Quoted post said:Originally posted by Stuart Black
Simon Brooke <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:in message <[email hidden]>, Ian G
Batten (') said:
So, the wiggle parcel arrived this morning, containing
tubes, patches and CO2 cylinders. Which was nice, as it
arrived as I was just waiting for my GPS box to lock,
and I grabbed a tube, a cylinder and some patches from
the box. Which was good, as I had a rear-wheel puncture
on the Grand Union towpath. I could quickly stick a new
tube in, blast it with CO2 and continue, with a patched
tube, a tube needing patching, some patches, another CO2
cylinder, a backup handpump and a fistful of patches in
my bag.
At lunchtime I repaired the punctured tube, and I'm a
bit puzzled by the Tip Top F1 Patches
(wiggle.co.ukwiggle.co.ukOpen ↗).
They're black on one side, brown on the other, with the
brown protrouding slightly. I used one brown to the
tube, on the grounds that it made most sense to remove
the (lightly adhereing) foil, bond it to the tube and
them remove the (firmly attached) clear layer. Was this
right? I know, I should read the instructions, but
they're with the other 90 patches at home...
That's right. Best patches out there, bar none. Mind
you, you'd be going some to use that many in the rest of
your life!
Over here in the middle of the Colonies (where it is dry and
our wheat was imported) I'm on at least my fourth box (in 20
years of cycling) of 100 and that is only after buying the
small patch kits by the dozen prior to that. I've had tubes
that had 25 patches on them. The only reason I threw them
away was that the stem pulled out because it was weakened
from so much pumping. In the American Southwest, things just
aren't right if you don't find every one of your bicycles
with a slow leak every time you want to use it.
Thanks to our imported Russian wheat, we are cursed with the
dreaded devil weed - Goatheads! Our childern learn how to
patch tires before they can ride. We are to goatheads what
OPEC is to oil except for the exporting part and the getting
rich part. If you every find yourself west of the
Mississippi, look carefully before you take your bicycle off
the pavement. I have watched farmers walking across their
fields grow from 5' 7" to well over NBA height from the
goathead stuck to their shoes! No foolin'! Tanks on
manuevers at Ft. Carson have had their treads flattened from
the goatheads! Small childred have had to have blood
transfusions from walking barefoot through playgrounds (and
their parents have been publically humilated for allowing
their childern to go around barefoot). Why, I've even seen
... Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Stuart Black
Dear Stuart,
Were you ever a steamboat mate?
S.L. Clemens
A Mr. H. furnished some minor details of fact
concerning this region which I would have
hesitated to believe if I had not known him
to be a steamboat mate. He was a passenger
of ours, a resident of Arkansas City, and bound
to Vicksburg to join his boat, a little Sunflower
packet. He was an austere man, and had the
reputation of being singularly unworldly, for a
river man. Among other things, he said that
Arkansas had been injured and kept back by
generations of exaggerations concerning the
mosquitoes here. One may smile, said he, and
turn the matter off as being a small thing; but
when you come to look at the effects produced,
in the way of discouragement of immigration,
and diminished values of property, it was quite
the opposite of a small thing, or thing in any
wise to be coughed down or sneered at.
These mosquitoes had been persistently
represented as being formidable and lawless;
whereas 'the truth is, they are feeble, insignificant
in size, diffident to a fault, sensitive'--and so on,
and so on; you would have supposed he was
talking about his family. But if he was soft on the
Arkansas mosquitoes, he was hard enough on
the mosquitoes of Lake Providence to make up
for it--'those Lake Providence colossi,' as he finely
called them. He said that two of them could whip
a dog, and that four of them could hold a man down;
and except help come, they would kill him--'butcher
him,' as he expressed it. Referred in a sort of casual
way--and yet significant way--to 'the fact that the
life policy in its simplest form is unknown in Lake
Providence--they take out a mosquito policy besides.'
He told many remarkable things about those lawless
insects. Among others, said he had seen them try to
vote. Noticing that this statement seemed to be a
good deal of a strain on us, he modified it a little:
said he might have been mistaken, as to that particular,
but knew he had seen them around the polls 'canvassing.'
There was another passenger--friend of H.'s--who backed
up the harsh evidence against those mosquitoes, and
detailed some stirring adventures which he had had
with them. The stories were pretty sizable, merely
pretty sizable; yet Mr. H. was continually interrupting
with a cold, inexorable 'Wait--knock off twenty-five per
cent. of that; now go on;' or, 'Wait--you are getting that
too strong; cut it down, cut it down--you get a leetle too
much costumery on to your statements: always dress
a fact in tights, never in an ulster;' or, 'Pardon, once
more: if you are going to load anything more on to that
statement, you want to get a couple of lighters and tow
the rest, because it's drawing all the water there is in
the river already; stick to facts--just stick to the cold
facts; what these gentlemen want for a book is the
frozen truth--ain't that so, gentlemen?' He explained
privately that it was necessary to watch this man all
the time, and keep him within bounds; it would not
do to neglect this precaution, as he, Mr. H., 'knew to
his sorrow.' Said he, 'I will not deceive you; he told
me such a monstrous lie once, that it swelled my left
ear up, and spread it so that I was actually not able
to see out around it; it remained so for months, and
people came miles to see me fan myself with it.'
--"Life on the Mississippi," Chapter 34
