The bike
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Traditional touring cyclists probably recoil in horror at the space age, futuristic appearance of my bike. Contemporary mountain bikers, on the other hand, would laugh their asses off at its quaint, obsolete wheel standard and old skool geometry...
Of course, the reality is that it's simply a cheap, effective tool that's evolved over time and is quite good at what it does; riding rough, offroad tracks with minimal luggage attached. I used to get hung up on the minutiae of bike design but, fortunately, I've moved beyond that. The cycling industry would like you to buy a new, specific bike to go on your once-yearly bikepacking adventure, but I'm a big advocate of just adapting and riding what you've already got. The thing about bikepacking kit is that it frees you of having to consider the design limitations associated with traditional touring. Not using panniers means you don't have to take account of heel strike, thus chainstay length isn't a huge factor; keeping the weight down and better balanced means frame flex and shimmy is less of a problem, so you can run a lighter frame not specifically designed for carrying luggage.
The bike I used on this trip was based around a second (third? fourth?) hand 2006 Kona Lava Dome frame I picked up in 2018 for £60. Its predecessor, a 2012 Cannondale frame that I also got second hand for £60, lasted 13 months before the seat tube cracked. At that point I simply swapped all the components over onto this one. The wheels are 13 year old 26” Hope Pro IIs, while the rest is a mixture of new transmission matched with old forks and contact points, plus random tyres bought as they come up cheap online. It's all dependable, mid range gear. It does the job.
I'm not a bikepacking evangelist, and resisted using the term for a long time. It's just useful shorthand for a specific type of bicycle touring. If I was going on a longer, road-based trip with more gear, I'd use racks and panniers – a tried and tested method of carrying stuff. I look at some set-ups where people are 'on trend,' fitting a large amount of gear into multiple small bags hanging off or bolted to every available surface and strut on their bikes: forks, seatstays, seatposts, each side of the stem....frankly, it looks fucking awful, and kinda misses the point of the bikepacking approach, which is: Take Less Shit. This enables you to ride the kind of rough, lumpy tracks that traditional touring bikes (and, more importantly, cars) don't go on.
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Really enjoyed this journal and it felt a little Deja vu, I think I read it a while back on CGOAB.
I’ve toured through much of the same area over the years but never really appreciated the extent of the mining.
A lot of what you write resonates with where we live now (Canmore, Canada). It’s now a lively mountain resort town but as late as 1979 it was a pretty rough and dirty coal mining town. Much of that is lost on the current tourists and few realize that when they are xc sking or mountain biking at the ‘88 Olympic Nordic Centre on the flanks of beautiful Mount Rundle, that it was an open pit coal mine in the 1970’s.
3 weeks ago
That Lava Dome is still in service as my commuter - and I've repaired the cracked seat tube on the Cannondale it replaced, now running as a drop bar monstercross. I like keeping old stuff in use.
3 weeks ago