top of the bottom bracket collected dirt and made it harder to keep the bike clean in that area. By the 1980s framebuilders realized a neater and much simpler idea was to run the cables under the BB. It has been pretty much standard practice ever since.

So fast forward to today, or to be precise the end of last week.

Someone on Facebook questioned the cables running on the paint.

Why didn’t I do it this way? With a picture (Right.) of someone else’s frame. 

As usually happens on the Internet others chime in with comments like, “Oh yea, that always concerned me too.”

Next I find myself writing lengthy explanations, getting really annoyed that I am having to justify something I did 30 years ago. Then I realized people send me pictures of the underside of the Bottom Bracket with the frame number stamped on it. I always save these pictures so I pulled up several from my archives.

Fuso frames numbering from 020 (Above.) to 693, old frames built from 1984 to 1986. All with original paint, some with the bare frame with the cables removed, showing surprising little wear at all. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and it is true in this case. I have about 8,000 or 9,000 worth here.

So if this is something that has concerned you in the past, look at these pictures and realize you are worrying about a problem that doesn’t exist. The latter frames shown had BBs made by the Japanese Takahashi Company. These had the cable guides cast in the shell and I didn’t have to do a thing. The others were finished in the manner described earlier.

I am always willing to answer questions about my framebuilding practices, but please use a little respect and tact when doing so. When someone asks “Why did you not do it this way?” it is a direct insult, and implies I didn’t know what I was doing.  

Footnote: The plastic cable guide (Left.) was not in general use in 1983 and 1984 when I began production of the John Howard and Fuso frames.

In 1985 I used it on the Recherche frames, it saved a lot of time and ended the controversy of cables running on paint.  

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Hypocrisy

In this recent interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport in Rome, Lance Armstrong is still whining that he got a raw deal and was treated unfairly compared to others who doped.

He stated that there is, “A lot of hypocrisy in cycling.” I would say there is less hypocrisy now that Lance Armstrong has been removed. He is the epitome of hypocrisy.

Lance Armstrong beat cancer and came back to win the Tour de France. If he had left it at that, he would still be a beloved celebrity, heading his cancer foundation. He could have taken that one monumental achievement to the bank for the rest of his life.

But no, he was not content with that. Not even content to go on and equal the record number of five wins achieved by several of the world’s greatest ever cyclists.

Not content to beat the previous record and win it six times. No, he had to bury the record at seven times. And even that was not enough, he came back after three years in retirement to try to win again. That was his downfall, no one likes a show-off.

I cannot stand people who bring down a ton of crap on themselves, then whine that it is someone else’s fault. Yes LA doped in an era when everyone doped, but he was the King Pin who took it to a never before seen level of sophistication and organization.

Other people who doped did not sue, and destroy the lives of people who spoke out against them. Others did not manipulate the press, or hide behind the mantle of Cancer Savior. Even today people who win races are accused of doping, but none are suing people for saying it.

Armstrong says he is through with cycling and has no desire to compete again ever. Well that is great news, because the sport of cycling can sure as hell do without Lance Armstrong. He has all but destroyed professional cycling, and it will take years to restore it to any level of credibility.

After Rome, LA is heading for Paris. I am sure the French will be even less sympathetic than the Italians. He says he has taken up golf. Golf was one of the last sports to allow people of color, and women into their exclusive clubs. I doubt there will be any welcome banners out for a disgraced ex-cyclist.

I wish Lance Armstrong would just disappear, I get tired of looking at his face, which is why I didn’t post a picture here. I don’t plan on making a habit of writing about Armstong. There is already too much written about him, without me adding to the shit pile. It was just the “Hypocrisy in Cycling,” quote I couldn’t let go by without having a little rant.

Thanks for indulging me. Feel free to post your own views in the comment section.

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