The Non-Three Speed in My Life
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 do you want to be up in the
