Tourist in MSN

Get some Schwalbe Marathons (with Green Guard), or some people speak highly of the Schwalbe Supremes. Should be available in almost every size you would consider. I have never ridden a Supreme, but a lot of people think they are great.

Drop versus other bars, some of that is regional tradition, but some of that is headwinds. A lot of people in continental Europe tour on flat bars, USA mostly drop bars.

I prefer drop bars for headwinds, or shallow downhills, but most of the time is spent on the hoods or tops of bars. I built up three touring bikes, all are drop bars. Typically I have the tops of my drop bars about the same height or slightly below the top of the saddle, NOT down low like racing bikes.

A friend of mine never used the drops, he eventually got some bullhorn bars that have similar hand position to riding on the tops or hoods on drop bars.

Gearing, even a road triple can be geared lower, two of my touring bikes have road triple cranksets, but both have 24T chainrings for the inner granny gear instead of the 30T stock chainring. But a lot of people that have been touring for years want triple cranks. That said, manufacturers are trying to avoid triples because it costs more in labor to get a triple adjusted right if indexed shifters are used. A lot of people use friction shifters on their triples to avoid that problem. I have triples on most of my derailleur bikes. Only one of the bikes that has a triple has an indexed front shifter, that is my 1994 Bridgestone errand bike.

If you want to switch a drop bar bike to flat bars or the other way around, generally a flat bar bike has a longer top tube than a drop bar bike. So frame geometry dictates the type of bars that will work best for that frame.

Sizing bikes, I focus more on top tube length and reach than I do on seattube length. You can adjust for frame size a lot by raising or lowering a seatpost, as long as standover height is adequate and it usually is adequate with sloping top tube bikes. But it is harder to adjust reach very much because your range of size adjustments is mostly with different stem lengths, and that is a much smaller range for adjustment.

Now is not a good time to buy a new bike or a new anything with supply chains all messed up. That unfortunately is just the way things are right now. Patience might be the best option, and if you see something that looks like it ticks all teh boxes, grab it quick.

But remember one final point. The best bike is the bike that fits. If it does not fit and if you can't make if fit with a different stem and seatpost adjustment, move on.

gauvins

A couple of observations.

1. It is often said that any bike will do. People have toured on fixies, draisiennes, UL carbon racing machines, and everything in between. Which isn't to say that any bike will feel great. The problem is to find a reasonable fit between the type of adventure you have in mind and the proper bike. Just like, UL backpacking is different from overlanding rigs or whale-sized RVs that are now ubiquitous.

2. The OP mentions road bike frames as potential (light) alternatives, ex: aluminium or carbon fiber frames. I would personally suggest a sturdy steel frame. You'll "gain" 1 kg or so on the road, but will be free of the worries that UL bike owners have WRT shipping the bike. Numerous threads in this and other forums. In our family, we have old-school 26" LHT and Troll frames, that are outfitted with components purchased separately.

3. Specifying details is almost certainly a waste of time. The OP will progressively develop expertise and preferences as he'll gain experience, and up/downgrade components as seen fit.

mtnbud

If I owned that bike, I'd put something like Schwalbe Marathon 29x2" tires on it for pavement riding and keep the knobbies for gravel and trails. I usually ride with my hands on the tops of my drop bars, or rest them on the hoods. It's nice to be able to change hand positions. With a flatbar, I'd probably add bar ends or something so I could adjust my hand positions. Here's the bike with a flat bar: https://www.poseidonbike.com/products/flatbar-redwood

LeeG

At 135 lbs and pavement riding my $.02 is to focus on a light touring load and 32-38 mm tires. There’s no need to load up w 40 lbs of gear unless you’ve developed a preference for that load. While the LHT is an excellent tank, I had a 700c version and now ride a 26” version with 1.6”- 2.10” tires I weigh close to 200 lbs, so it’ll have a lot of unused extra payload capacity for you. When I was young and weighed 145 lbs I did 90% of my tours with minimal load under 20lbs on steel road racing bikes and 28 mm tires.
The sport tour category, or what was a racing bicycle in the 60’s has kind of evaporated but are perfect for front low riders, light load on top of rear rack. That style of bike doesn’t handle solo rear loads well like the LHT. Surly CrossCheck with front low rider would be a good set up. Seems to me the best route is to demo lots of bikes and dial in your preferences for seat and handlebar position.
Btw don’t dismiss 1x drive trains if you like how the bike rides. You can get plenty low gears with some setups. Marin Muirwoods looks interesting. When you do test ride make sure the tire psi is optimum for your weight.

