Childhood dreaming

I became obsessed with photography at an early age, from the time I was about five I had some kind of camera in my hand a string of less than spectacular Kodak 110's and ancient garage sale 126's passed through my hands in the mid 80's before I switched to cheap plastic fixed lens 35mm's.

I dreamed about an SLR, the unatainable dream for a pre teen fixated on photography, the glorious luxury of being able to compose through the lens of the camera. A chance encounter with a very complete, though now I know very limited early 60's Kodak outfit was the closest I came for years.

amazingly, I was in my late teens before my first SLR came into my life, a 70's era Minolta X-370. It survived and thrived for a decade of College classes, vacations, and Railfanning, which is about the most dangerous occupation for a consumer SLR, I gathered up a fair selection of glass for it, though nothing spectacular. And along the way managed to kill an CG-7 and a second X370 Body before switching to more robust Pentax Bodies, and thats where I'll take up tomorrow.

It's been awhile for this blog, I never set out to ignore The Middle of Nowhere, but I've been trying to keep focused and keep busy. Depression and loneliness are hard subjects to talk about, and so is setting aside what was going to be the biggest part of your future. Sometimes you do things because there is no better choice, sometimes you have to make the wrong decision for the greater good.

The wheel in the sky keeps on turning...

Or something like that anyhow....

A tale of weakness and moral outrage.

It was the summer of '08, and I had completed my first semester as a rather long-in-the tooth junior at the local private college. All A's of course, but being a decade or so older than your classmates doesn't hurt when it comes to focus. It had been a long road just to get there, with precious little help from the University I might ad. But I was hanging on.

I always dreamed about going to a real University, not as an end in it's self, but as a path to spreading my love of History to as many people as possible. My first semester went great, not cheap, but great otherwise. Liked the professors, liked my fellow students, a few seemed to have real potential as human beings. Thinking about joining History club and getting to really experience some campus life, or at least as watered down a version as I could stand.

The trouble, and my lack of courage began to show it's self as I signed up for classes. High on my list of remaining requirements was the glaring PHE121, crap, why a Health class?? My Advisor was quick to brush aside my concern, assuring me it was something that could be slept through and still attain a B. Fine, I though, watch some movies and talk about healthy eating, No problem.

Not the crux of the problem is, I'm not the prototypical College Junior at this point. I'm a walking contradiction in Wranglers and a Co-op hat, even though I'm an avid bicyclist, I'm not avid enough. With my classic, pudgy German farmer build, (Short legs, long torso) I'm not built for speed of any sort of elegant fluidity of motion. Ok, I'm a big dumpy farmer. And thats how I show up for the first class, ahhh o, first thing I see wrong is it's in the athletic center aka the gymnasium, not good, I have not set foot in any sort of gym since jr High, it's against my personal beliefs! I find the room, a crowd of Children mulling outside the door... Freshmen, dressed in workout clothes... Crap... double crap, I'm standing out like a billboard, the big guy in jeans and T-shirt. The toddlers are looking at me too, like I'm a misplaced janitor or something. Thoughts about how much I hate college administrators are flying through my mind as the Professor pushes through and opens the door.

And bad got worse... This meatbag has "Coach" written all over him, it might as well be stamped on his forehead.. ()*&*&%^$%!! and other unrepeatables are flying though my mind at lightspeed. I have an aversion to coaches that runs so deep I skipped physical therapy after they rebuilt my knee! Chnka chunka chunka goes my heartbeat, every second this is looking more like some sort of horrid organized activity, how could these monsters be heartless enough to toss a 30 year old man with high blood pressure, an ulcer, acid reflux and a limp in here with a bunch of kids.

I stayed long enough to get the sylabis, which sadly confirmed my worst fears, words like BMI and maximum heart rate littered the page. My mind turned to mush and the wind fell from my sails like a ship in the doldrums. And I walked, no way I was going to spend $1500 for humiliation. Today, a year later, I might have limped my way around and embarassed myself for the semester. But probably not. I'm ashamed, and a bit dissapointed, but I still don't know quite why they could not have just let me skip that stupid class.

