Thorn Cycles Forum

Community => Muppets Threads! (And Anything Else) => Topic started by: Andre Jute on December 24, 2014, 03:26:31 am

Title: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Andre Jute on December 24, 2014, 03:26:31 am
(http://www.coolmainpress.com/andrepaintings/andre_jute_sampan_harbor_south_china_sea_oil_on_canvas_2014_16x12in_800pxw.jpg)
Andre Jute: Sampan Harbor, South China Sea, oil on canvas, 2014, 16x12in

Happy holidays, all!
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Danneaux on December 24, 2014, 03:36:20 am
Thank you, Andre, and the same to you and the same to us all; lovely sentiments and a corker of a painting.

All the best to everyone this holiday season, in the new year, and beyond!

Dan.
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: jags on December 24, 2014, 12:34:43 pm
Have a great Christmas Andre stay safe my friend .
another super painting


anto.
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: geocycle on December 24, 2014, 03:09:29 pm
All good wishes to everyone, may your sprockets be forever clean and your Brooks perfectly shaped.
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: jags on December 24, 2014, 03:51:06 pm
Quote from: geocycle on December 24, 2014, 03:09:29 pm
All good wishes to everyone, may your sprockets be forever clean and your Brooks perfectly shaped.

 ;D ;D ;D i like that .very good.

anto
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: John Saxby on December 24, 2014, 04:10:55 pm
Splendid painting, Andre!

Best wishes to you and your family for the holiday and the coming year, and to all Thornistas.

An old Irish blessing (I'm told), adapted for all who travel on two wheels -

     May the soft breezes caress your cheek,
     And the gentle sun warm your back;
     May the passing rains refresh you,
     And the beckoning road not rise up to meet you.

[I'm signing off for a while:  Will read the collective wisdom & good humour of the Forum only now & again for the next six weeks or so, as we're about to decamp to the SE corner of Queensland to visit our son, daughter-in-law, and our two wee grand-daughters, the youngest only 6 weeks old   :-)   Normal service to resume in mid-Feb.]

Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: jags on December 24, 2014, 04:37:20 pm
Enjoy John hope the rain holds off for ya. ::)

anto
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Matt2matt2002 on December 24, 2014, 08:47:53 pm
Best wishes everyone..
May all your rides be as exciting as the first you rode without stabalisers.
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Andre Jute on December 24, 2014, 11:31:30 pm
Quote from: John Saxby on December 24, 2014, 04:10:55 pm
     And the beckoning road not rise up to meet you.

Especially that one, now that dentistry is so expensive!
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Andre Jute on December 24, 2014, 11:38:13 pm
Some background to the painting I'm using as a Christmas card, the purple one at the top of the page. On my blog (http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/archives/4710#comments), R. Doug Wicker, a novelist and photographer (http://rdougwicker.com), said of it:

Quote
Absolutely stunning painting, Andre.  When I saw your photo of it I thought it was a photograph taken through a frost-covered window.  Yeah, it's THAT good.

I replied:

Quote
The moment of relief in a memory so frightening it has stayed with me for decades... I was running before a monstrous storm in my City of Germiston, a tough old seabird but only 68 feet long, navigating blind in rain lashing so hard it hurt the skin, unable to see even the bowsprit, heading for this tiny little bay on the map which was our only chance of survival. Every Christmas I think of this tiny incident in a life then chocabloc with incident. It was Christmas Eve and even in the shelter we took a battering; on the open ocean we would have gone down with all hands for sure.

I expected it to be a difficult painting (emotion is neither technique nor achievement), but once I settled on Dioxazine Violet (the technical name for that purple, pigment number PV23), the painting just flowed, almost as if remembered fear is a transmutable skill.

***

You know, Doug, if I had your apparently inexhaustible energy and patience to go find just the right shot, I wouldn't be a painter, I'd be a photographer. I'm a painter only because it gives me such instant, perfect control over the image. By inclination I'm much more of gadgeteer who'd be delighted to be a photographer instead — if only the subjects would present themselves in my studio!
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: JWestland on December 25, 2014, 03:28:30 pm
Happy holidays!

Ah, writing and now painting too Andre :D
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Swislon on December 25, 2014, 04:59:34 pm
Season's greetings everyone.
Have a good one!

Steve
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: John Saxby on December 26, 2014, 04:07:59 am
Quote
running before a monstrous storm in my City of Germiston

Andre, Andre, stay put in Germiston, lad, and with feet planted surely on the highveld you'll not have to worry about finding a safe harbour -- but then, we'd never have the benefit of your splendid painting, either.

