Sheldon Brown

I've just learnt from the CTC's newsletter that Sheldon Brown has died. If you don't know who Sheldon was, then all I can say is you have probably never repaired a bicycle. For years Sheldon's website has been the first port of call for anybody seeking answers to difficult or esoteric questions about bicycle building and maintenance. And what they found there was practically an encyclopaedia of incredibly well-informed material which Sheldon shared selflessly with the world. There are probably thousands of people internationally who have learnt the difficult art of wheelbuilding at his virtual knee. Surely nobody in the last decade has dealt with a tandem without seeing what he had to say about the subject first.

Sheldon was intelligent, witty and wonderfully eccentric. And with his interest in language he would, unlike my spellchecker, even have appreciated my spelling of 'encyclopaedia' in the last paragraph. He'll be much missed. Thanks for everything.