This blog just reached a milestone - and I missed it! A couple of weeks ago, apparently, I hit 3 million visits to The Retrogrouch.  Understand that I'm the kind of person who gets a little kick out of seeing my car's odometer tick over a big significant number - like hitting 50,000 or 100,000 miles. I had one old car that turned over from 99999 back to 00000 (I doubt anyone born after 1975 will remember when odometers only went five figures before rolling over). I was stoked about that one for months. Yeah - I know - I'm kind of a dork. Anyhow - I knew I was getting close to 3 million ..read more

If you want to kill someone - and get away with it - it would be hard to find a better way to do it than to get the person on a bike and run them down with your car.  Cynical? Maybe so - but statistically speaking, it's very unlikely that a driver who injures or kills a cyclist will face any jail time, and in many cases may not even be charged with a crime. There's a pretty egregious case of this brewing currently in Texas - where a teenaged driver of a big modified diesel pickup truck ran over about six cyclists while attempting to harass them by "rolling coal." For those not familiar ..read more

Well, I finished my test period on the Brooks B-17 Imperial, or "Carved" saddle. I'd put several thousand miles on the saddle in that time, but when the year-long test period was over, I was actually glad to swap the saddle on my commuting mule. I took it off and replaced it with the Brooks C-17 I had been using previously, and it was a relief. The C-17 saddle's top is made of rubber and fabric bonded together. Its look is somewhat more "modern" than the B-17, but the "feel" is similar. I find that it more or less "disappears" under me, like a good traditional B-17 (without the big hole in th ..read more

Okay - I'll start this off by pointing out that this isn't exactly going to be a typical retro-grouchy, vintage-bikey kind of post. There won't be any pictures of lovely old bicycles, or photos taken from bike riding adventures. There won't be any grumbling about modern bike tech, or nostalgia for the beautiful simplicity of vintage bikes. But there is some connection to my usual retrogrouch interests. My now-teen-aged Retro-kid is an art student in high school, but so far has not learned how to do silk-screen printing at school. Silk-screening is something that I did many years ago and enjoye ..read more

If you read the previous post here in the blog, then you know that my family and I spent about a week in eastern Virginia, soaking up history in a part of the country that's just steeped in it. Well, our vacation is done, and we're back home in Akron - but now I have some time to write about how I spent my last day in VA. In doing some reading about bike routes and trails in the area around where we were staying, I learned about the Colonial Parkway, which is operated by the National Park Service. The parkway connects the three main historic villages of colonial Virginia - Jamestown, Williams ..read more

I had mentioned in my last post that the family and I would soon be taking a vacation trip - and that's exactly what we did. We made a drive from Ohio south to Virginia, where we would be spending about a week in the Williamsburg area - in the eastern part of VA, near the Chesapeake Bay. Well, by the time this gets posted, we'll actually be wrapping it up and on the way back home. But since we were driving, it was a simple matter to bring a bike - which as far as I'm concerned, is the best way to explore someplace new (or in this case, someplace very old). There is a lot of history in this par ..read more

I haven't had a lot to post about lately - this summer has had me off the bike quite a bit for various medical things, minor surgeries, and other procedures - Nothing too serious or alarming - but it has meant that I haven't been able to ride as much as I might otherwise. For a guy who rarely gets sick, and almost never goes to the doctor, it seems like I had to have a lot done all in one summer. Anyhow - I'm doing better - and I did finally manage to get out for a nice ride, early in the morning, just a bit after sunrise. We had some mist in the lower lying areas, especially down in the valle ..read more

How long after the Covid 19 pandemic ends will we still be finding discarded masks littering the ground? It's probably an impossible question to answer, but I have a feeling we'll be seeing them for a long time to come. Every time I go for a ride (or a jog, or a walk . . .) I'll see them everywhere I look -- soggy, dirty, and gross -- on the sidewalks, streets, and grass. Just one of a dozen or so that I spotted on my ride today. I should emphasize that the pandemic is far from over, but it's hard to tell from looking around at people shopping or dining out. I still wear a mask when I ..read more

I've long been a fan of the comic strip "Frazz," by Jef Mallett. Mallett is an avid cyclist (and very competitive triathlete, if I recall correctly) and he frequently works bicycling into his comic strip. The main character of the comic, Frazz, is the custodian at an elementary school, who happens to be a fount of knowledge, wisdom, and experience - and like the strip's creator, is also an avid cyclist. Mallett's comic strip often incorporates bicycle-related content (and it's notable that Mallett is one of the few comic strip artists who can actually draw a bicycle accurately). I had the plea ..read more

I thought I'd take a moment to share a recent find that I've added to my collection of vintage parts: a first-generation SunTour Cyclone derailleur, new-in-box - or NIB. I've always been a SunTour guy, and the Cyclone has long been a favorite. I have a couple of them, both in short cage and long-cage GT versions, and one of them gets pretty regular use on one of my vintage Mercian bikes. I have a second-generation version (M-II) on my Sequoia. Clean or lightly-used examples come up for sale frequently, but finding one like this is rare these days. The box has seen better days, but it doesn't ..read more