Originally Posted by
janine1
To me the Mareekesh doesn't look like a bike I'd hit the trails with,it's touted as an exploration,adventure bike and to me would work well on gravel but it has a road bike geometry. The Trek 920 has more of a mountain bike geometry and 29 inch wheels. The trails I would be riding such as Cocino (sp) would be more mountain bike than gravel.
To me the 920 isn't expensive. I wouldn't expect to get a touring bike that I could put tons of miles on to get any cheaper. My first choice was a Rivendell Atlantis that's Alittle more pricey. I would expect not to get great wheels on a bike in the 2k range. My carbon bike was 2k in 2008 and its stock wheels are nothing special.
Ive put 10k miles/yr on it since 2008 still going good and never had a spoke come out yet! Only 2 flats! If I needed a new wheel touring I would deal with it. If your gonna play the what if game the chain could break, derailleur break, I could have a heart attack etc,wreck by a car.
i don't know about some comments but not really looking to argue just info about the 920. Bike shops don't carry very small sizes to I have to order sight unseen. I may get that Trek Precision fit to get some idea but it prolly is too much reach for me ( the 920). The top tube effective is 21 inches and I need 19. I hate being stretched just to put the brakes on.
i love drop bars and ride gravel on my 19 tires that doesn't bother me but being a small female most unisex bikes don't fit me so not a lot of options. The safari bike is just ugly to me and I want drop bars.
19" ETT is ~48cm. I think in metric for bikes.
I'm surprised you'd even consider T920 since it's smallest size has a 54cm ETT. WRT to fit for females/shorter persons, the basic problem with the T920 is it uses 700c wheels for all sizes. This forces frame geometry to maintain an inordinately long effective top tube length to help mitigate toe-overlap occurrence on smaller frames. Also seat tube angle steepens and head tube angle slackens with smaller frame size. This is a very common but very compromising solution to TO on small framed 700c bikes, used for years by every major bike manufacturer.
Salsa Vaya in smallest size has a 49.5cm ETT - it is the shortest reach 700c-wheeled touring bike that I know.
If you are amenable to the fact that smaller wheels on smaller bikes for smaller people makes sense, then consider the Surly LHT. Surly sensibly fits smaller (559BSD/26") diameter wheels on sizes <54cm, which permits them to actually proportion ETT length to frame size.
The smallest size LHT has a 49cm ETT with 26" wheels, which is probably as close a match to your stated target ETT as you will find in a stock drop-bar-capable tourer (if disc brakes are desired, then look at Surly Disc Trucker, same geometry for a given size as LHT).
You actually are a good candidate for a custom sized bike frame. I say actually because a lot of people have custom frames made when they could easily fit a stock frame size. Since you have indicated considering multiple frame materials and more costly bikes, I suggest you take a serious look at a custom builder like
Rodbikes or
CoMo. There are many other custom builders, most do not have touring-specific building expertise, so those are my stock answers for touring bike builders. Since custom is costly and a long wait time, you may also want to consider titanium as a frame material. Look at
Lynskey, they've made more Ti frames than anyone.
Getting yourself professionally fit for a bike will probably be money well spent in the event that you do choose to have a custom frame made. Find a LBS that has one of these
contraptions.