Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
My dissertation on my fleet (a few posts above) made me think about swapping my rando bike and road bike, last night pulled the road bike out of storage, put the rando bike in storage. I was considering doing a 200k this coming Saturday, but the forecast is rain which I prefer to avoid, so unlikely to need the rando bike for a while. Rode the road bike today for an exercise ride. Thus riding that means that I now have ridden six of my fleet since January 1.
My heavy duty touring bike (which I sometimes call an expedition bike) has a frame designed for either the solid fork that came with it or a 100mm suspension fork, it can take up to 57mm wide tires. About six years ago a friend organized a trip for ten of us to ride the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park in Utah. Lacking a good mountain bike, it became a question of what do I take, do I rent a full suspension bike or do I get a suspension fork for my expedition bike and use it as a hard tail. Found a NOS suspension fork on Ebay for a great price, that answered my question for me. Since then, also did a week of day trips while car camping in North Dakota ridding the Maah Daah Hey Trail with that same bike. I will just keep using my expedition bike with a suspension fork as my (drop bar) mountain hard tail bike when I get an urge to go mountain biking.
I could do brevets with my light touring bike (Lynskey Backroad), so my rando bike is probably the most redundant bike I have. But, I really do not need to get rid of a bike at this time, so I will keep what I have.
A few years ago I donated a frame and a complete bike to a local bike charity. For now that will have to suffice as my downsizing. The charity sold the frame for $350 USD several weeks later.
Too funny.
After reading your rundown and posting mine I decided to go down and do some maintenance on my bikes. Got totally frustrated with the commuter that used to shift up into its 40 cog but now won't so I pulled out my old 26 mtb which had been sidelined lately. While I occasionally want to dismiss it because the frames a bit too small that old bike has served well in a few incarnations.
Originally a rigid 92 Marin Pine Mountain from a thrift store I picked it up because of the light double butted Chromo frame and decent components, I converted it to a touring bike and rode it across Western Canada and several 1-2 week tours after that. I wanted lower gears so I swapped out the crankset for a 42/32/22. A while later I got into hill climbing and added an wide range cassette. Then I swapped out the rigid fork for a suspension I had laying around and began using it for bike packing and mtbing. My endurance and fat bikes have taken over the tour/mtb roles and I think of selling it off as redundant but then again, a bike sometimes feels like an old friend that way.
Long and short, that bike could serve as a capable off road tourer no problem. If it could fit 3" tires for sand and was just a bit bigger, I would probably invest in having some more bottle cage barnacles added to it in the places I want. Eventually, if anything, the thing that would limit it's potential is the fact that it doesn't have disc brake caliper mounts. I could add a modern fork but that still leaves the rear. At some point it' just better to start with a new frame.
