Santa brought some wonderful intangibles, including Meg, our daughter, visiting from Berlin & planning a velosafari later this year, perhaps in Denmark.
Not quite "gifts", but we did negotiate & agree on lotsa Bike Bits for John. (For "specialized items" within the family, things linked to one of us but not the other, we negotiate Permission To Spend While Preserving Domestic Harmony.) Some of these were Big Expensive Items like a New Raven frame-and-forkset, and trick German hubs for the Raven. There were some nice smaller items, as you'll see from the foto attached:
> A nice black Nidd saddle from Spa Cycles, to be mounted on my Eclipse when my Brooks Premium migrates to the Raven.
> Very spiffy XD2 cranks, also from Spa Cycles.
> A really good--I mean, really good--EVO S18 Swiss Army Knife, made by Wenger, with quality far beyond the Victorinox I've had for ages. Wenger has been bought out by Victorinox, and it's not clear that the Wenger variant will be made beyond 2014. So, if you want one, suggest you get it asap.
> A tiny wee BrightBike Revolution USB charger, to mate with the front Trick German Hub mentioned above. Plus a USB splitter cable, to charge two Sanyo Eneloop USB batt-chargers at the same time.
> Excellent Portland Design Works Radbot tail-light, which takes 2 AAA batts; cheaper from Universal Cycles (Portland, OR) than from Portland Design Works' online store. (?!)
> The LPG guide, Cycling France: After the Denmark trek with Meg, I'm thinking to do un circuit de la Bretagne in early September. If this happens, it could be the first stage of a meander through the Celtic fringe of Europe, spread over a couple of seasons. (Denmark connects to Celtic Europe, you say? It's a roots thing: my father's family came from the Schleswig-Holstein area & ended up in Sussex, a thousand or so years back--they were Jutes, as the story goes. [Fn: Bet that woke you up Andre!--check yer DNA, lad.] And, my mother's family are Scots-Irish.)
'Nor is it finished --'twas a productive negotiation!--as still to come are an Arkel seatbag, and a Trangia stove & clikstand, the logic for the latter being a more compact cooking setup. And maybe even an upgrade on my Nikon P50 point-and-shoot.