Look forward to seeing more in the new year--the paintings, that is, you can skip the life-threatening storms.
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Andre Jute on December 26, 2014, 04:33:26 am
Quote from: JWestland on December 25, 2014, 03:28:30 pm
Happy holidays!

Ah, writing and now painting too Andre :D

And a cyclist! Only wish the weather was suitable for more cycling. But now it is raining again, besides being cold.
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Danneaux on December 26, 2014, 05:05:11 am
Quote
But now it is raining again, besides being cold.
Rain gear, Andre! And woolies!  ;)

No, I know...it really isn't as fun in the cold and wet. It's unusually wet here at the moment, with pretty substantial flooding in towns between Oregon's Coast Range and the Pacific. It is apparently turning out to be an El Nino year, influenced by currents coming up from Peru and compounded currently by storms originating in China that then swoop over Hawaii, picking up moisture and making for an "atmospheric river event" commonly called a "Pineapple Express" weather system -- unusually warm, lots of rain, some winds, and little snow at the moment. A safe harbor would be most welcome!

I'm taking this as an opportunity to re-evaluate and fine-tune my existing rain gear to get a combo that works better than what I've been using. I'm back to the seatless Gore-Tex 3/4 pants combined with Gore-Tex knee-high booties that sleeve under the abbreviated pants legs. There's gaposis between the jacket I've been using and the seatless pants-back (they ventilate better with the open bottom, and I don't have to sit on something waterproof between the saddle and my cycling shorts or over-tights) but I think I can overcome that by adding a flip-down "tail" to the jacket I prefer.

Anyone else planning a "polar bear" ride on New Year's Day? After dropping to -5°C here in Oregon's southern Willamette Valley this coming Tuesday and Wednesday, it is supposed to climb back up to -1°C Wednesday morning, so should be a good time for the ride.

Merry Christmas, All!

Best,

Dan.
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Andre Jute on December 26, 2014, 09:48:09 am
Very rare for me to wear overtrousers, and then normally I wear plastic trousers against the cold rather than the rain; of course, I routinely cycle in long trousers: I don't even own a pair of cycling shorts. Usually I find that for progressively colder weather normal cotton, thermal weave, and then angora long johns not only do the job well but are much more comfortable to wear because they breathe well.  I have a Berghaus Goretex jacket but it isn't much chop for cycling, too bulky and stiff and awkward (it's the same jacket Chris Bonington wore up Mount Everest, so it's good on the mountains, which is what I bought it for). I prefer the thin standard type of year round cycling jacket (mine is currently an Altura Night Vision Evo) fitted loosely enough to wear two or three progressively thicker layers underneath but generally I wear only a long-sleeved cotton undershirt and a cotton poloneck shirt under it and depend on the exercise to keep me warm.

You won't believe this but I have -- wait for it! -- a lightly padded leather bomber jacket that is kept specifically for wearing close to 0ºC. It does a wonderful job keeping the wind from interfering with my ride, so that I don't have to slow down, and if the ride is 40-90 minutes (and my rides are rarely longer, even in summer; in winter that's usually all the riding time there is) you don't work up enough heat for it to become hot and sweaty. It's just a matter of judging the point at which it is smart to switch over from a cycling jacket with layers underneath to leather.

Of course, if I were on the bike all day, I'd have to make different arrangements. But these work very well for a recreational/utility cyclist. I've noticed that the people who ride with me started out with the "proper" gear and gradually came to wear everyday street clothes too on their bikes. That raises the likelihood that they felt social pressure to "do the right" thing by wearing Lycra on their bikes, until they saw that I cycle in khakis or cords.

***

Remarks about saddles by Martin yesterday make me wonder about something. A bicycle saddle isn't just about the width and the materials; there is a time element: for instance, Gazelle's top-range saddle, a gel job from Selle Italia, is actually rather good to sit on for an hour or two or three, but then becomes sweaty and slippery and hard in all the wrong places; Utopia's base saddle, a Terry concoction with a slit, is a pain in the posterior for the first three hours and then is rather good; a Brooks saddle, if chosen correctly for width according to back angle on the bike, is a pain for a few hundred kilometres and then permanently either the best, or the most hateful, of saddles, according to individual experience.

