Brooks and myself are resolving issues....

Brooks in the UK have been talking to me a little more and have offered
be a new B17 under warranty, which is a very fair solution to my
problems.

I've also outlined the improvement I think they could try.
They could build a few samples and have a few keen cyclists try the idea
out. I am not saying they should change a design that is over 100 years
old overnight.

In my last email to them I said...

"""""The clip through which the tension bolt fits could be a block of
skulptured/cast aluminium with a thread to take a tension pin made of
10mm dia steel. This would have a cone shaped end to push into the nose
bracket like the existing tension pin. But you could have an Allen Screw
indentation in the cone ended pin to allow easy pin tension adjustment
with an Allen Key. This would be far simpler and easier to adjust that
the existing arrangement.
The nose bracket could then be made to slide on the aluminium clip thus
reducing dynamic forces on the pin. And there could be room for more
nose rivets but smaller than the existing to ensure the nose leather is
more likely to last longer without tearing apart."""""

I had rather a lot of other things to say which explains the wisdom of
**constant** R&D behind the scenes to improove any product.
We all know why the British motorcyle industry flopped when faced with
japanese competition. Mind you, I wasn't impressed with Japanese
motocycles despite their speed and lightness. After owning lots of of
british motorcycles I bought a BMW and I then had clean hands because I
didn't have to repair something every other week.

Just where would Campagnolo or Shimano be without a few guys beavering
away to make better bicycles for the world?

Patrick Turner

Patrick Turner wrote:
Brooks in the UK have been talking to me a little more and have offered
be a new B17 under warranty, which is a very fair solution to my
problems.

I've also outlined the improvement I think they could try.
They could build a few samples and have a few keen cyclists try the idea
out. I am not saying they should change a design that is over 100 years
old overnight.


Patrick

Patrick did you put your hand up to test ride the saddles?

r

Rob wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:
Brooks in the UK have been talking to me a little more and have offered
be a new B17 under warranty, which is a very fair solution to my
problems.

I've also outlined the improvement I think they could try.
They could build a few samples and have a few keen cyclists try the idea
out. I am not saying they should change a design that is over 100 years
old overnight.


Patrick

Patrick did you put your hand up to test ride the saddles?

r

No, because that could have been seen as an attempt to merely get a free
deal with Brooks.

If my ideas for Brooks saddle improvements are valid ideas then it
should be able to be proven anywhere. Since there are many more than one
keener cyclist than I am in the UK and nearby Europe, then its
convenient that Brooks test improvements amoung them because they are
all based quite close to the Brooks address.

But If Brooks were to include me as test rider then I'd accept.

I don't want anything out of this for myself, except for the opportunity
to buy a better Brooks in future.

At a time in history where economic uncertainty would have many blokes
thinking twice about buying a new car, or leasing one, they may well be
thinking that they should ride to work to save paying gym fees as well
as car payments and petrol costs. Bike sales look sure to increase and
if ever the world gets over the economic downturn, then just watch
commodity prices; they'll skyrocket to make up for lost times, and then
its a dog chase the tail thing again where as pay packets increase you
only get a miserly increase in real wealth but at a terible cost of
increased anxiety.
I worked out after 1980 that being a minimalist was a sure bet. Even
young women accused me of being a minimalist. How could they milk all
the money out of me if I refused to earn piles of dollars for them to
waste on friparies? If you simply refuse to eat at McDonalds, run up
credit card debt, drink at pubs or footy clubs, smoke cigarettes, rent
housing housing and cars instead of buying them, stay married to wives
who spend way too much on bull**** things but won't cycle anywhere with
you, go to brothels where the girls charge far more than you earn in an
a hour, have far too many children, and do 1001 other things that simply
make you feel your're missing out on something and that you want more
and ****ing more, then you'll live a peaceful uncluttered sensible life
with the same carbon footprint as somebody in the third world.

But there's still plenty of need that anyone alive today should feel
guilty that the Farm, ie, the world in general is being left in poorer
condition when we leave the Farm then when we came onto the Farm. And
how much so called "progress" is actually guilt free?

