After 16,000 miles on my much loved, April 2004 pur­chased, Shi­mano SH-SD60B bicy­cling san­dals I dis­cov­ered three weeks ago on the Shi­mano site that they had revert­ed to a two strap design, new mod­el SH-SD66. As I did not like the inter­ven­ing three strap mod­els I went by a local bike store yes­ter­day and found and pur­chased a pair in my size. Very spif­fo, no?

New 6th gen­er­a­tion Shi­mano bik­ing sandals.

Shi­mano san­dals gen­er­a­tion six and one.

My won­der­ful duplex neigh­bor Jill just host­ed a cou­ple from Ger­many, Frank and Mar­git. They found her place on a cool web site she had found and reg­is­tered with called Warm Show­ers and spent Mon­day and Tues­day nights with her on their San Fran­cis­co to Los Ange­les adventure.

Here they are yes­ter­day morn­ing with their unloaded bikes as the three of us are about to start off on a very nice day of explo­ration as far as Coal Oil Point. Its always spe­cial for me to meet cycle tourists and have a chance for a good chat.

Things for bik­ers to notice:

• Frank wrapped both frames, forks, etc. with insu­la­tion padding thus allow­ing an unboxed air trip from Ger­many (and back) .
• Sprung/wide Brooks saddles.
• Very upright rid­ing posture.
• Inter­nal­ly geared rear hub with one chain­ring and and a very nice, very com­plete chain guard. This allows shift­ing when the bike is stopped!! Very cool, when I stopped us quick­ly on a hill — I was the only one in the “wrong gear” for restarting 🙂
• Front hub/dynamo = lights when­ev­er need­ed with­out batteries.
• No span­dex!
• Frank is a very expe­ri­enced cycle tourist hav­ing solo toured to Moroc­co twice, Nor­way, and to Patag­o­nia with a friend.

It was a very fog­gy morn­ing as we road off, Tom for 100 miles, Steve 72, and Ashe 50.  The fog cleared around noon and had its own sense of move­ment through the land­scape as con­trast­ed to rid­ing on a clear day.

I was think­ing when I read this sign that it was refer­ring to the met­al cat­tle guard behind me but I guess it real­ly was a sign for cat­tle cross­ing as Bessy, here, was just a lit­tle ways up the road.