Robert Pence

< :speech: > The "geese" are actually herons, the Raleigh Logo. There's a tag in the shape of a heron on the stem, mostly obscured by the brake rods, and a similar decal on the seat post. Sturmey-Archer made hubs in a variety of configurations; There was a four-speed that shifted with a cable just like the three-speed, and a five-speed that had a cable going into each end. It was all done with constant-mesh planetary gear sets and overrunning clutches (ratchets), and power was routed through them via different paths by means of clutches. Low gear is a reduction, middle gear is direct-drive, and high gear is a step-up. In high gear sometimes you can hear the overrunning clutch clicking, and it makes a whirring sound when you coast. I've taken apart both three-speed and four-speed hubs (and put them back together successfully) and the mechanism is quite clever. I think there was a 3-speed with a built-in coaster brake, and I know there was a model with an internal-expanding drum brake, that could be used with a front hub that also incorporated a drum brake. They could be used with either rod- or cable-connected setups. Sturmey-Archer also made a Dynohub, a generator hub with the armature fixed to the axle and a powerful segmented permanent magnet ring in the rotating portion of the hub. It was frictionless and absolutely quiet, and didn't consume any power unless the light was turned on. The Dynohub was available either as a front hub or in combination with the 3-speed rear hub. An optional gadget with the dynohob was a three-cell battery holder with a rectifier. It mounted on the seat post and kept the lights on when you stopped at a stop light or stop sign. Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. There was also a light-weight close-ratio 3-speed hub that was used on the Raleigh Record Ace, an aluminum-framed racing bike. My older cousin had one when I was a teenager and I lusted for it mightily but never got to ride it. There are still some of the old English-built Raleighs around, pre-Raleigh USA. You can spot them by the heron logo and the complex crown rolled into the wheel rims. They're a better bike than the Raleigh USA, and I've seen several in bike racks around the University of Chicago campus. Rudge and Robin Hood were also made by Raleigh and are very similar, and another good find is the authentic Hercules built in Birmingham, England. It's a whole different bike from the one built under license in the USA by AMC and sold in discount stores in the fifties and sixties. It has a lugged frame and uses a hub that is branded Hercules but looks like a Sturmey-Archer. The US-built knockoff uses an early Shimano hub that is badly engineered, prone to failure and no longer repairable. </ :speech: >

Bah to literacy, anyway! Once you learn to read, there's nothing ahead but bitterness and frustration. You end up wanting stuff you never knew about or wishing you lived someplace nicer that you never knew about. Your world gets knocked off its axis by ideas about religion and politics that are different from what your parents told you, and your life loses all it's certainty and predictability. If it weren't for literacy, our society wouldn't be plagued by all those liberals. :whip:

I'm pretty sure I've posted these somewhere before, but here goes again. This is my city bike; distances aren't great and there are no hills here, and this works just fine. It's a Raleigh DL-1, a model developed for English policemen and postmen in the 1930s. This one is more than 30 years old; it has a 24-inch frame, 28x1 1/2-inch wheels, Sturmey-Archer AW 3-speed hub, rod brakes, a long wheelbase and low frame angles. It's very stable and rides comfortably on bricks and rough pavement. Although it weighs 34 pounds, it rolls pretty nicely. This bike looks like crap, but I keep it in good mechanical condition and well-lubricated; last year I gave it a new set of tires. It's unattractive to casual thieves, but I lock it up just the same.

Interesting photos and information. It's too bad the brand didn't survive; it was quite nice & mellow and was once my potion of choice.

Sorry; I should have been more specific. I was referring to the loss of elephant habitat due to illegal logging and destruction of forest by impoverished people who share their territory and who have no way to feed themselves and their families other than by subsistence farming and by the sale of timber (and ivory, too; I agree with what you said about that).

Yes. I read that article. It's actually relevant to this discussion; the elephants are losing out to humans in the competition for resources that are insufficient to sustain the human overpopulation. If elephants were carnivores, the problem might partially rectify itself. The accusations of hypocrisy directed against Al Gore seem somewhat justified, but that doesn't change the facts of his message, or the need for Americans to conserve. Whether or not you accept global warming as fact, I don't think anyone denies that America's oil and gas supplies have peaked and are not capable of meeting our demand. It's a fact that we're dependent upon Middle Eastern countries for oil and our dependency will continue to increase. Whether or not their supplies are near peak or overstated is only marginally relevant. They control the supply, and we're not making much effort to control our demand. We cannot afford the oil imports and we cannot afford the military interventions, and most Americans are still in denial about both.

I shudder when I see people riding bikes on the street past my house. It's a one-way arterial going out of town that's posted 35mph, but where typical speeds are 40-50mph and drivers are competitive and aggressive. There's a quiet residential street that runs parallel just a block away, and that leads to a paved greenway path that continues on westward a couple of miles. The people that I see doing it usually aren't hard-core cyclists. More likely they're dorks who lost their licenses because of DUI, or beat their old junkers to death and couldn't get them fixed. Sometimes they're smoking a cigarette as they grind away with chattering misaligned derailleurs and half-flat tires. I guess it's just natural selection at work. :roll:

Wow! Even more scathing than usual. While some denounce Kunstler as excessively apocalyptic in his views, I feel like he's much better than I am at articulating what I've felt intuitively for a long time. Much as we don't like to hear what he's saying, I find it hard to refute. Uncharacteristic amount of potty-mouth in that particular column, though, isn't it? Edit: After going back and reading some of his previous blogs, I guess that last comment I made is without substance.

I have seen the future, and its time is already past! :?

We should all eat more elephants! Anybody got a recipe?

Thanks for sharing those. I was tempted to drive to Cincinnati for the tour, but the weather forecast discouraged me. It looks like the weather held up pretty well, though. Magnificent places!

Possibly not. The town was founded around 1900, and was in sharp decline by the time the mill closed in the early sixties. Had you grown up in Cass, you might not have known anything different, as most houses in rural communties and small towns were painted white then. There were a few variations here and there, but nothing like the combinations of Victorian colors we see now on restored nineteenth-century homes. Even older homes in many places had had their original color schemes painted over with white, and had you visited a city and seen some of the older houses in their multicolored schemes, you might have thought them strange.

It's interesting that no one applies the same standards of profitability to commercial aviation and the interstate highway system. I'm trying to get beyond being too dumbstruck to respond, when I hear people express the belief that airlines and trucking companies don't benefit from taxpayers' money.

I didn't know that about Cass & Mower. From what I've read, the timber companies were fairly good employers, at least compared with the coal companies who were the other major employers in West Virginia. Apparently, they paid well and took good care of their employees.

Fascinating! There are still some wonderful buildings there that need some love. Eleven or twelve feet of fall with a good volume can produce a lot of power when used to drive turbines! It will be interesting to see if interest in hydropower revives as oil and gas become more costly. It can never sustain the energy use that people are accustomed to, but it could be a lot better than any alternative.

Even the Amish will feel the pinch; go to any of the towns in Amish country (I grew up ten miles from Berne, Indiana) on a Saturday morning. You'll find Amish families arriving in vans driven by "English" drivers and shopping for groceries, hardware items and clothing. Some Amish farmers use modern farm machines adapted for horse-drawn operation, and many use commercially produced fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Some hire "English" farmers with tractors to do heavy tillage work. Amish homes are often heated with propane and may have gas refrigerators and ranges. I've shopped in an Amish hardware store that uses gas lighting fueled by propane. Still, the Amish will be able to adapt more readily to scarce oil supplies than the general population. Their livelihoods are built around an agrarian model, and they possess the basic skills for producing and preserving food with or without the help of fossil fuels. Even the Amish who work outside farming are generally in professions like carpentry that will be invaluable in providing shelter and making use of renewable resources. Most have a strong work ethic and a strong sense of community in which people look after one another with minimal reliance on commercial institutions. They'll be safer on the road in their buggies, too, without so many careless auto drivers.

since I don't drink...tell me now! lol Inquiring minds want to know! Nor do I drink much, or often, but a few drinks make it easier to tell. I'm kinda bashful, ya know. :oops: Besides, that's just the kind of tale that could get a guy banned.

I did exercise some restraint by not revealing the lurid details. I'll save those for after a meet sometime, over a beer or two. :evil: For now, I'll just acknowledge that it had something to do with holiday family dynamics, as so often is the case.

Wrap your hat with aluminum foil inside and out, and then tape all the remotes to it. Put it on and go outside and walk around the neighborhood. :weird:

Dang! Wonderful stuff!

I don't use many remotes, but people tell me I have a problem with control.

There used to be a bus that ran back and forth between LaGuardia and Grand Central. It's been several years since I've been there, and I can't remember the name of it, but the fare was only $5 one way. I expect it's more expensive now, but still probably lots cheaper than a cab. It ran fairly frequently, and was an express bus, not a local. edit: I just googled airport bus laguardia and came up with several hits, including this one, to Penn Station (pretty close?) with departures every 20-30 minutes depending on time of day, travel time 1:10 and fare $12 one way.

D'OH! It never occurred to me to take a camera that night; I already had quite a few train photos at Baker Street, and one Amtrak train looked pretty much like another. I didn't expect to see that much traffic piled up. I can remember two occasions when I saw the Lakeshore in Fort Wayne, and once the Cardinal came through westbound. In that case, the passengers had already been put on a bus and Amtrak was just ferrying the empty train. It might have come up from Muncie on Norfolk Southern, and I saw it perform a rather convoluted switching move through downtown on track that no longer exists, and then go through the interchange off the former Wabash onto the Conrail (PRR) line to Chicago. The assistant division superintendent was overseeing the switching move and he was boiling. At one point, all three districts that come together in Fort Wayne were tied up by it.

I speculate that that particular mess is one of the consequences of the "rationalization" that took place in the 70s, 80s and 90s as systems were pruned of what the bean-counters considered redundancy. One example of that was cutting off the Conrail (former PRR) line through Fort Wayne that resulted in the loss of Amtrak service here in 1990. That was once the preferred detour route for the Lakeshore Limited when traffic was disrupted on the former New York Central Water-level Route. I used to listen to scanner traffic on the Conrail frequency, and one night in the 1980s I learned that the Lakeshore would stop at the Baker Street Station. I called a friend and we met on the platform. We ended up seeing three Amtrak trains (Broadway, Capitol and Lakeshore) at the station or within sight, all at the same time! The good ol' days revisited! The main was still double track then, with three or four tracks across downtown, and both platforms were still in service. With all that activity plus freight traffic next door on the NS former Wabash line, I had goosebumps.

Heteros recently bought the house about two blocks from here, where I lost my virginity on a Thanksgiving night back when I was young and innocent. That pretty well kills my plan to install a bronze plaque designating it as a historic landmark. :-D Although there's still a significant 'mo presence in Fort Wayne's Historic West Central Neighborhood, it's nothing like it was back in the day. Time has taken its toll; those of us who remain are mostly homeowners. Today's twenty- and thirty-somethings grew up in the 'burbs, and when they moved out on their own they moved into suburban apartment complexes and villaminiums. Still, it's comfortable here, most folks get along well, and there's a visible gay presence in the neighborhood association.