Originally Posted by
Papa Tom
As a "casual" bike tourist at best, it's probably not my place to make this suggestion, but I think you might get more useful replies if you provide more information about the type of touring you want to do.
What I call "tours" are overnight bike rides of 50 miles or so that use well-paved public roads and end in a Holiday Inn with a free breakfast buffet. What someone else calls touring might be slogging along a rutty dirt path in a third-world country for three weeks at a time, always 500 miles from the nearest bike shop.
As you know from being around these forums for a long time, there are so many different tires and so many different opinions out there. Do you know exactly (or roughly) where you'll be touring and what the road conditions will be? How much gear you plan to carry? What type of ride (fast/comfortable) you are hoping to have?
For the riding I want to do, I've already invested in the tires: Rene Herse Antelope Hill 55mm Endurance. I've been riding on these and they work great on pristine pavement, typically crappy roads, and rough single-track, as well as sand. I think they can handle pretty much anything except peanut butter mud.
So starting with the tire choice, I would like wheels with rims that can comfortably support 2.2" (55mm) wide tires. The HEDs do this ok, but I would prefer to return to using these wheels on a different bike.
I still want to do a cross-country tour before I croak, but more immediately, I have the tires, and they are mounted on HED Belgium+ rims at the moment, which are great rims. The spoke count is "only" 28/32, so might prefer to up that, and as mentioned, I would like a dynamo hub on the front. Ideally, I would like to get rims as good as the HED Belgium+ (which are arguably one of the best).