We were all hunter gatherers before about 10,000 years ago, like Oz abos
only a hundred years ago. The Planet can't sustain 6 billion hunter
gatherers. We evolved Farming. Good farms exist in the midst of complex
species diversity without many problems but our species went further
because we decided we needed an Industrial Revolution. Iraq is a country
which illustrates the terrible effect of unsustainable farming, and
thousands of years ago it wasn't even industrial.
All our smartness not only increased consumption of resources in the
world in energy terms by 100 times over what it was only 200 years ago
but it doubled our life spans and vastly reduced infant mortality, so
the environment copped the ultimate whammy in the guts.

So to sustain our city dwelling middle class lifestyle we rely on oil to
farm what we eat and transport the produce to cities. The oil supply
exists because of millions of years of subterranean processing of
hydrocarbons buried for millions of years. The oil looks certain to run
right out in 100 years, an eyelid blink in cosmic time. Ditto coal use.
If we go on as we are, then in 1,000 years we may have weaned ourselves
off oil and coal and gas but the whole of the rest of the natural world
will be utterly ****ed up.

I didn't choose to be born. But I was, and once my turn came to choose a
wife, OK, I am as stupidly human as the next man along, and I find a
girl to marry. But unless ALL conditions were right, then I MYSELF would
see to it that who ever I was rootin at the time wouldn't get pregnant.
The girl wanted such an enormous amount and such a huge release from her
internal anxieties that I said "Darlin, see that door? matbe a better
life awaits you out there somewhere." And luckily she vamoosed. Like
most people she couldn't face the issues around herself regarding
existance and her relativity to the universe.
And when of course my thoughts concluded that nothing much was ever
right about human existance most of the time, I was unwilling to breed.
Good decision that one, and its saved me a pile of misery, judging by
what I saw happening around me. Seemed to me blokes were desperate for
pussy, and to make their wives hang around longer than they otherwise
would, they'd get them pregnant. That mentality was never going to make
the world a better place.

I'm left wondering if there is a better way to solve **long term**
unsustainability. I'm rather dull, and dumb, and no expert on such
issues.
But as our Planet wanders around in the Milky Way we may discover
evidence of other folks existance on perhaps thousands of other planets
like ours. We currently are at the crawling stage of discoveries about
our visible universe. Maybe we find a bunch of planets where life
obviously once existed only to be snuffed out by the life's stupidity
over greenhouse or some other equally daunting challenge.
There is every reason why many planets have developed "intelligent" life
and had it snuffed out all maybe millions of years ago. There are
archeological treasures to be discovered out there. Thousands of lessons
of history to be learnt and ignored!
If the universe is 15 billion years old since the Big Bang, 100 million
years isn't a large amount of time. So when we find hundreds of
Earth-like planets some won't yet have life and others will have had it
and maybe a few will have it while we still exist and can take lessons
from them. Travelling to such places seems a bit of the bother just now,
so for the forseeable future there is ZERO escape from the Human
Condition.

Such issues of existance are more important than Fringe Benefit Taxes
and whether you lease or own your car.

I'm just lucky that bicycles give me a sustainable feeling of wonderment
while I ride one. But I guess if I lived in 1709, I'd be riding a horse
for pleasure on weekends and one day during the week. There was a lot of
grass around for horses to eat, and a beautiful unspoiled environment.
It never occurred to idealists in 1709 that there could be too many
people, unless you lived in the Grand Slum they called London.
But I'd be dead now if I was around in 1709 because hardly anyone lived
to my age i am now, mainly because doctors dentists were not so good; in
fact they'd hasten death and pain if anything. If there were no bicycles
or motorists we'd need better vets to allow horses to have a nice life
too.

So all the world needs is good doctors and dentists and vets and less
greedy people.

My old Economics teacher at school once told us all that the only thing
that the world will NEVER run out of is Demand.

Everyone's needy, even wanty, and that's a hell of a problem. We pay a
huge price for the survival of the fittest.

Patrick Turner.

On Mar 19, 6:55*pm, Patrick Turner wrote:

Patrick Turner.

Wow!, thanks Patrick!!