End of an age, French steel in the 80's

A beautiful machine I need to take some proper pictures of, my '80 Motobecane "Super Touring" France, much to the supporters of British and Italian bikes denial, dominated much of the American bicycle market. Seemingly millions of Peugeot's, Motobecanes's Gitane's, Merciers's and countless others poured in in the 60's and 70's. By the 80's though the handwriting was on the wall, cheaper, but still amazingly high quality bikes from Japan, and progressively more decent machines from Taiwan began to fill the market. All too soon, the old names faded from our national eye.

I was lucky I guess, in a way, I had a Peugeot P8 I won in a bike-a-thon when I was 8, so after I was tall enough to ride it, I got to spend part of my childhood on a steel french 10 speed, just as the golden age of the Road bike was coming to a close.

Now, I spend my very limited bicycle budget trying to recapture a past I only touched in the tiniest way, from the back rooms of bike shops, or the vast wasteland of e-bay I have gathered up a few old machines I play with. Such as the Motobecane shown above, and yes, I have replaced the seat and shortened the cables. The Motobecane "Grand Touring" had a reputation well earned as a competent road machine in the day touring style, brazed up from Vitus 172 tubes, double butted, and a close match to Reynolds 531 it rolled on throughout the 1970's. But in 1979 or '80 The grand old name was transferred to a new machine, similar in shape and intent. But made from the somewhat heavier Vitus "888". An economical decision I'm sure, but leaving a sad gap in the Motobecane line up.

This filled soon after by the rebirth of the "Grand Touring", if not in name, the most certainly in spirt under the guise of the "Super Touring" complete with it's heart and sole, the Underapriciated Vitus 172 Tubeset, and clad in nearly bulletproof Suntour equipment. It would roll on for a while longer before Motobecane faded from the American market.

My Super Touring was a happy accident on e-bay. I was close enough to avoid the $100 shipping charge! So the old war horse came home for $65! New tires and replacement wheel finished a refurb that included new paint and home made decals. Not to mention a few months of cleaning, painting, tinkering and wrenching.

Standing your ground: a recipe for an immobile life

Here is an interesting pic for you today, a snapshot of my '53 International Harvester "Super" C, for those not in the loop, it's a rather archaic farm tractor. It's also a battered, rusty, artifact we dragged out of a junkyard. Happily though, this one runs! My history obcession tends to run away with it's self, and a couple of years ago, it ran right into collecting old farm tractors. Hefty beasts these, even more cumbersome than the basement full of vintage ten speeds, but not, thankfully as immobile as the collection of industrial lathes I have somehow taken in.

But my half dismantled farm tractor is not the point.. mostly. My point is, heaven help me if I ever have to move, somehow in my life I've assumed the mantle of unpaid, untrained and very unofficial museum curator to the Midwestern race. From the box of old Bell Telephones to the garage full of woodworking equipment I have enough stores of antiquated stuff to keep three or four 1950's Illinois farm family's well provisioned and comfortable, Everything down to the books to teach them how to use the tools, (and educate the whole family somewhat comprehensively for that matter). Battle scars of the unstoppable flea market picker are the thousands of books I somehow amassed on unconnected subjects, from flying to fishing.

What I need, is a gigantic time capsule, A King Tut's tomb of middle America, that way, 10,000 years from now people will know what a Zebco 33 Spin-casting reel is, or a Bell 500 Rotary phone. Then I can start collecting stuff all over again.

In the mean time, I think there is an Apple //+ under my bed, stacked beside the pile of Successful Farming from 1964......

RNW

On lost arts, and vanishing icons.

Image stolen from Wikipedia

vanishing icons.

Know what this is??.... Most won't, but this simple looking piece of furniture gave birth to the age of technology we live in. 

Before Computers and cad,  Engineers, Artists, Draftsmen and Architects designed our reality by hand, skilled fingers put pencils and pens to vellum and made some of the most stunning works of mankind posable on this simple looking device. 

