muse kidd

Pontsticill Reservoir, Wales

greatbasin

Nice Dawes. Here's a Super Galaxy at Point Reyes, California.


To the left is my wife's Cannondale comfort bike. I put a beam rack and Topeak trunk and panniers on it and my sons are riding it.

That z-fold pad is just being blown by the wind. I had to put another bungee on it.


When one son was riding the Cannondale, the other would be riding this Trek. At first, I couldn't get my sons into bike touring, but when I described my plan for this tour, they were in, but had no bikes. They had sold their 24"-wheel bikes after outgrowing them and hadn't bought anything since. I picked this up at the last minute and put some Ortlieb panniers on it. It's a Verve 1 with a triple that goes down to 22 gear inches so it worked quite well on the hills. My sons prefer the hybrid/comfort bike style to drop bars or road bikes like my Bianchi. The boys distributed their loads across the two bikes. Because the Cannondale's rack is limited to 15 pounds and it's only a 7-speed limited to 31 gear-inches, it carried art supplies, water, food, toiletries, its spare tubes, extra bike lights and miscellaneous items. Their clothes and sleeping bags, water, tubes and other items were in the Ortliebs on the Trek. Even though the bikes were pretty evened-out, they would trade bikes every half day to change-up saddles and bar positions.

These bikes don't look especially loaded but we spent three days on them and camped two nights. There was nothing about the bikes or our gear that limited us to that, but only other obligations. We carried all our food until we were in San Francisco. Besides my son's digital camera, I carried a film camera and we had everything for drawing and watercolor. I think because we could share items among the three of us, the overall load was less.

Steve B.

I've owned this bike 25 years, its a Miyata City Liner, lugged steel, I had re-painted to a pretty green. Ive never used it touring, its been my commuter mostly and JRA bike. I recently retired and received a nice retirement gift card at REI from my co-workers, so invested in Ortleib panniers, plus some Axiom and Roswheel racks, and will soon set out on my life long dream of actually doing some touring.

str

KPREN

Full on heavy touring mode Me and the rig plus the dog is about 400 pounds.

muse kidd

It looks awesome, but it's also fast approaching the motorcycle genre.

KPREN

I could only wish. It's very much a bicycle and subject to all the weight limitations and handling problems of an overweight bicycle.

Brett A

Was sorting some old photos and found this from my first tour. I was somewhere down the Owens Valley, CA, about to turn east across Death Valley, September 2016. It's still pretty much the setup I use today. Food, clothes, shelter and water; It's enough stuff to live open-endedly on the bike. (Minus the Crocs. I'm not a fan after all)

novecho_delta

Presenting: My dream bike (kinda)! A custom-built titanium touring bike frame, designed to fit my unusual body and eat up my unusual rides. Designed by me, built by Titan Cycles out of Xi'an, China. Due to the bike part shortage, and the fact that I'm still in school (Yes, my financial priorities are messed up), I'm holding off on getting my ideal spec of parts in favour of some old parts and cheap stuff from AliExpress that will eventually be replaced.

For those wondering, I paid $1400 USD for the frame+fork, fully customized. Given that a comparable off-the-shelf steel or aluminium frame+fork would cost near-$1000, and that my strange body shape (short legs, long torso, 40" waist) has never allowed me to find a super comfortable bike, the case for the custom Ti frame wasn't too hard to justify.

Bad photo, I know, but it's the only one I have of it fully loaded.

The closer one is mine.

This is out on a shakedown ride - 120km from Nanaimo to Victoria, BC. This was mostly to test stiffness and real-world usability - I weigh 260lbs, the bike weighed 115lbs, and I towed my sister (130lbs) and her bike (55lbs) up the steeper hills on the island. Had ZERO issues with flexing, creaking, instability at high speeds, etc. For those who know the area: Descending Malahat Drive on TCH-1 at 80km/h with a 115lb bike was one of the most unexpectedly fun things I've ever done on a bicycle.

As a part of the weird components I threw on the frame, I had a 42-24t crankset and a 11-40t 9 speed cassette. It shifted poorly, which is forgivable given I was exceeding both max tooth count and chain wrap numbers on the derailleur. That being said, having a 17 gear-inch granny gear has completely changed the way I think about hills, and I don't know if I can go back. Once Shimano starts shipping parts to Canada again, I'll try and get a 3x11 XT M8000 groupset, which boasts a 42t capacity and 22t front chainring combo. Thoughts on this? I don't ride terribly quickly (120km or so per day), so the 42t top ring is not a problem. What do you run for ultra-low gearing?

SapInMyBlood

I run a budget DRAM 2X10 setup with extended derailleur hanger on my salsa Fargo, which gives 22/38T and 11-46T, all shifting smoothly. The 22t/11t combo is a bit slack but hey, it's not meant to be used!

22T x 46T is awesome for climbing with a loaded bike up >15% grades