There's more than one cycling nerd besides me at the Information School where I work so it should not be too surprising that one of them walked in to my office today and informed me that Sheldon Brown had passed away. Sure enough, you can read about it here.

My only real contact or interaction with this guy was one long email exchange on some techy bike list some years ago and I vividly recall how adamant he was that you only EVER needed one brake on a bicycle. That being the front brake. No amount of real-world examples that I had experienced would convince him otherwise.

The guy sure was an icon in the bicycle industry and a very unique individual, I wish his wife and kids all the best. Working in a bike shop is not exactly going to leave his family a big nest egg if you get what I'm saying.

Some things that stood out to me when I was browsing his vast collection of bicycles were a fixed-gear tandem and a fixed gear with a Biopace chainring. That takes balls.