  Drafting tables are quickly becoming a vanishing species, in industrial and commercial settings.  Save for among students and artists, few now seem to prefer manual work to the ease that the personal computer brings.  With my interest in old machinery last year I had casually started buying drafting sets, and books on technical drawing.  A  few tool purchases led to a bit of research, which of course, led to the desire for a drafting table of my own.   Looking, in a brief moment of fog-eyed consumerism I considered a new table, but with the dismal quality of the $150 ish student tables at the craft store, and the $300+ cost of a vintage wooden table, I nearly gave up.  

Days later, while browsing craigslist I stumbled upon the ad, laced with the words every deal hunter desires, adjectives like, "Moving", and "Must Go". So I made the trip into the city, around by-passes and through pot holes big enough to swallow a semi, down to an out of the way self storage  area where I met "Doug" former Engineer and motivated seller.   Shortly after, my war torn Jeep Cherokee was packed to the roof with 300lbs of a  ca. 1985 Hamilton, fully adjustable Drafting table.  

I sit at it now, tinkering with a sketch of a GWR Pannier tank locomotive, or some farm building I'd like to build, and I reflect at the history that even this (In Comparison) very young table experienced. My table may have only had a twenty year life of designing gas stations, but it's brothers and cousins were used to design everything from steam locomotives to space shuttles. Workspaces touched by skilled hands and  brilliant minds, works of art flowed from them under the thin guise of blueprints and technical drawings.  

Yes, the computer is worlds ahead of pencils and paper,  drafting machines and erasers, and out friend the drafting desk,  but something of the soul is lost in it now, something of the person behind the creation. 

 

I freely admit it, he people at Brooks saddles in England http://www.brookssaddles.com/ are heros of mine, they are still making some of the same models saddles (Bicycle seats) they were making in the 1890's, and using the same methods. Some of the production machines have been in use for decades. 

Now, Brooks saddles are not for everyone, go to any cycling forum and you will find divided opinions on the subject,  for some, they are a revelation, for some they are a quaint throwback to a bygone era, and for some, they are pure torture. 

Granted,  I'm one of the lucky ones, a new Brooks B-17 standard is perfectly comfortable to me right out of the box. Some people have to break a Brooks in, and some never adapt to a tensioned  leather saddle.  I have three B/17's a vintage B/15 and a B5n  mounted on my bicycles, in addition to the new saddle featured below.

The new Brooks Imperial

Last year I had the honor to serve as a product tester for the new, or rather old, depending on your viewpoint Brooks Imperial slotted saddle.  Cut out saddles have become all the rage in the past few years as health issues have blanketed the cycling news. Brooks re-issued the Imperial for the first time in a century. 

More on leather saddles later on. 

RNW

Welcome to my Blog, Day 1: May 7th 2009.

Not that I believe any great number of people will bother to read it, but as the entire rest of the planet seems to be blogging. I decided to jump feet first into the arena and start one for myself.

I've been a student of history all my life, not so much of historical figures and there personalities, but more so of what people have created, human life is fleeting. Brief moments of existence passing by in a flash of time. What they left us, however can be preserved for future generations and learned from. I like the stuff people made in the past too, old stuff is usually better, wood and steel and craftsman ship have been replaced by computer design and cost cutting.

So in this blog, letters from nowhere, you might read about just about anything. But expect me to talk about companies that maintain a living link to the glory days of western industry, about cycling and vintage bicycles (1960's to 1980's) Farming, with my focus on history and equipment and the occasional foray into anything from vintage phones to model trains. I also have an interest in Photography and transportation, anything from bridges to Railroads to great lakes freighters.

I admit I'm crazy and not the greatest success in the financial arena, my best course in life would have been to hide in some university using my limited gifts to go as far as I could in education. However that course is closed to me due to financial restrains. So off we go.

RNW

P.S. This blog is first and foremost about meeting life face first, no matter if you triumph or fail there is no exit button.