The Happy Little Three Speed Bicycle

 Here is my Rivendell.  I've switched out handlebars more times than I can count - OK, that's a lie - maybe five times.  Currently it has a Bosco Moose bar, which I pretty much like.  I ordered the Rivendell in a fit of I-can't-find-the-bicycle-I-want fury back in 1999.  I had been riding an old Cannondale Road touring bike for years, and the components simply wore out.  That particular model of bicycle was featured on the cover of a book on bicycle touring we carried at the independent backpacking store I worked in during the late eighties early nineties.  I imagined myself out touring the world on it, though I think I never actually went out touring at that point in my life.  Whenever I weigh bicycle touring against backpacking in the scales of my mind, backpacking usually wins.  The argument goes like this: "Do you want to be out in the hot sun on the side of the highway with cars speeding past you at seventy to ninety miles per hour, or d...