Touring - rei novara safari

Anybody have experience with the rei novara safari.

thanks - tourtrek

I have a 2003 Safari, which I got last Feb., and have ridden almost 3000 miles on it. I have commuted year round on it and have done some limited credit card touring. It is a really good bike for these purposes especially for the price. The butterfly bars are great especially with the Softride Suspension stem (discontinued alas) I recently replaced the seat and suspension seat post with a Brooks B.67 which is a change I wished I'd made thousands of miles ago. I liked the suspension post just fine and I'd keep it if you replace the saddle with a non sprung saddle.

The bike is very intelligently geared for a production tourer, allowing one to carry a full load up a mountain pass or trail. The Deore components are reasonably high quality and are a very intelligent group for this on/off road There are sufficient braze-on's for 3 water bottles and front and rear racks. Plenty of clearance for full fenders over the wide Town and Country tires.

I'm not a hard core mountain biker but I wanted a bike that I could take on fire trails, gravel paths and other non technical off road. I have ridden on a number of trails like this and once even on singletrack and the bike performed flawlessly (though on the single track I did not :) ) I have yet to do a long unsupported tour (this spring hopefully) but I did do 5 days in the San Juan Islands last spring and I can state that the bike was comfortable for long daily riding.

So to wrap up a great bike especially if you want to do both on and off road touring. An ideal all weather commuter and general purpose bike. I would get a steel bike if I was doing an around the world tour and fear I might need some backwater frame repair.

Here's a pic of my Safari from my San Juan tour:

Thanks Kodama for info on the Safari-
I'm thinking about this for riding on longer distance rail trails, C&O Canal , Forest Service Roads, etc.

Anybody else have thoughts on this?