On Mar 19, 5:55*pm, Patrick Turner wrote:
Rob wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:
Brooks in the UK have been talking to me a little more and have offered
be a new B17 under warranty, which is a very fair solution to my
problems.

I've also outlined the improvement I think they could try.
They could build a few samples and have a few keen cyclists try the idea
out. I am not saying they should change a design that is over 100 years
old overnight.

Patrick

Patrick did you put your hand up to test ride the saddles?

r

No, because that could have been seen as an attempt to merely get a free
deal with Brooks.

If my ideas for Brooks saddle improvements are valid ideas then it
should be able to be proven anywhere. Since there are many more than one
keener cyclist than I am in the UK and nearby Europe, then its
convenient that Brooks test improvements amoung them because they are
all based quite close to the Brooks address.

But If Brooks were to include me as test rider then I'd accept.

I don't want anything out of this for myself, except for the opportunity
to buy a better Brooks in future.

At a time in history where economic uncertainty would have many blokes
thinking twice about buying a new car, or leasing one, they may well be
thinking that they should ride to work to save paying gym fees as well
as car payments and petrol costs. Bike sales look sure to increase and
if ever the world gets over the economic downturn, then just watch
commodity prices; they'll skyrocket to make up for lost times, and then
its a dog chase the tail thing again where as pay packets increase you
only get a miserly increase in real wealth but at a terible cost of
increased anxiety.
I worked out after 1980 that being a minimalist was a sure bet. Even
young women accused me of being a minimalist. How could they milk all
the money out of me if I refused to earn piles of dollars for them to
waste on friparies? If you simply refuse to eat at McDonalds, run up
credit card debt, drink at pubs or footy clubs, smoke cigarettes, rent
housing housing and cars instead of buying them, stay married to wives
who spend way too much on bull**** things but won't cycle anywhere with
you, go to brothels where the girls charge far more than you earn in an
a hour, have far too many children, and do 1001 other things that simply
make you feel your're missing out on something and that you want more
and ****ing more, then you'll live a peaceful uncluttered sensible life
with the same carbon footprint as somebody in the third world.

But there's still plenty of need that anyone alive today should feel
guilty that the Farm, ie, the world in general is being left in poorer
condition when we leave the Farm then when we came onto the Farm. And
how much so called "progress" is actually guilt free?

We were all hunter gatherers before about 10,000 years ago, like Oz abos
only a hundred years ago. The Planet can't sustain 6 billion hunter
gatherers. We evolved Farming. Good farms exist in the midst of complex
species diversity without many problems but our species went further
because we decided we needed an Industrial Revolution. Iraq is a country
which illustrates the terrible effect of unsustainable farming, and
thousands of years ago it wasn't even industrial.
All our smartness not only increased consumption of resources in the
world in energy terms by 100 times over what it was only 200 years ago
but it doubled our life spans and vastly reduced infant mortality, so
the environment copped the ultimate whammy in the guts. * *

So to sustain our city dwelling middle class lifestyle we rely on oil to
farm what we eat and transport the produce to cities. The oil supply
exists because of millions of years of subterranean processing of
hydrocarbons buried for millions of years. The oil looks certain to run
right out in 100 years, an eyelid blink in cosmic time. Ditto coal use.
If we go on as we are, then in 1,000 years we may have weaned ourselves
off oil and coal and gas but the whole of the rest of the natural world
will be utterly ****ed up.

I didn't choose to be born. But I was, and once my turn came to choose a
wife, OK, I am as stupidly human as the next man along, and I find a
girl to marry. But unless ALL conditions were right, then I MYSELF would
see to it that who ever I was rootin at the time wouldn't get pregnant.
The girl wanted such an enormous amount and such a huge release from her
internal anxieties that I said "Darlin, see that door? matbe a better
life awaits you out there somewhere." And luckily she vamoosed. Like
most people she couldn't face the issues around herself regarding
existance and her relativity to the universe.
And when of course my thoughts concluded that nothing much was ever
right about human existance most of the time, I was unwilling to breed.
Good decision that one, and its saved me a pile of misery, judging by
what I saw happening around me. Seemed to me blokes were desperate for
pussy, and to make their wives hang around longer than they otherwise
would, they'd get them pregnant. That mentality was never going to make
the world a better place.

