[CR] Great new issue of Bicycle Quarterly

(Example: Framebuilders:Jack Taylor)

From: Tom Sanders <tesanders@comcast.net>
To: <Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:57:12 -0400
Thread-Index: AcoFda3EDInTta6DSMOgDQFsdAFJew==
Subject: [CR] Great new issue of Bicycle Quarterly


The new issue arrived today and while eating lunch I set out to read it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is what I feel is the best issue I have seen yet of it. In the past I have felt that it was a poor fit between me and the magazine because of its' seemingly endless preoccupation with French Randonneur and touring bicycles.not exactly at the top of my interests. This issue had a fabulous and long article on Jack Taylor Cycles, some great testing and good discussion of stiffness or frame deflection. I am not sure I agree with all of it (I have yet to be converted into a believer in "Planing", for instance. I have always suspected it is just those wonderful times when you have been riding long enough to have a real second wind and manage to get into a long run with the wind at your back and suddenly you discover you are strong enough to leap tall buildings at a single bound, at least until you turn back into the wind.) At any rate the frame deflection issue is something I am very much interested in as one of my Masi bikes was the one used in that Sheldon Brown article on the matter. http://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/rinard_frametest.html I was especially pleased to see a short bit by Alex Wetmore (to whom all of us on this and the IBOB list owe no small debt). In the tests it was refreshing to see the testers speak up when something did not please them. I get so sick of sugar coated reviews in bike magazines.

I would suggest that if you haven't gotten into this magazine before, do check out the Summer 2009 issue. Jan and his compatriots have done a really outstanding job on it.

Tom Sanders

Lansing, Mi USA