All to soon my visit to Oregon and Washington has come to an end. My plane ticket says that it is the day to fly back to New Mexico, so I guess I will have to go. If I will let myself admit it I am getting a bit homesick for Lee, the horses, dogs and cats so I left so far behind. And although I don't want to admit it to my sister, and tour guide, sometimes the sight of so much green can be scary. I noticed when I walked out this morning to sit on her back porch and see if there were any deer watching that the ring of trees that surrounded her home looked as if they were invading my - well shall we call it 'my space'. I love trees, but here they make it so that you can't 'see'. At my home on the desert you can 'see' for miles on end. And I miss that.
I hope I am correct on these names. Purple is Bee Balm, then a type of ragweed, cat tails both a new green one and a dryed one, black-eyed-susans on the fence and later with grasshopper on it, small white is Queen Anne's Lace, larger white is bind weed (wild morning glory),
When setting up dynamo lighting on a bicycle with no provisions for it (i.e. no internal routing or special braze-ons), there is always the question of how to route the wiring so that it looks "clean." After all, no one likes to see black wires coiled around a frame's fork and tubes. When setting up the lights on my Rivendell some time ago, the Co-Habitant and I developed a nice method that is practically invisible, and I've been meaning to share it. So when we recently did the same to my Bella Ciao, I made sure to document it.
This method assumes that your bicycle is equipped with fenders, and that you are installing both a headlight and tail light. I will also assume that you already know how to connect the lights themselves; this is not meant to be an electrical tutorial.
The key to our method is using as little wiring as necessary - running it in a straight line parallel to existing stays and tubes, as opposed to coiling it, and securing it with colour-matched zipties. It's a simple idea, but colour-matched zipties really do blend in with the bicycle when all is said and done. You may be surprised to learn that they are available in all sorts of colours - from bright rainbow hues, to neutrals such as clear, white, cream, taupe and gray. We use small gray zipties to route the wire from the tail light along the non-drivetrain side fender chainstay.
In natural light, the result looks like this.
We then proceed along the non-drivetrain side chainstay, using a larger colour-matched ziptie. This frame is a sort of pale military green, and this beige ziptie blends in nicely.
Continuing the same underneath the bottom bracket.
In natural light, the wiring really does "disappear" when routed in this manner, staying close to the chainstay.
If your frame already has shifter cable braze-ons on the downtube as this one does, then you can simply attach the wiring to the shifter cable itself (small black zipties this time). Otherwise, use two large colour-matched zipties for the dwntube, like we did here.
For the headlight, you will need to leave enough wire so that your ability to turn the handlebars is not constricted. We prefer to achieve this by creating a coil here. To do this, simply wrap the wire tightly around a pen or a stick. 
And voila, there is your coil. Notice the additional ziptie along the shifter cable, just to keep everything neatly in place.
Finally, use the same colour-matched zipties along the fork as you did along the chainstays, routing the wire to the hub as tautly as possible.
Even frames with internal routing often lack provisions for the fork, and here I find it especially important to find zipties in a colour that blends in with the paint - otherwise it can look as if the fork is cut into pieces, its elegant curvature disturbed. I am using my camera flash to show the process, but in daylight this really looks quite unobtrusive.
In natural light up close.
And from further away. 
I didn't plant any daffodils last fall but did have this one come up from some I had planted before. It was the only one. Daffodils are one of my favorite flowers but they don't like to do well here in the desert where the wind has a habit of burying them to deep with sand for them do to well after the first year.
Will Spring ever arrive this year? Looking at all the new snow on the trail as we braved another "spring ride," I began to seriously doubt it. Nonetheless, my Rivendell is back in action after a long winter.
Now, here's an admission: Although the Sam Hillborne is super-comfortable, when it comes to shorter rides without major hills I've come to prefer a more pared-down roadbike. In fitting the Rivendell with a front rack, decalleur, handlebar bag and good sized saddlebag, we made a conscious decision to optimise it for long distance travel and exploration at the expense of simplicity. Though individually each accessory is fairly lightweight, all together they do add heft to the bike and make it more difficult to take in and out of the apartment. And I find it inconvenient to detach and reattach the bags depending on what kind of ride I am taking, so I would rather just leave them on.
I have a routine 30 mile ride that I do whenever weather permits, and on this ride my ideal bike would be a lightweight single speed (fixed/free flip-flop hub), with a tiny saddlebag and no fenders. Currently, my Moser and Bianchi share this role, with the Moser being the fixed gear and the Bianchi essentially acting as the freewheel singlespeed, since the 2x6 gearing is so unfinicky that it allows me to forget it's there. By contrast, the 3x8 gearing on the Rivendell feels cumbersome on a ride where I don't need to shift gears.
I am not the first person to experience the epiphany that "for fast and short rides I prefer Roadbike A, while for long and hilly rides I prefer Roadbike B." Still, I was surprised to feel myself developing this preference - particularly the single speed and no fenders part of it. There is something to be said for just being able to throw a bike down on the grass and not worry, for pedaling fast and not playing around with shifters. At times I value this simplicity and ease more than I value load capacity, gearing, comfort, and yes - even keeping my clothes clean and dry. There, I said it!