Back in early March of 2020, Windy and I had begun to plan a bike tour in Europe. We were excited as, after several years together, we were finally going to do something that had been the focus of a bit of our talk.
Windy has a bit of experience with bicycle touring. She’d ridden from the east cost of the US to the west. From the northern boarder of Canada to the south. Also a few other trips. I’ve done a lot of driving car to chairlifts. In this case, she is the one with knowledge and I am the newb.
Sure, I’ve done plenty of quality road rides in my day and a trip from SF to LA with the California Aids Ride. Not exactly the same thing but lots of skinny tires and pavement for a dirty mountain biker.
We were about to buy our plane tickets but there were odd things happening in the news. Something about hospitals and cities. I decided to put the purchase off another day. The next day, the news was worse. Boarders in some places were closing. Within a week, the world was fully shut down. Our plans evaporated. Fucking COVID.
Now, five years later, we were ready to go again. I had a pair of bikes for us to ride (Electra and Gulfstream) and we committed to some plane tickets.
The big issues for us, in terms off gear, was mounting racks to what are performance Road+ bikes and deciding on gearing.
When I was constructing Windy’s Electra road+ bike she wanted a fully loaded touring bike. Windy had demanded that front and rear touring luggage be run on the bike for her touring and adventures. Anyway, I wasn’t having that as a primary bike for her but I promised that I would make it work for touring.
The problem that I have mounting racks and baskets to my bikes is that I really don’t like to include threaded bosses and clutter on my frames. I think that they make a mess of the bike and clutter my vision. Finding a way to mount a rack to the bikes without that option is difficult as it tends to not be done.
As it turns out, the Robert Axle Project has been working on just this problem. Since they make skewers for bikes, they could develop a mounting system for racks that are based on using the hub to mount instead of the frame. Then they just sell skewers for that.
This is cool on a few levels. By mounting to the hub, the rack is able to be loaded in ways far in excess of what one would when mounting to the frame. A fame can be much more comfortable than if it had to support all the load. Additionally, the hub is common to any bike so this extends to many types of frames. That point supports the rack, and thus the weight, vertically, all that’s needed is to add a spar to keep the rack from rotating. Another nice touch is that since the center of the wheel is the mount, a pair of racks are able to be placed similarly to each other, unlike traditional methods where there are very different mount points on the front and rear.
We would use the Old Man Mountain Divide rack at both ends. This is the setup for hanging bags.
Sadly, there is no lowrider mount for the front at this point.
Since the bike has UDH interface on the frame, not everything was going to be easy. I did a bit of measuring and decided that having the supports centered would be a goal. Thus, a OMM826 (12 x 1.0mm 169 – 184mm) skewer would be used with a 16.5mm spacer under the head.
I was going to drill out the mount bracket to lower the racks on the Electra but the Ortlieb Back Roller bags in the rear were having an issue clearing the axle lug. This made mounting the bag a hassle so I stayed with the lowest stock setting on the rack. I may look at this more in time. Lower profile setups would help here. I’d love to see a narrower option for the OMM racks.
A rack mounting clamp that attaches to the seatpost or replaces the seatpost clamp is a handy thing when doing this work. I may go to this when a real tour is planned but not right now as removing the post on these bikes is a serious undertaking. Axiom makes a Trekk Seat Collar, Salsa has a post-lock clamp., and Problem Solvers Seatpost Clamp with Rack Mounts.
I used some Vibration-Damping Loop Clamp, Galvanized Steel, Vinyl Cushion, 1/2″ ID, 1-7/16″ Long from McMaster (8863T14, $10.68/25) to bind to the the rear stays. I can order long straps and cut them down for the forks. They are cheap and handy around the shop and really help with this kind of work.
I don’t like the fork mounting that OMM uses. It’s not very clean. I also ended up with two different designs that they provide. Seems like something they may be trying to solve.
I like a lot of things about the Old Man Mountain system. The build quality is good and there are reasonable options for several scenarios. The big issue that I have is that there aren’t pleasing options for bikes that don’t use gigantic tires. Road and gravel bikes really draw the short straw with their products as the racks look quite silly and take up considerable space on the bikes. Hopefully, they will add a low and narrow rack in the future.
When I left to go back home from Vienna, Robert flew in and took over my bike for another week and a half with Windy. We had planned this ahead and swapped the stem out so that he could have an extremely relaxed position. This is a pretty wild stem that I’d made years ago.
- I wore the wrong shoes. I had been on the edge about weather I needed better biking shoes or walking shoes. We were touring, not racing. I decided on walking shoes. That was wrong. Adding to that was that these shoes had insole issues that turned into a big problem. My feet were hurting while riding. I should have worn my 510s for the stiffer soles.
- Grippy pedal pins compounded the shoe issue. I had to remove the rearward pins from the pedals. That helped some.
- I should have had a 10mm shorter stem (from 60mm/7° to 50mm/7°) and another spacer beneath. While my setup was a comfortable one for bike commuting, several days on the bike found that more upright would be much nicer and more relaxed.
- I used the old bar-ins from the M2-F2. I should have used the new ones from the upcoming Corsair that sat on my workbench. They would have been a nicer, more inward geometry.
- In the chaos of getting ready to go and working on a new frame just as I was leaving, I had completely forgot about an issue on my bike, the rear wheel spokes were woefully loose. I new this weeks ahead of leaving but it slipped my mind. The added load on the wheel with the luggage exacerbated that and it was complaining loud. We stopped in a town and a cool mechanic guy fixed us all up.
- I shouldn’t have brought a helmet. I never wore it and it took up a bunch of space.
- I wore a ball cap for the sun but should have had something that covered my ears as well.
- Long sleeve button down shirts are great but I only had one. Next time, bring two.
- I’m convinced that there are better pedals for touring than the HT AE05 that I used.
- I hate to say it but a small handlebar bag that converts to a hip sack would have been a real value. A place that is handy and secure for phone and money makes like work well.
- Our paniers needed outside labeling like ‘A’ and ‘B’ or ‘1’ and ‘2’. That would have helped to know where things were.
- A few small stuff sacks for organization that we didn’t have would have been nice.
- A few lightweight bungee cords to hold the paniers fast would have make the bike seem more secure.
- I should have had a bandana for cooling and sun.
- I was jealous of Windy’s 43mm tires. She looked like the cool kid. My 36mm tires were good enough but 38-40mm would be even better on the rough cobbles.
- We should have had good cups on board for instant coffee.
- Our little tool bag was lame. Made me frustrated.
- The bikes were amazing.
- 210mm dropper was just right on my bike. In this case 240mm would have been too much. Compare this to normal road/urban riding where I’d want the 240mm.
- Our gearing with the 10-44 and 10-52 cassettes and the 34t chainring was excellent. It was a bet that worked.
I saw some neat bikes that you don’t see in the US. Europe is definitely way ahead of the US when it comes to the use of electric cycles. It’s a shame that these aren’t available int the US.
My photo set.
Riding through Czech Republic was amazing. I really loved that and the medieval cities. Almost everyone spoke English so we weren’t very limited. Things are just different.
Note the Vinylograph recording booth in Vienna. Such a strange thing to need custom vinyl recordings on the street.
For the bike nerds, check out the indoor bike wash area in KOLODÍLNA TÁBOR. Filip Ryjáček helped us out with a tune up and the needed wheel work on the back of my bike. His shop in Tabor CZ was a lucky find. The indoor bike wash is just genius. This is the place to go.
This is Windy’s photo set from her phone. Different eyes.
A very special moment that she caught was the ferry ride across the Vltava river outside of Prague. Rowed by hand to keep us on the bike route.