sloppy12

That bike is fairly aggressive geo wise if I remember right. I don't know if that would make for a great touring bike. it is available in flat bar trim its definitely aimed at trail use.

staehpj1

The thread about Carradice reminded me...
The Carradice seat bags are an option for touring with a carbon fiber bike or other nike with no bosses for racks (road, cyclo cross, whatever...). If you have any interest in exploring this you might look into posts by a user here who is called Nun. He has toured on a Cervello RS using a Carradice bag and a handlebar bag. He was already doing this 10 years ago. It looks like he had plenty of volume to carry the gear you plan to carry. You'd need to address your gearing needs as would be expected, but that is do-able.

Here is a shot of Nun's setup from a 2012 post:

sloppy12

that's the "hipster" route now. lol tons of options for bags and some are IMO quite a bit better than carradice. A few of the locals use swift zeitgiest front and back and or a wald basket with a bag for light tours. I use a a smaller carradice audux on my MB5 and its a great bag little smaller side but has modern buckles and a good cost to size ratio.

tgot 

Apologies if this was covered elsewhere: Have you ridden the steeps in question to see what *you* need?

If you are just reading that "real touring bikes" need 18" lows, bear in mind that a lot of that advice is for 60# of gear.

Another poster mentioned chainstays. Recent road bikes have short ones like 410mm. Sport touring 90s maybe 420mm-ish. "Touring" bikes longer. The 10mm between your foot hitting your bags, or not, makes a big difference.

pdlamb

While I agree about finding out what gearing each rider needs, I'm not sure about the implications of the second sentence. Low gearing lets a rider deal with accumulated fatigue, with daily fatigue, and with steep grades, regardless of pack weight.

Accumulated fatigue: it's one thing to go out and ride 50-100 miles. It's totally different if you do it every day for a week or ten weeks. Throw in a bad night's sleep, and suddenly what seems on paper to be a easy climb turns really, really tough.

Daily fatigue: Once you've gotten used to a given distance, riding that far won't be a problem, right? Well, maybe. Unless you're increasing mileage to get to the next town, hit a headwind, the place you were going to get water has closed, and you've got to climb 1,000 feet to get into town.

Steep grades: Are you training on the worst grades you'll ever tour on? I've got some 20% grades within a few miles of home, but I don't like riding them. Fortunately for me, there are better streets nearby that top out at half that grade -- those I'll ride. But sometimes on tour you don't have that luxury.

What do you do when you can't pedal up a hill? Then you use the lowest, two-foot gear, walking. It will get you there, and sometimes you may enjoy getting off the bike to walk a hill. You'll have to learn how to push the bike while walking without barking your shins on the pedals, which can be done with a bit of concentration. But if you compare a "low 1:1 gear" on a road bike (~27 gear inches) to a low gear on a touring bike or mountain bike (call it 20 gear inches), the touring or mountain bike has three or four lower gears. It's been kind of fun on some century events (pack weight = zero) over the years to watch road bikers show off their climbing abilities -- standing, exhibiting the "push front pedal, pull back pedal up" skills, and then in desperation tacking back and forth across the width of the road -- while I shift down into my tourist's granny and pedal up the road. On a tour, that means the person with the low gears has a choice whether to ride or to walk.

greatbasin

I haven't ridden them, no. My current bike's low is 36 inches and the frame is too big for me. I'm thinking about buying this vintage Raleigh, but the low is 49 gear inches (44/24T w/700c). Passes can get as steep as 15%, but only for short distances. Steepest 1/2 mile averages 10% and overall average is 5%. Several of those passes are in my backyard, but I can go other directions where the gradients are more consistently 5% and under.

I resolved that I will definitely pack for camping and not just motels. I packed bags yesterday and found my gear, including camping gear, clothing, cooking, fak, survival, water filter etc. is 12 pounds and fits into two 15L bags. My clothing is a bit bulky because I choose cotton and wool instead of synthetics. Besides this, I have a short z-fold sleeping pad. I'd also have a lot of weight in a handlebar bag or somewhere else: camera gear, tools, glasses, wallet, spares -- probably 7 pounds and 9L. Other than that, I'd still need food and water. I can carry a day or two of freeze-dried food and bars. On some routes I can resupply readily. In other directions, water is scarce. I'd like to only carry 3L of water, but might need 6L sometimes. So on the best routes I'd be starting with 7 pounds of water and a couple pounds food.

