ivendell eader 42 Published erratically ever since 1994 Winter 2010 When Kids had Pea -s hooteRs & s lingshots & P layed MuMblety -Peg eadeR no. 41 Was Mailed in FebRuaRy 2009 and now the name of this phenomenon, but i believe it is one. it’s rare it’s nearly February 2010, and that is why this Reader is to marry the first girl you date, and for the most part that’s a R two Maynards and twice as long. in some ways this issue good thing, although once in a while you should. is rough. in the late ‘70s when i was working at Rei in berkeley, we the Reader has never been entirely about bikes, and that is sold Madshus birkebeiner cross country skis, which at about nothing against bikes at all. i have less against bikes than any - $70 a pair, were the most-expensive light touring skis at the body i know, but there is only so much you can say about them time. they were also the best-looking, with no paint or varnish, in one issue, so some repetition is inevitable. just an oil finish that showed all the wood at its best. google not everybody who starts with us stays with us, anyway, so them and see for yourself. but despite their good looks, or on what’s old to vets is new to rookies. back to “not everybody who top of it, they were great-skiing, high-performance skis, and be - starts with us stays with us”: When you come upon Rivendell fore the age of specialization set in, they were used for every - early in your education as a cycler, there’s a tendency, as you gain thing from groomed track skiing to week-or-two back country experience and knowledge, to explore new territory, discover treks equivalent to a fully loaded off-road bicycle tour. new worlds, and associate the old friend with grammar school, then Madshus quit making the birkebeiner, and Rei bought so to speak. orvis suffers from this, to a certain extent. an a bunch, maybe hundreds, and blew them out for $29.93. in orvis bamboo fly rod is or was more accessible to more people, those days, all sale items ended in $0.93. and got to young fly fishermen before, say, they found out about Whether the sale was successful or not depends on how you leonard, Paul young, and Winston; and it cost less, though not define success. We sold out in a few hours, and it seemed that that much less. so you’d start with an orvis, get good with the every fourth person in the store that saturday was walking rod and at catching trout, and at that point orvis would be your around with a pair of Madshus birkebeiners. People who had stepping stone on to rarer, less-well-known and therefore more never owned cross-country skis found out about the sale and prestigious rods that seemed to offer the same thrill at that bought them, and everyone was shrugging their shoulders and stage of your fishing career as the orvis did earlier. i don’t know RR 42 E aRly 2010 saying, “at this price, you can’t go wrong.” and were a light “double-boot,” with a re - We regularly write or say that we don’t they were starting at the top, that’s for movable reflectorized liner. the outer like carbon forks, because we’ve seen too sure. was full-grain leather, and it had the nor - many of them shatter and snap. anything Preparing wooden cross-country skis mal norwegian welt, and speed-lace and can break, and not all breaks point to de - meant brushing pine tar onto the bot - hook lacing arrangement. it came out just fects. the concept of “wearing things toms, heating it up with a butane torch, at the onset of the plastic boot age, and out” has fallen out of favor in the past and then, when the pine tar got thin and to borrow a term from another industry, couple of decades, but it used to be com - bubbly, rubbing it in with a rag, and re - it was a “last-gasp” leather mountaineer - mon. peating. it took about ten minutes per ing boot, made with the best materials When something breaks you have to ski, and you had to be careful, because if and every crafty trick a boot cobbler look at the reasons and the conse - the flame was too hot or too close or could throw at a boot in an effort to sur - quences, and the repairability of it. We’ve dwelled too long at the same spot, you’d vive and stay relevant as the plastic ski- had dropouts break on our bikes. they burn the wood. it’s the old trick of run - boot style mountaineering boots were aren’t defective dropouts. they are well- ning your finger through the candle’s advancing in force. brazed. but sometimes riding puts a lit - flame fast so it doesn’t burn you. Rei blew them out at $3.93 per pair, no tle too much stress on a place that wasn’t about twenty people got the skis and limit per person, and there were guys super reinforced, and a crack develops charcoaled the bottoms black. they re - walking around with four and five pair and grows over time—-many months, al - turned them, and were refunded their stacked in their arms over their heads, as - ways—until the dropout “suddenly” $29.93 plus tax. sorted ballpark sizes. it made us employ - breaks. and it breaks where dropouts on a darfur scale, it didn’t matter. if ees livid to see day hikers and car campers have broken for scores. it’s always the you like to laugh at stupid mistakes where scamper to the register with armloads of right side dropout, just behind the chain - nobody dies, it was a good chance. on an the finest mountaineering boots of their stay. oil spill scale, it was a trivial hoot.. but on day, at $3.93 a pair. i am ashamed to say i hindsight is a good teacher, and we’ve a ski scale, where you think of the de - bought a pair, but only to rescue them made small changes that reduce the signer and the makers, and all of the po - from somebody far less likely to need chances of this happening to virtually tential in those plain-looking wooden them than i. Keep in mind that this was zero, but now and then one breaks, and a skis, it was a disaster. those skis had before ebay, so the chances of reselling blogger puts it on the web, and it makes something like 36 laminations of wood, them was slim. how this incident fits in me sad, and we take care of it. the fix is finely fitted together and glued and made with this editorial is unclear to me, but it not difficult, and the fixed dropout is into skis, and they had thousands of miles seems to fit. stronger than the new one. but it is a in them never skied, never would be i remember a 60-Minutes story several bummer. skied. years ago about nordstrom’s return pol - at least it is not a life-threatening bum - back then and i bet still now, Rei had icy, also famously lenient. it was rumored mer, or an unrepairable one. in a pinch, a return policy the was referred to inter - that you could return something to nord - in any town of 400 or more people, there nally as “smiling Jack.” it meant Jack or strom that you didn’t even buy there. is somebody who can weld the steel back Jill could return anything for any reason, this was tested and proved correct, and good enough to last another 10,000 miles and you did whatever it took to make him in the show, as i recall, the 60M reporter or so. the same cannot be said of lesser go away smiling. was interviewing the return department materials. person, who acknowledged that she knew under smiling Jack, abuse was impossi - Many years ago friend henry Kingman the thing wasn’t bought there, but that ble. the birkebeiner incident pushed a was riding an old steel mountain bike in was oK, she wanted to satisfy the cus - few buttons too hard, though. the tribe the afghanistanish mountains of nevada, tomer. was on the warpath, and we had a recov - five or so miles from town (as i recall he ery pow-wow to get back into the spirit our policy is to treat you the way we’d told me), when his fork, which had an un - of smiling Jack. like — well, it’s pretty much golden usual stress riser about three inches down Rule-like. everybody who works here has Within a year of the birkebeiner sale, from the top of the crown, broke. it did - the authority to do what it takes to han - we also blew out some mountaineering n’t suddenly go until it suddenly went, but dle your problem without checking with boots, a model called the habeler su - henry hadn’t noticed the crack. What - anybody else. it doesn’t come up a lot, perlight (named for Peter habeler, a ever—he was in the true blue boonies but just so you know, that’s the deal. still, mountaineer buddy of Reinhold Mess - with a broken steel fork. this was before if you didn’t buy it here, you can’t return ner), made by Kastinger.