I'm left wondering if there is a better way to solve **long term**
unsustainability. I'm rather dull, and dumb, and no expert on such
issues.
But as our Planet wanders around in the Milky Way we may discover
evidence of other folks existance on perhaps thousands of other planets
like ours. We currently are at the crawling stage of discoveries about
our visible universe. Maybe we find a bunch of planets where life
obviously once existed only to be snuffed out by the life's stupidity
over greenhouse or some other equally daunting challenge.
There is every reason why many planets have developed "intelligent" life
and had it snuffed out all maybe millions of years ago. There are
archeological treasures to be discovered out there. Thousands of lessons
of history to be learnt and ignored!
If the universe is 15 billion years old since the Big Bang, 100 million
years isn't a large amount of time. So when we find hundreds of
Earth-like planets some won't yet have life and others will have had it
and maybe a few will have it while we still exist and can take lessons
from them. Travelling to such places seems a bit of the bother just now,
so for the forseeable future there is ZERO escape from the Human
Condition.

Such issues of existance are more important than Fringe Benefit Taxes
and whether you lease or own your car.

I'm just lucky that bicycles give me a sustainable feeling of wonderment
while I ride one. But I guess if I lived in 1709, I'd be riding a horse
for pleasure on weekends and one day during the week. There was a lot of
grass around for horses to eat, and a beautiful unspoiled environment.
It never occurred to idealists in 1709 that there could be too many
people, unless you lived in the Grand Slum they called London.
But I'd be dead now if I was around in 1709 because hardly anyone lived
to my age i am now, mainly because doctors dentists were not so good; in
fact they'd hasten death and pain if anything. If there were no bicycles
or motorists we'd need better vets to allow horses to have a nice life
too.

So all the world needs is good doctors and dentists and vets and less
greedy people.

My old Economics teacher at school once told us all that the only thing
that the world will NEVER run out of is Demand.

Everyone's needy, even wanty, and that's a hell of a problem. We pay a
huge price for the survival of the fittest.

Patrick Turner.

Wow!! I just Googled "Brooks saddles bull****" to see if anyone had
anything negative to say about Brooks saddles, as I am thinking about
buying one... I didn't count on getting an existentialist critique of
post-industrial society. Nicely done sir!! So should I get the
saddle or not?

wrote:
On Mar 19, 5:55 pm, Patrick Turner wrote:
Rob wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:
Brooks in the UK have been talking to me a little more and have offered
be a new B17 under warranty, which is a very fair solution to my
problems.
I've also outlined the improvement I think they could try.
They could build a few samples and have a few keen cyclists try the idea
out. I am not saying they should change a design that is over 100 years
old overnight.
Patrick
Patrick did you put your hand up to test ride the saddles?
r
No, because that could have been seen as an attempt to merely get a free
deal with Brooks.

If my ideas for Brooks saddle improvements are valid ideas then it
should be able to be proven anywhere. Since there are many more than one
keener cyclist than I am in the UK and nearby Europe, then its
convenient that Brooks test improvements amoung them because they are
all based quite close to the Brooks address.

But If Brooks were to include me as test rider then I'd accept.

I don't want anything out of this for myself, except for the opportunity
to buy a better Brooks in future.

At a time in history where economic uncertainty would have many blokes
thinking twice about buying a new car, or leasing one, they may well be
thinking that they should ride to work to save paying gym fees as well
as car payments and petrol costs. Bike sales look sure to increase and
if ever the world gets over the economic downturn, then just watch
commodity prices; they'll skyrocket to make up for lost times, and then
its a dog chase the tail thing again where as pay packets increase you
only get a miserly increase in real wealth but at a terible cost of
increased anxiety.
I worked out after 1980 that being a minimalist was a sure bet. Even
young women accused me of being a minimalist. How could they milk all
the money out of me if I refused to earn piles of dollars for them to
waste on friparies? If you simply refuse to eat at McDonalds, run up
credit card debt, drink at pubs or footy clubs, smoke cigarettes, rent
housing housing and cars instead of buying them, stay married to wives
who spend way too much on bull**** things but won't cycle anywhere with
you, go to brothels where the girls charge far more than you earn in an
a hour, have far too many children, and do 1001 other things that simply
make you feel your're missing out on something and that you want more
and ****ing more, then you'll live a peaceful uncluttered sensible life
with the same carbon footprint as somebody in the third world.

