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Originally uploaded by guuwatanabe

Tokyo bagmaster GUU Watanabe has an interesting Flickr photostream. There are many pictures of beautiful bags. There are also many pictures from day-to-day urban Japanese life.

Tags: bags, GUU_Watanabe, tokyo

Brooks Imperial

UPS just dropped off our first shipment of the new Brooks Imperial.

B.17 Standard Imperial, $145.

S and N models coming in January

Tags: imperial

Gilles Berthoud reports that he is having some trouble with equipment needed to produce his new, innovative, leather saddle. His idea was to do some of the leather work with CNC equipment. He searched for a long time and finally found one little company that promised to supply the machine he needed. The machine, adequate for prototyping and sample work, proved to be not up to the job for production. Now Gilles is developing his own CNC machine to meet his requirements. This unexpected difficulty has caused some delay. Stay tuned.

We are overstocked on some Brooks titanium models and we are selling them on Ebay at prices at least 1/3 off.

B.17 Champion Special, honey/ti $199
Team Pro, honey/ti $199
Swift, black/ti $199
Swift, honey/ti $199

Why we are using Ebay
I chose to market these blow-outs on Ebay because, at this price, we cannot give our standard six-month unconditional guarantee. I felt it would be better to get this distance from our regular walbike.com sales. Our experience has been that people who aren’t familiar with the differences between the Brooks models will see “Brooks” and “cheap” and buy a saddle that won’t suit their riding style, leading to disappointment and many returns.
These are new, first-quality saddles and they are covered by the Brooks two-year defect warranty. We will be happy to help you with any warranty claims you might have.

How to choose - short course
Generally the Team Pro and Swift will suit an aggressive rider with handlebars that are significantly lower than the saddle. The B.17 will suit a rider with handlebars closer to level with the saddle.

Tags: sale, ti

Our order of B.17 Imperials is leaving an Ohio warehouse today. We usually get these shipments in 3 UPS days. Not sure with the holiday but they are finally coming.

Tags: imperial

We pleased to learn that author Stephen Lord recommended Wallingford Bicycle Parts as a source for Brooks saddles in his Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook. We ordered a copy of Mr. Lord’s book from Amazon and found it to be a very good read.

This 288 pg book addresses its subject matter in a comprehensive way. Skimming the table of contents we find:

• Planning
• Choosing a bike and equipment (by cagegory and by brand)
• Transport
• Route outlines around the world
• Touring stories
• Bike maintenance

There are numerous black and white pictures and a few beautiful full color photos of exotic touring locales.

We looked at this book because our name is in it (thanks, Stephen) but we recommend it because it is a rich source of information for the bicycle tourist at all experience levels.

With this book we are going to try the Amazon Associate program. If you click this link to buy the book from amazon.com then Wallingford Bicycle Parts will get a little piece of the deal. The alternative is stocking the book ourselves and charge you 50% more than they do. We are curious how this will play out and we would be glad to hear your opinion about wallbike ‘partnering’ with the e-commerce giant.

Tags: amazon, book, touring