On Feb 2, 2009, at 10:13 PM, David Estes wrote:
> I guess I came into this the opposite way. I was a BOB, > Bridgestone Owner's Bunch member that ended up on the Rivendell > mailing list when GP started the company. Although I read the > Hobbit and LOTR in middle school, I didn't really make the > connection right away. It had been fourteen years or so since I > read the books, and "Rivendell" the place didn't really stand out > for me. Plus I'm just slow that way. I came in through the BOB route (BOB #2704 or something like that); I discovered BOB through Grant's funny ads in VeloNews or where ever it was- especially the ad about the bike built by a mysterious vintage fame builder from mysteriously hoarded vintage parts and tubes and lugs. It was brilliant stuff with multiple levels and it's too bad Grant doesn't have that kind of ad budget now. He's good at it. I bought my wife a Construction Pumpkin 1993 XO-1 as an engagement/ wedding present through BOB when Bridgestone finished, among a few other things. She loved that bike, which was horribly destroyed about 10 years ago when it was run over while locked to a sign in front of her workplace. If it's any consolation, the bike and the sign saved some lives that day- an elderly lady somehow confused the gas pedal for the brake while parking, shot over the curb/the sign/ the bike and nearly hurtled through the front windows of the beauty parlor. Every frame tube was bent, I've never seen a bike so destroyed. (With the collusion of several friends, I replaced it with a Heron Road as a surprise Christmas present- a better made and nicer bike, objectively, even if it lacks the cachet of the XO-1). The XO-1 does live on in that some of the parts are in use on other bikes, and my wife still wimpers a bit when she sees an XO-1 on the Internet or in person. Of course, as Grant has mentioned the "Rivendell" connection to Tolkien was indirect. IIRC the business was named after the defunct Rivendell Mountain Works backpacking gear company rather than directly after the Last Homely House. > I'll probably start reading them to my oldest rather soon. Right > now going through the L. Frank Baum Oz books which have a lot of > the same elements in them. > > Bonus question: Anybody re-read the LOTR books after seeing the > movies, and did that make the books better/worse for you when you > read them again? I first read LOTR the summer after graduating from high school (1977) and re-read it about four times in the following six months. I even started learning to read and write Sindarin (this has been carried on to an amazing degree by Tolkien scholars on the Internet and one can now find entire lexicons)- what a nerd I was (and still am). I've read it about once a year since then, probably about 30-35 times now. I remember seeing the first movie with my wife; after the Ralph Bakshi debacle, I was wired to be pissed at Peter Jackson. I made my wife kind of nuts with "wait, that's not right!" "what happened to Crickhollow?" and "why is Arwen there? What happened to Glorfindel?" etc. She finally told me to "STFU already." (Any other LOTR fans do this?) But on the whole I came out impressed, and later on when watching the DVD commentary the writers explained why they made changes in plot and characters, and it made so much sense that I felt much better about it. The second movie was much closer to the book and the Ents rocked, so that made it way better, and I was able to let go of the books a bit more. The third movie bugged me in spots again, but still it was easier than the first movie was. Now I can enjoy the movies as sort of separate entities from the books; the extended editions help a lot with that, although the weakest stuff is generally the stuff they added. And the various video extras are astonishing. Reading the books after watching the movies a few times felt strange, because the movies had shifted the contour of the story in my mind a bit. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