So I estimate 20 to 25 pounds of gear, food, and water (about half that being food and water) and about 36 to 40L of cargo capacity. I could do it with a frame pack, handlebar bag, saddle bag, but I'd still want some front panniers. If I had short chainstays, I'd rather have the weight over the front than behind the rear axle or where my heels hit it. But some custom narrow rear panniers could be an alternative to a big saddlebag supported off the seat post.

mtnbud

Which Raleigh is it? I'd agree with your assessment that you'd want lower gearing. Depending on the situation changing the gearing could be simple or complex. Do you have a good bike shop nearby, or would you be changing the gearing yourself?

Thulsadoom

There's always the option of towing a trailer. A lightweight trailer often weighs less than a full set of racks and panniers, and you can tow a trailer with any bike you want since the weight is on the trailer instead of the bike.

greatbasin

early 70's Professional with campy-everything
it's not the most practical, but among what's readily available to me right now, it stirs my soul the most

dgodave

There must be a ton of interesting dirt roads out that way. Not planning on riding much of those?

Tourist in MSN

I find that about 20 gear inches works well as my lowest gear when I am not carrying a massive load. There are a lot of 8 percent grade hills along the Pacific Coast and I had a 20 gear inch low gear for that, it was adequate.

The one liter Smart Water disposable water bottles fit nicely in bottle cages, so do the one liter Life WTR brand water bottles. I use three of those on my touring bikes, thus three liters on the frame in the first photo below. Shorter seatpost frames however might be too small for that tall a bottle. Smaller frame bags can be used if you have one or two bottles inside the frame, second photo below.



I have used a frame bag with one bottle inside the main triangle, below.




That bike originally would have been fitted with tubular tires. Not clinchers. If I recall correctly, the Pro of that era was six speed freewheel. That is not the kind of bike you would want for the type of trips you are talking about.

greatbasin

Yes, a lot of them have been refit with clincher rims on the original record hubs. It's true it still doesn't have the utility of a truck-like tourer. That's the dilemma of this thread of mine: get a truck bike, or pack light enough to make a road bike work.

Dirt and gravel roads, yes. Offroad trails, no. I backpack. I also drive a 4x4 trail rig. Besides that, I ride a street-legal dirt bike motorcycle. So it's not that those places are inaccessible or unvisited by me, but when I think about where I'd like to go on a bicycle, those places aren't foremost on my mind. As for dirt and gravel roads, I do ride my mid-80's Schwinn with skinny Marathons on those. Rode one this morning.

mtnbud

I'm thinking you'd likely want to keep the gearing original on that bike. Does it have 700c wheels or 27 inch wheels?

Doug64

If you have a foot that is smaller than a size10, The Bianchi Volpe is a great all-around bike. Volpes from 2013 on had rack mounts on the fork blades.

2013 Volpe


LHT
I also have a LHT and our 2 daughter also tour on LHTs. It is a good bike, and will take you almost anywhere.


Cannondale T1
Cannondale T series bikes are nice touring bikes. I am only familiar with the 2007 T800(my wife has one), and the 2010 T1.


TREK 1000 and Specialized Allez
I made the panniers for my wife's and my road bikes. They were tapered and worked with shorter chainstays. We only carried about 20 pounds including our camping gear.


1972 Peugeot PX10
Most bikes can be set up for touring. I made the panniers, they had good heel clearance.

staehpj1

I agree that most if not all bikes can be made to work.

Folks make a bike deal about needing a long chainstay to avoid heel strike. Heels strike can be avoided even with short stays and rear panniers by care in choosing the panniers and how they are positioned. . Both size and shape come into play. Also to some extent they can be moved fore and aft to find the right spot. Handling will be impacted if you go with weight too far back so if they are mounted farther back you will need to watch where the weight is.
Using front only panniers, or four small panniers or even two small pannier on the rear are all options that work well with short chainstays.

staehpj1

Having those roads close by does make the idea of a gravel bike attractive if you will have one bike for everything. It becomes even more versatile with two wheelsets.

IPassGas

I have backpacked for weeks in the sierras and canadian rockies, the climb out of bishop is fun. I never carried that much water, but then I always picked routes passing by water sources. Perhaps you can start your tours through areas having water, should be easier on a bike. Years back I started touring on a schwinn. It was ok, learned a lot and then upgraded.

timdow

The Fuji Touring came with a rear rack included. I like the discs over the LHT's rim brakes, and I also like the fact that the Fuji has two mounts on the fork for a WB cage, and the fact that came with a pretty good rear rack . I was on the lookout for a non-current disc Trucker, but got impatient and bought the Fuji. For better or worse, the new disc Trucker is more of a bikepacking bike. As far as the way it rides, both the LHT and the Fuji are good. I think I might like to have a disc trucker a bit more, but not the new one... only used, and it seems to make out of "unobtanium" right now.

