Wow! My dream bike! I LOVE my Merlin Extralight race bike, and have used for five-day cc tour with a Topeak MTX seatpost rack and trunkbag/pannier system. But the extreme geometry wears me out after a few hours.

My LHT is a wonderfully comfortable bike with deliciously relaxed geometry -- I feel I could stay in the saddle for hours without tiring, and in fact do. But the bike is heavy, and the only way to deal with heavy in my neck of the woods (lots of hills/mountains) is to go slower. And honestly, most of my riding does NOT include camping and cooking gear, so the load weight is usually 20-ish pounds max.

Enter the custom titanium touring bike. Built to something like the LHT geometry. But designed to carry a 180-pound me and 30 pounds of gear. Fit it with Mavic Open Pro 32s, DT 240 hubs, 105 10-speed STIs and derailleurs, cantis. I figure this could be a 22 pound bike pretty easily, maybe less. My Merlin is 15 pounds, but utilizes carbon bars, Campy Record components, a 1400g wheelset, 150g saddle, etc.

The linked Merlin, while beautiful, isn't the answer for me. I love the S&S and would add those for travel. But I wouldn't use Campy 8 on a touring bike, no way. And I wouldn't pay $6000 for a bike like that either, even if it was perfect. I'd think that would be a $3500 bike, and only then to the absolutely perfect customer who just has to have it.