But there's still plenty of need that anyone alive today should feel
guilty that the Farm, ie, the world in general is being left in poorer
condition when we leave the Farm then when we came onto the Farm. And
how much so called "progress" is actually guilt free?

We were all hunter gatherers before about 10,000 years ago, like Oz abos
only a hundred years ago. The Planet can't sustain 6 billion hunter
gatherers. We evolved Farming. Good farms exist in the midst of complex
species diversity without many problems but our species went further
because we decided we needed an Industrial Revolution. Iraq is a country
which illustrates the terrible effect of unsustainable farming, and
thousands of years ago it wasn't even industrial.
All our smartness not only increased consumption of resources in the
world in energy terms by 100 times over what it was only 200 years ago
but it doubled our life spans and vastly reduced infant mortality, so
the environment copped the ultimate whammy in the guts.

So to sustain our city dwelling middle class lifestyle we rely on oil to
farm what we eat and transport the produce to cities. The oil supply
exists because of millions of years of subterranean processing of
hydrocarbons buried for millions of years. The oil looks certain to run
right out in 100 years, an eyelid blink in cosmic time. Ditto coal use.
If we go on as we are, then in 1,000 years we may have weaned ourselves
off oil and coal and gas but the whole of the rest of the natural world
will be utterly ****ed up.

I didn't choose to be born. But I was, and once my turn came to choose a
wife, OK, I am as stupidly human as the next man along, and I find a
girl to marry. But unless ALL conditions were right, then I MYSELF would
see to it that who ever I was rootin at the time wouldn't get pregnant.
The girl wanted such an enormous amount and such a huge release from her
internal anxieties that I said "Darlin, see that door? matbe a better
life awaits you out there somewhere." And luckily she vamoosed. Like
most people she couldn't face the issues around herself regarding
existance and her relativity to the universe.
And when of course my thoughts concluded that nothing much was ever
right about human existance most of the time, I was unwilling to breed.
Good decision that one, and its saved me a pile of misery, judging by
what I saw happening around me. Seemed to me blokes were desperate for
pussy, and to make their wives hang around longer than they otherwise
would, they'd get them pregnant. That mentality was never going to make
the world a better place.

I'm left wondering if there is a better way to solve **long term**
unsustainability. I'm rather dull, and dumb, and no expert on such
issues.
But as our Planet wanders around in the Milky Way we may discover
evidence of other folks existance on perhaps thousands of other planets
like ours. We currently are at the crawling stage of discoveries about
our visible universe. Maybe we find a bunch of planets where life
obviously once existed only to be snuffed out by the life's stupidity
over greenhouse or some other equally daunting challenge.
There is every reason why many planets have developed "intelligent" life
and had it snuffed out all maybe millions of years ago. There are
archeological treasures to be discovered out there. Thousands of lessons
of history to be learnt and ignored!
If the universe is 15 billion years old since the Big Bang, 100 million
years isn't a large amount of time. So when we find hundreds of
Earth-like planets some won't yet have life and others will have had it
and maybe a few will have it while we still exist and can take lessons
from them. Travelling to such places seems a bit of the bother just now,
so for the forseeable future there is ZERO escape from the Human
Condition.

Such issues of existance are more important than Fringe Benefit Taxes
and whether you lease or own your car.

I'm just lucky that bicycles give me a sustainable feeling of wonderment
while I ride one. But I guess if I lived in 1709, I'd be riding a horse
for pleasure on weekends and one day during the week. There was a lot of
grass around for horses to eat, and a beautiful unspoiled environment.
It never occurred to idealists in 1709 that there could be too many
people, unless you lived in the Grand Slum they called London.
But I'd be dead now if I was around in 1709 because hardly anyone lived
to my age i am now, mainly because doctors dentists were not so good; in
fact they'd hasten death and pain if anything. If there were no bicycles
or motorists we'd need better vets to allow horses to have a nice life
too.