I sit on a Herman Miller Mirra chair and it has been very successful for me for many years now. The seat is some kind of mesh, and the back a perforated plastic. Though I it in the chair well north of 12 hours every day, sometime 16 hours, both surfaces are, by a combination of inherent qualities of the materials, and their shaping, and their suspension, pretty stressfree on respectively the Jute bum and the small of the Jute back. It's a chair that just works; it's fit for purpose.  I'm just wondering why no one has tried turning one or the other of these surfaces into a bicycle seat. What works on an office chair...

(http://www.hermanmiller.co.uk/content/dam/hermanmiller/page_assets/products/Mirra_Chairs/hero_mirra_1.jpg)
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Danneaux on December 26, 2014, 04:53:21 pm
Quote
I'm just wondering why no one has tried turning one or the other of these surfaces into a bicycle seat. What works on an office chair...
Oh, but they have, Andre! See: http://www.togoparts.com/articles/article.php?artid=68
...and...
http://www.dx.com/p/genuine-tioga-spyder-twin-tail-race-saddle-black-93054?tc=USD&gclid=COb4p7CU5MICFcSWtAodxhsAwA#.VJ2RBIAg

...among many other mesh-and-plastic-grid variations for the road-bike market over the years. Mesh seating is almost the default standard in the recumbent bicycle world as well.

I have personally tried both the above saddles and found them sadly wanting. As with my mesh office chair (the back is fine, but my own thinly upholstered bottom means I also need to sit on a cushion atop the mesh), I found the design actually concentrated the pressure of sitting forces rather than relieving it. Other people I know own these these saddles and love them so much they will use no other.

Just goes to show, the requirements in saddles are as varied as the people using them. I think for me it is riding position. Tilting forward in my preferred 45° back angle where my ischial tuberosities converge and become more narrow but not so much as if rode on the drops, a mid-width B.17 works well (second runner-up was an Avocet Touring II I used for many years). I suspect if I sat more upright a wider saddle would do my fine -- and a much narrower one would do instead if I habitually rode in a go-fast position, as the greater part of rider experience shows. Come to think of it, I do tend to lean forward in my office chair hunched over my keyboard in about the same position as I tour.

Hmm. What I need is a B.17 office chair....

All the best,

Dan.
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Slammin Sammy on December 26, 2014, 05:06:16 pm
Although I'm a bit late to the conversation, I want to add my best wishes for a happy holiday and brighter new year to one and all. Thanks for making this such a fun place to hang out!  ;D

Sam
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Andre Jute on December 27, 2014, 01:11:27 am
I knew you'd know if it had been done, Dan. Can't say I like the looks of either... The mesh one in particular looks like a saddle that I got on a Trek and rode less than ten feet before I chucked it off, saying, "I'm not a masochist."

Quote from: Danneaux on December 26, 2014, 04:53:21 pm
Hmm. What I need is a B.17 office chair....

You and Kaiser Wilhelm both!

(Veelee, as he was called in the family, was a smallish man, further handicapped by being crippled -- possibly by polio; can't remember and don't have the time to look it up. In a nation of warriors he made up for not being horsy by sitting at his desk on a saddle (horse).

Actually it's not such a funny idea. A Brooks saddle, mounted at a proper height on a base with a rail for your feet, would most likely make an excellent draughting chair.
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Danneaux on December 27, 2014, 05:44:03 am
Quote
A Brooks saddle, mounted at a proper height on a base with a rail for your feet, would most likely make an excellent draughting chair.
Probably would! I actually had homemade version of this for awhile: http://reestore.com/products/victoria

I made mine by cutting an old bike frame in two just ahead of the seat lug and just forward of the bottom bracket, spreading the rear triangle and mounting the saddle on a seatpost. It looked like this: https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7002/6838135937_f2c5c3002c.jpg

It worked well enough as a stool and would have been nice for drafting, but I missed the occasional back support when at the computer -- really missed it when I leaned rearward and found it wasn't there! My expressions, in succession: :o :-[ :-\ ::) ;D

Here's one for you: http://freshome.com/2011/12/12/creative-chair-design-ikeas-dalfred-stool-with-brooks-saddle/
...and...
One for Kaiser Wilhelm: http://www.backdesigns.com/Health-benefits-of-saddle-sitting.aspx

All the best,

Dan.
Title: Re: May you reach as safe a harbour as this one: Merry Christmas, everyone
Post by: Andre Jute on December 27, 2014, 11:44:30 pm
 
"And this is my friend Dan. He just looks like a conservative. He's never less than a mile ahead of the curve!"

AND

"What goes round, comes round."