Sunday morning gear update June 17 2012
I woke up this morning thinking about our gear and how well it’s done. San Francisco is only 289 miles away on the most direct route (which we surely won’t take) and we are still rolling along splendidly. Since I met up with the trip in Portland the only breakdown of any kind was when I got a flat going 40 mph down a gravel road and pinched a tube when we crossed a sharp cement bridge crossing. I wondered why everyone else was slowing down… I thought they were just being wuss’s because of the skinny tires. I didn’t think about how hard it was to bunny hop the back wheel over a sharp edge with a heavy loaded rear rack on the bike. Extra parts we brought: Sandy: 1 tube, 1 patch kit Nick: 2 tubes, 1 patch kit Taj: 1 tube, 1 patch kit Bikes: Sandy and Nick are both showing some heavy rear tire wear. No surprise really since both of them are running 25mm road tires with all the weight far off the back of their bikes. You can see the wear lines showing through on both tires. Sandy got a flat before I got on the trip but hasn’t had any problems since. Nick’s bike just keeps on trucking but is in need of some brake pads. Weekender production version. My bike is the Weekender prototype I’ve been testing for a while. It’s essentially what you’ll be able to buy except I added the drop bars and front derailleur. I couldn’t be happier with it’s performance and it’s been great to ride. I do wish I had two rack bags so I had a little more room for stuff, but even with an overloaded one-sided-load the bike seems to stay stiff enough to keep me stable. At one point someone’s bike fell on mine and broke a spoke which threw my wheel out of true. I never bothered to fix it though since with disc brakes my braking is still good. Having the discs on the days when we road in wet weather or got our bikes covered in beach sand was a big plus. While the guys had to find hoses to get the sand off their rims my brakes were perfect. I highly recommend fenders for a ride like this. Having them has kept me a lot drier then everyone else on rain days just since you get so much less splashing. I wish everyone else had them too because when you ride behind someone with no fenders in the rain you end up eating all the grit and mud they kick up. The compact chain rings up front with the Weekenders mountain bike gear cluster in the back has given me a full range of gears that I’ve been happy with. If we were camping and carrying all that additional gear I might have geared down a tiny bit or put a triple on up front. The setup I have has […]
