Originally Posted by
greatscott
You have a pretty good camp kit laid out, I didn't notice any fire starting stuff, and water wise you seem to be a bit short, 2 bottles on a tour is nothing! So i'm guessing there is plenty of water along the way to fill the bottles up with.
I found that taking two bottles and adding capacity by using sport drink, bottled water, or soft drink bottles as needed works great. That way you add or delete capacity as needed rather than carry containers the whole trip that are only needed for a portion of the trip.
The exception is when touring somewhere that a filter makes sense (most places I have toured it did not, but on the southern half of the Sierra Cascades in spring the filter was great. Having ice cold water from a mountain stream was wonderful. On other trips like the TA and ST I found it pretty worthless and didn't carry it or started to and mailed it home.
Personally, I know this is going to sound bad, but I wouldn't take a racing bike touring unless I was credit carding it.
There are two ways to look at that. In my experience folks staying in motels don't actually tend to travel all that light. It is possible to travel pretty light with UL backpacking gear. I know that I have managed to go lighter than most credit card tourists while managing to cook and camp. I think most folks credit card touring tend to carry more off bike clothes and other stuff and most often don't really travel all that light. Some may, but the ones I have met were actually carrying more than I do on and UL camping style tour. I think that because they don't need to edit what they carry they don't want to or don't bother to. I did the ST with a 14# base (with heavier gear than I own now) buying food pretty much daily rather than carrying much and have gone as light as a 9# base bike packing in the back country, but of course the total load was heavier in the backcountry due to food and water.
Since I first heard the term credit card touring many decades ago, I have often though about actually doing a really light credit card tour. I am thinking the clothes on my back and a handlebar bag with a few things in it if not just stuff in jersey pockets, maybe 2# or less total (plus the ~1# or so of tools and repair stuff in the seat wedge).
As far as the suitability of a racing bike... For a lighter rider, they could carry a good bit of gear and still not have the bike heavily loaded. I am a fairly heavy guy and rode the ST on an older (1990 vintage crit race bike). Granted it had 32 spoke wheels and maybe the aluminum frame was more durable than the newer race frames (I doubt it). Personally I don't think I'd be worried about anything being too fragile on a new race bike other than the low spoke count wheels and if I was a skinny little guy carrying UL gear I probably wouldn't even sweat that.
I know that quite a few folks successfully rode across the US on race bikes by pulling their gear in a trailer. Personally I don't think that is a great idea unless they keep the weight fairly light, but I met quite a few on the Trans America, the Pacific Coast, the Southern Tier, and elsewhere who seemed to be doing okay with pretty heavy loads. I even rode with a guy who pulled a trailer with a CF bike on the ST. He was carrying quite a bit of gear and was a fairly big strong guy. He did have some wheel problems and I think he bent a derailleur hanger at some point. The CF frame held up okay though.