So all the world needs is good doctors and dentists and vets and less
greedy people.

My old Economics teacher at school once told us all that the only thing
that the world will NEVER run out of is Demand.

Everyone's needy, even wanty, and that's a hell of a problem. We pay a
huge price for the survival of the fittest.

Patrick Turner.

Wow!! I just Googled "Brooks saddles bull****" to see if anyone had
anything negative to say about Brooks saddles, as I am thinking about
buying one... I didn't count on getting an existentialist critique of
post-industrial society. Nicely done sir!! So should I get the
saddle or not?

I ride, therefore I am.

On Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:44:08 +1000, Blue Heeler wrote:


Patrick has a unique

naah

and somewhat idiosyncratic view of the world.

Isn't everyone's?

Blue Heeler wrote:
drop bar road, 1* Flat bar road, 1 * MTB and 1 * tourer). You need to
know that the first 200~300km on a new Brooks is not pleasant, the
leather needs time to "break-in", that is mold to your shape. Afte
rthat however, they just keep getting better and better.

Not always. I have 2 Brooks saddles, both B17's. One is the pre-aged
model and is the most comfortable saddle I've ever had. The other is the
std B17 and is pretty much horrible. After 6 months of commuting it was
still awful, and is pretty much now in the spare parts bin.

DaveB

wrote:

On Mar 19, 5:55 pm, Patrick Turner wrote:
Rob wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

snip,

Everyone's needy, even wanty, and that's a hell of a problem. We pay a
huge price for the survival of the fittest.

Patrick Turner.

Wow!! I just Googled "Brooks saddles bull****" to see if anyone had
anything negative to say about Brooks saddles, as I am thinking about
buying one... I didn't count on getting an existentialist critique of
post-industrial society. Nicely done sir!! So should I get the
saddle or not?

BY all means try one if you have the patience to break one in. After the
troubles I reported Brooks kindly sent me a pair of replacements which I
have fitted to two bikes, one is a B17 and a touring saddle just
slightly wider than the Pro which is narrower. Both are still very hard
feeling to ride on and will take some time for the leather to become
supple and flexible, even with the bolt tension reduced below where i
think it should be.

Before I can really say more, I have to break both saddles in, and only
one is partially run in. I used to easily ride 130km without any saddle
soreness in a day'd ride to Gunning and back with the old Pro before it
broke. The new one is taking its time to soften up, and last weeks ride
to Gunning left me with a sore arse and wanting ride hard to get home
asap over the last 40k instead of taking a second coffee stop.

Maybe hanging a damp cloth over the saddle before break in rides might
make the leather loosen up better. I put on plenty of Brooks saddle
doping grease but that didn't make the leather loosen. I recall that
20yrs ago I once paddled one saddle with a ball hammer where the pelvic
bones rest to hasten the break in. That saddle lasted over 25,000km,
leather was fine.

The thrust bolt, or tension bolt, same thing, has always broken so I
changed it straightaway with my own larger dia bolt with does not break.
It was difficult to get into the saddle when new, and so maybe its
better to break in the saddle and allow some leather lengthening and
bolt tensioning so that it then is easier to get out and replace without
having to use a Dremel angle griner to remove the existing bolt and to
have to grind the nut on the new larger bolt to a cone shape to get a
new bolt in.

You really have to be very handy to make mods Like I have. if you are
70kG or less, maybe you'll never break a saddle. But I am 85Kg, and Oz
sealed country back roads are not smooth hotmix.

Put it this way, If you had to ride the Paris to Roubaix which is 260km
with a fair amount on cobble stones, you'd need a well broken in Brooks.
I'd need to be a little fitter than I am now to out pace Tom Boonen who
just won it, even if I did have a comfy Brooks.

Patrick Turner.

Davo wrote:

wrote:

snip,

I ride, therefore I am.

But where? and why?

Patrick Turner.