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Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Madison, WI
Posts: 11,177
Bikes: 1961 Ideor, 1966 Perfekt 3 Speed AB Hub, 1994 Bridgestone MB-6, 2006 Airnimal Joey, 2009 Thorn Sherpa, 2013 Thorn Nomad MkII, 2015 VO Pass Hunter, 2017 Lynskey Backroad, 2017 Raleigh Gran Prix, 1980s Bianchi Mixte on a trainer. Others are now gone.
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If you normally ride an ultra light road bike with skinny tires, then I can see how you think that the touring bike handled like a semi-truck.
As noted above by others, the bike was probably 30 pounds, thus 45 pounds for racks, panniers and contents. That is not that unreasonable for most bike tourists. My Ortlieb panniers, empty handlebar bag and racks add up to over 13 pounds empty. There are a lot of really light weight bike tourists on this forum, but the norm I think is closer to what you had.
The first attached photo was from a group tour I did with 15 others. Almost everyone had four panniers except the three riders that pulled trailers. If my memory is correct, only two people had rear panniers but no front panniers and one of those two had the giant sized rear Arkel panniers.
I almost never see anyone wearing a backpack when bike touring unless they are on mountain bikes that totally lack racks, but if you want to try to wear one, go ahead. If it works for you, great. I want the weight on my bike, not on my back.
I have no idea what campgrounds you plan to use, but every campground I have ever used had water. But if you think you need to carry a lot of water a long way, someone else on this forum commented a few years ago that the 1 liter smart water bottles (bottled water) sold in grocery stores fit in water bottle cages quite well. Since I learned that, I started to use three of those bottles on my bike unless I want to also carry a coffee thermos, then only carry two of the smart water bottes.
The second photo was my expedition bike in Iceland last summer, the duffel on top in the back was almost all food, I needed to carry a lot because I was far from stores for over a week. The third photo was my touring bike from my Florida trip that I got home from last week, the blue dry bag (behind the green tent pole bag) on top in back was 100 percent food, in that case we also were far from stores when in the Everglades for several days so we carried quite a bit of food with us. The second photo had three of those 1 liter water bottles that I mentioned above, the third photo has two bottles plus my coffee thermos.