To run a 4-pannier setup, you would need front and rear bags, front rack and handlebar bag. What I paid may not be an apt comparison because I purchased some time ago, and some of it used and for lower prices than with today's availability issues. I guesstimate you would be $500-$600 deep in the rack and bags. Add another $100-$150 for rear rack if bike not equipped.

FYI: I currently don't use a traditional 4-pannier setup. I currently have cargo cages on it (Blackburn Outpost). I use the cargo cages with small bags attached (could also use the Ortlieb fork bags), rear Ortlieb panniers, a Revaluate Designs frame bag, and a Ortlieb handlebar bag.

dgodave

Cool. I have to second the recommendations to start with a rigid fork mtb that has rack mounts. Cheap entry point. Nice low gears. Lots of tire options depending on how rough the roads are. Ride the heck out of it while you take your time learning exactly what you want from a more long term investment bike.

Downside: many of them are long in the top tube and might stress your back. You can remedy that with different handlebars like the albatross/oxford, or similar.

staehpj1

I too avoid carrying large amounts of water when hiking. I tend to choose routes where there is water or set caches or arrange some other method of resupply. I hate being a pack mule.

That said there are times bike touring long distances when I have found the need to carry a gallon or a bit more of water even foregoing dish washing and bathing for a day. Doing that for one day here and there isn't that big of a deal. In some cases I had jersey pockets jammed full of pop bottles of water at the start and the load got lighter as the bottles got empty. So even if I started out with 8 pounds on those rare days I was down to much less pretty quickly as the day went on. That isn't the norm but on a coast to coast trip you may wind up with a day like that in one place.

greatbasin

I rode a moderate grade this morning. A little over 2 miles and just under 600 feet gain. The actual numbers worked out to 5.3% average. I used my schwinn's 52/28 combo to get an idea what that vintage Raleigh's low of 44/24 would be like. My tires are 27 but effectively the same as a 700c with some fatter ones. It works out to 50 gear inches instead of 49. I couldn't do it sitting in the saddle, but if I stood up it was ok. I think I'd have to walk if it got over 10%. I didn't have a load, I'm not planning on carrying a big one. Even without the load, I'm convinced I want lower gears. I tried my Schwinn's low of 39 gear inches. It was probably too low for a 5% grade unless I wanted to sit, but I can see using it if the bike was loaded or I was tired and definitely if the grade was steeper. I don't think less than 20 gear inches would be a requirement for me, but something like the Salsa Vaya's low of 24 gear inches would be nice, and a typical modern road bike's low of 34 gear inches would leave something to be desired, but it wouldn't be unworkable.


This is the Schwinn I ride. It's pretty cool with Weinnman rims, Maillard hubs, Suntour derailleurs with downtube shifters. All the bearings are loose balls in the hubs, bottom bracket, head. It's high-ten except for the main triangle. I would tour on it if it fit me. But it's a 23 inch, and I need about a 21. The saddle is just a take-off from my wife's Cannondale.

I replaced the SR drop bars with the VO Tourist bars you see. They help make up for too-long a top tube, but I like these bars and I'm pretty sure I want to tour with something like these or with even more sweep like the porteur bars or more sweep and rise like the Left Bank bars. It will depend on things like the stem height. Porteur bars would work well with bar-end shifters, but these Tourist bars would not. Either way, I'm happy with down-tube shifters and friction, but they're hard to find except on vintage bikes. I don't know if I could put brifters on these Tourist bars, but I've seen some people put mountain bike thumb shifters on bars like these. I don't really care for either idea, so if I don't get a downtube shifter frame, I'll probably get porteur bars and bar-end shifters.

I like to ride upright and look around. I tried grabbing the center of my bars like I was on the top of some drop bars, and I have to reach forward and tilt my neck up just to see ahead. Looking truly up and around is awkward. I've had drop bar bikes before and I spent years riding (hyper)sport bikes (motorcycles), so I'm familiar with this. It's great if the focus is on riding the road but not so great if I want to focus on anything else. I think I would be remiss if I hadn't considered recumbent bikes and trikes in this respect. I can see myself switching to a trike when I get older, but prefer the lower weight and rolling resistance of an upright bike for now.