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Yes, and William Sanders (who wrote the article in 1981 saying a Claud rack was the best ever) should have known too, since his own magazine had covered the Merz tubular Cr-Mo racks in 1972! (Jim didn't offer them for sale until later, but still well before '81.)

I remember reading the Merz article BITD but I didn't remember details, like the gearing. Their bikes came with 52/45 chainrings and 14-22 freewheels, so of course he changed that for heavily loaded bike camping, right? But what he changed was to make the high gear much higher (54 by 13)! He kept the 45t inner rings, and added only a single tooth to the large freewheel cog, changing from 22 to 23t. Seriously? That line about low gears for touring bikes being "useful mainly as a substitute for physical conditioning" was a gratuitous slap in the face to almost any normal human being. Even when I was a racer (true, a lackluster Cat.3, but still a racer) I wanted lower gears than that for any kind of loaded touring. And this is the same guy who, a few years later, made and sold those 31t granny rings and triplizer rings to lower the gearing on Campy cranks.

I'm not seriously complaining about the Merz article, in fact I loved it. Needless to say, I've said or written a few things over the decades that I might phrase a little differently today... And being able to pedal a loaded touring bike over mountains, with those gears, truly is something to be proud of.

Mark B