I live in the Trenton Ontario area. In addition to the usual roads that are available for doing battle with some of the most unaware drivers around, I am blessed with easy access to a snowmobile/ATV trail network based upon a network of very serviceable and abandoned rail lines. It's a maintained network with signs and maps. You can literally go almost anywhere in the province in both peace and safety. The ATVers actually give you a break when you are on the trail.
Anyway, I've been riding the trails when I'd get tired of falling on the the single track of McCauley Mountain (you can only afford to lose so much skin in your late 50s). What an interesting ride. You get to see a lot of familiar places from a different perspective but my daytrips left me wanting for more. What to do?
My Kona Lava Dome is a rescued refugee from the early nineties that I saved from a certain death last year. It was a fairly high end MTB in its day. But more importantly, it shares its genes with its touring brothers. I decided to set it up for touring. The flat bars are a work in progress. I'm looking for something else but haven't figured out what that something else is. In the meantime, I installed a set of bar ends to give me an extra hand position. The front rack is a conventional job made by Voyager. I figured it would be best to keep the panniers up relatively high given where the bike is to be used. The rear rack is an Axiom Journey. The panniers are MEC PF12s on the front and PF19s on the rear. That gives me 62L of storage space. More than enough for the type of touring planned for this rig.
I loaded her up today for a test ride. Took the rig for about a 40 Km trip on the gravel trails and have to say that I am very pleased with the result. The bike actually handles better with a load and is quite comfortable to ride. It won't break any land speed records on pavement but holds its own off road.
As mentioned earlier, a new set of handlebars might find their way onto the bike and I might update the drivetrain from a very conventional 3 X 7 setup to 2 X 9 or even 10 MTB gearing. We'll see. Al
A pic of course:
