Tour De Diligence: Post'em Scriptum

"rollin', rollin', rollin'...keep those dogies rollin'...Rawhide!"  Photo by Gnat.

First of all, let me share some links to others blogs that were on the trip.

Errin, the GPS master. 

Andrew the Pilgrim newbie.

Jason the camera master.

Ben's Blog (yet to post about the trip)

Photo courtesy of Gnat.  The burrito refueling stop, Fish Canyon.

Now that we have shared all that, a few thoughts after the fact.  I am more stoked about bikepacking then ever.  It had always caught my attention and fired my imagination and I have been acquiring gear over a couple of years...refining, sampling.  Good gear is costly.  Light, warm, small, durable, cheap.  Pick four.  Guess which four?

Photo courtesy of Errin.  Andrew's bivy.

But over time I lost some interest as I never could get anyone else I ride with to go.  Sure, there were lots of good intentions but that was all.  Solo is OK and all, but....  So I just put it aside, but not out of mind.  Well, it is back squarely in my cerebral cortex...I think that is part of my brain, yes?...and I am making new plans.  And I have made some new friends and I expect that to play out to more group adventures.

This is not for everyone.  Heck it is hardly for anyone.  Ride your bike all day and then crawl into a bag/bivy/tent for the night, get up and do it again, repeat without much rinsing.  But it is for me. 

I learned a few things this trip, watching others who were more experienced than I.  First was smart packing techniques.  Less weight on the back is better.  Water can be carried in all kinds of ways.  Cages strapped to fork legs, little Platypus 1L+ water bags that can be stuffed all over the place....refine, test, refine, test, etc.

2 liter

1 liter and smaller.

My pop can stove is a winner and I made a new pot stand that is more stable AND smaller from three bike spokes.  I need to refine my sleeping kit a bit more.  The REI bivy sack is good and so is the Exped pad.  After trying two other large hydration packs, I cannot see using anything but an Ospey Talon 22, so far the most comfy and lightest of them all.  If it does not fit in there, you are carrying too much.  But I need a better quilt option, something that packs light/small and is warm, but not full 4 season.  I may even look for a very small and simple tarp to use as a head/shoulders shield along with the bivy in case of high winds or showers.  I can use the front wheel as a tarp support.  I have the full tarp shelter for cold or ugly days.

My new sleep system?

Another option I am considering. 

So I have some tweaking to do and a list of things to look at a bit better.  Part of the joy to me is the planning and gear selection anyway.

First on the list is a new bike for the cause. I will end up with two bikepacking bikes.  The Salsa Spearfish is certainly good, but that is not mine, just a long term test bike for twentynineinches.com.  But I still have the Lenzsport Leviathan 3.0 and it is a functioning bike or would be with a bit of work.  But a lot of the time bikepacking does not really call for an FS.  So I am pointing my builders tool chest and box-o-parts at a hard tail scoot.  You get a few great things there...the pedaling efficiency of a hard tail, the 'one less thing to go wrong' idea without a rear shock and pivots, etc, and maybe best of all, that huuuge main triangle that allows a equally huuuge frame bag.  On-bike storage is a coveted and highly prized thing and no FS I have seen will give you that main triangle space like a hard tail does.

So if I were to choose a perfect hard tail bike for this purpose, what would it be?  Well, first off, steel would be a great choice.  Cheap-ish, strong, durable, easy to repair if you are in upper Zanzibar and need to weld the frame with jumper cables and a car battery.  Or, really, titanium is the i-ching of materials for this purpose.  The finish of the bike is unperturbable.  Is that a word?  It does not get perturbed.  Nothing much bugs it short of a nuclear bla....well, maybe not even that.  So strapping on bags and such will not wear the paint out.  Plus, dropping it, bashing it, etc.  Shrug it off.  The ride would be nice too, although steel is already very good there.

I would also want the ability to run it SS if you sheared off the rear der hanger or pranged the rear der completely.  So sliders or swingers or an EBB would be worthwhile.  Any decent geometry would do.  29" wheels of course.  Duuh!  Generous room at the CS/BB area would be good too.

It would not be bad if it was slightly beefy to deal with the extra weight of the bags, etc.  Not a big deal, but why not?  Tapered steerer, OS TT, etc.

It would not need all carbon everything although that could be OK.  That would be nice if you were using it as a plain old bike, not a pack mule.  Even 9spd makes sense here and likely a triple crank to get a wide spread of gears and a true big ring for long paved runs.

So where would one find that bike?  Heck, right in my dining room.  Most of the rest is in boxes in the garage.  So look for a bend in the road for the next project bike from my fevered brain.  I think SS is out and gears are in for the Lynskey.

