Having 3 healthy growing children who eat a lot of roughage sharing a bathroom can be very hard on the plumbing. Thoughtfully, Older Boy prepared this sign and taped it to the bathroom door, during one period of plumbing distress:
Note detail:
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Monday, March 3, 2008
Sheldon Brown Sprints to the Finish
Sheldon Brown died a few weeks back, of a heart attack. He was 63.
I never met Sheldon. I’m sure I passed him in the aisles of Interbike, I read a number of articles he wrote and spent some quality time poking through the LARGE amount of web-content he created, and I had a very brief email exchange with him last year in which I asked him if he knew where I might find a no-longer-manufactured part that is essential to the function of our tandem or if he thought an audacious Frankensteinian modification that would eliminate the need for that part would be possible. In his friendly way, his answers were no, and no. When Sheldon Brown said something bike related wouldn’t work, it wasn’t worth putting any more time into it.
He was married to Harriet Fell, a mathematician and computer scientist and their two grown kids are both working on doctorates in mathematics. Sheldon was born, lived and died in Massachusetts. He was a webmaster for a bike shop and had been since before most bike shops had computers. He was also a camera repairman, music lover, Savoyard, and was interested in Star Trek, bad poetry and hats. He spoke French and listened to the radio a lot.
Here is one of the more interesting bikes I’ve ever seen. Sheldon had the rare ability to both conceive of and execute wacky ideas that actually worked.
I never met Sheldon. I’m sure I passed him in the aisles of Interbike, I read a number of articles he wrote and spent some quality time poking through the LARGE amount of web-content he created, and I had a very brief email exchange with him last year in which I asked him if he knew where I might find a no-longer-manufactured part that is essential to the function of our tandem or if he thought an audacious Frankensteinian modification that would eliminate the need for that part would be possible. In his friendly way, his answers were no, and no. When Sheldon Brown said something bike related wouldn’t work, it wasn’t worth putting any more time into it.
He was married to Harriet Fell, a mathematician and computer scientist and their two grown kids are both working on doctorates in mathematics. Sheldon was born, lived and died in Massachusetts. He was a webmaster for a bike shop and had been since before most bike shops had computers. He was also a camera repairman, music lover, Savoyard, and was interested in Star Trek, bad poetry and hats. He spoke French and listened to the radio a lot.
Here is one of the more interesting bikes I’ve ever seen. Sheldon had the rare ability to both conceive of and execute wacky ideas that actually worked.
He was, right up to his end, an eternal optimist. Over the last few years he had begun to experience nerve deterioration in his legs which was eventually diagnosed as a form of multiple sclerosis. He created another page on his website titled The Bright Side of MS.
As I said, I did not know him. But he and other unique, brilliant characters that seem to pop up in the bicycle world from time to time are a very large part of why I love the bicycle world so much.
Sheldon, you are missed. I’m sorry you didn’t get to stay around longer.
http://sheldonbrown.com/home.html
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