Originally Posted by
ablang
I'm a relative newbie to cycling but not biking.
I was talking about my hobby at work this morning and a couple of older fellas (50s) mentioned that touring bikes were no longer being made and that they missed them.
So what are they to young guys like us? Are they basically road bikes or is there something I'm missing?
The classic tour bike was something like a Renolds butted steel road bike frame with a long wheelbase, heavy duty rims with a lot of spokes and sealed hubs like, e.g., Phil Woods, and an alloy rack that was firmly attached to eyelets on the dropouts, a wide range of friction-operated gears (e.g., cranks with a triple, with a small inner ring, the likes of which are not made anymore, like Mighty Tour or TA), a peg for a frame pump, and a saddle that you will feel obliged to stick with even though you probably will gripe about it ... a lot.