The Project
Here she is. The New/Old bike who has not seen the light of day for 30-plus years.
| Heart | 2 | Comment | 0 | Link |
But it wasn’t gross for long. I fixed her up with a new chain, shifters, seatpost, tires, etc.....
She is a great little bike and I felt a little more motivated to ride again. I'm having fun with it on the local trails.
So I thought, why not tour with this bike? I would like to get off the roads a bit more. Im not interested in technical trails and crazy stuff but dirt roads are a different story.
Adding dirt roads to the mix opens up all kinds of interesting route possibilities. And I would love to do things such as dirt/gravel roads and/or return to Camino de Santiago in Spain. I rode some of that route with The Trucker. But the geometry of the trucker wasn’t ideal. A mountain type bike would be better.
Except when all was said and done I couldn't make THIS mountain bike work for touring. It is aluminum, not sure that's a good touring material? It doesn't have brazons/attachment points for racks, bags, fenders, etc and the fit isn't right for hours a day in the saddle. I could have fixed the fit with stem adapters and other "adapters" to change from an 80's mountain bike to modern parts, but it just got to be a little too much in the end. Oh, and tires were surprisingly difficult to find, because of modern wheel sizes.
I will still ride on local trails. And it turns out this was a great transition bike. But if I really am going to add dirt to the touring mix, It was clear I needed to set my sights on a proper, modern day off road touring bike after all.
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 6 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 3 |
11 months ago
I agree! It was a fun little project during Covid, though I admit that since I don't know what I am doing it took a REALLY long time. ;-) And in the end I needed an actual mechanic to get the shifters to work right!
Karen
11 months ago
11 months ago
11 months ago