I swapped the Cazaderos and Albastaches on my Sam and put it back into stripped down pavement mode, with Compass Bon Jon’s and drop bars, largely for the purpose testing a quill stem adapter + threadless stem for possible use on a new 61cm Roadini (it’s orange!!) where I’ll be transferring components from an existing bike.
I planned on doing about a 25 mile ride this morning, and ended up doing 42. Lots of scenery, mixed surfaces and hills. A ride of farms, forests, small towns, and public parks; and of industry. One of the highlights of my longer ride was actually riding by the Lehigh Cement plant in Union Bridge, MD. It’s a massive tower which I presume processes mined stone into a useful form for cement & concrete and is fed via a conveyor from a nearby quarry. But more than the sight of it was the sound which could be heard almost a mile away. Almost a smooth, soothing hum that signified everything was working as it should. A sound you want to hear from a production operation. If you’ve ever spent time in a factory or a printer, you’ll know what I mean. If you hear variable loud, erratic, sounds, you know something isn’t right. You want that hum. Most might think a concrete plant is an unsightly thing, and admittedly, I wouldn’t want this view & sound from my back yard. But to me, it’s also a thing of beauty, and an achievement of mankind that has enabled the construction of skyscrapers, bridges, road infrastructure, airport runways, and made so much possible. People built that. It reminded me when I stayed at a family member’s house for a week in a small town which was close to an in-town train track. Every morning around 6am train would wake me—and the sound of the cars rolling across the track was soothing, calming even. This, like the concrete plant, communicated that economic activity was happening, and that people were at work doing what they do. That all is well. On this occasion today, I wouldn’t have experienced it but by bike. And I also wouldn’t have seen it if my Sam didn’t inspire me to go further than I planned. I thank Rivendell for enabling this experience to happen. <https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-5T9ssFdtO5w/WybTfe7F03I/AAAAAAAAq4A/JmkfyRvdGIwWjD032Mg15Uc3mMCpSud3wCLcBGAs/s1600/sam_concrete.JPG> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