Meanwhile I am searching for the perfect quilt.  Lots to look at...trying to decide that temp rating vs. cost vs. packability vs. insulation type vs. whatever.  Right now I have a 50* at best bag and a 20* bag (both soon to be full on quilts...snip, snip, sew, sew).  More on that later.  I have wrenches to turn.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something shiny.

Parts, parts, parts.  Interbike is a bit of a time and energy sucker and, in turn, pays back very little. So I have been way less than interested in blogging.  And as far as riding goes, summer in SO Cal is hardly the pinnacle of trail conditions.  It is hot, dry, brown, and dusty, so epic rides are not really the deal.  So you make do with early and late rides and add in a few high country excursions to get out of the yuck.  Meh!

But I do have two things going on worthy of wordage...the Ti SS build and the upcoming bikepacking trip.  One at a time, here.

I was not really looking to make the Lynskey a ground-up, high zoot, damn the cost and the torpedoes build.  So it will be getting a bit of this and a bit of that.  The bars, headset and stem are really nice, new FSA goodies.  I have some Ergon GA-1 grips, the old ones and the good ones before they made them into a skinny DH grip, and the rest is a mixed bag.

As it is now:

• FSA cockpit as mentioned
• WTB Pure V saddle (what else?) and Syncros CF seat post from the stripped Blackbuck
• Old Shimano Hollowtech II 180mm XT cranks and BB with 34T CR and ring guard from the Blackbuck
• A Fox 110mm fork from the Camber.  110mm sounds tall, but a Fox 110 is still only the same height at the crown as a Manitou 100mm fork
• White Industries hubs from the Blackbuck but with a new rim laced to them
• Some Avid Elixir brakes I had sitting in a box
• Tires TBD

The wheels were a real puzzler.  I wanted to use the fast rolling and bomber drive system of the WI hubs.  The polished hub shells and the decently fast engagement, the bolt on rear axle, the true non-dish rear wheel...well, they are really sweet hubs, but they come with some compromises.  They have that odd offset...47.5mm...that is the old Shimano standard for a middle ring chain line.  But no new cranks from the 'big guys' have that chain line.  Bummer.  So, you either run an older crank like the XT HTIIs ( a great crank BTW) or you buy into the WI cranks they offer to match or run any square taper crank with a Phil Wood BB and swing the chain line to whatever you need.

That is acceptable to me, but not convenient.  But the other thing is weight.  That is hardly a light set-up, that WI hub and freewheel.  Bulletproof, yes.  But not light, at least not compared to a DT Swiss 240 SS hub or a American Classic SS hub.  And there is the expense of gearing changes too.

So the wheels as they sat were a build using Stan's Flows (the old versions) and DT Swiss Comp spokes and alloy nips.  Those wheels with valve stems and tape were 2184g all in, no rotors, but with the freewheel included (and 47g for the cog taken off).  Basically as close as I could get to what a 'normal' free hub wheel set would represent.  OOOfff!!!  2200 grams!  Wow.  The American Classic SS wheels on the Carve are 1600-ish grams.

Hmmmm...so I had some rims around that would be a bit more modern for the WI hubs and very wide and strong, but the same weight.  Not much of an improvement.  What would be absolutely fabulous would be carbon rims laced to the WI hubs...what a blend of classic and cutting end new...but no budget for that.  Besides, unless I go China carbon, the Enve hoops are too stiff for an XC hard tail from what I read.

So the folks from American Classic have a new rim that would drop 300gs off the wheel set and get in the ball park and the weight savings would be all at the rim where it counts the most.  the new 101 rim could be a Stan's Crest killer at 381g and 21mm internal width, the minimum for an SS rim (I would prefer 23mm or so, but...) and they way they build the rims, they give you a low rim sidewall height and that allows for more tire 'poofiness'.  

But are they strong enough?  They say they are.  But I was perplexed...lot of work (well, for JeffJ, anyway...I don't build wheels) for a 1900g wheel set.  I could run something like the Rovals I have from a few years ago or even a set of Eastons and get to 1800gs easy...maybe even under that.  And I would have chain line all over the place so i could run any crank/BB setup.

Makes sense.  But.

I really wanted to run those shiny, smooth yet odd and quirky WI hubs.  And although the Fox fork is just a 9mm lower for the axle config, the WI hubs are pretty big diameter at the axle flange surface, not as good as a 24mm Roval end cap, but pretty good.  And they convert to 15QR as a new fork comes along...if ever.  So, the AC 101 rims are on their way and a wheel building we will go.  We shall see.  There is always plan B.  

Meanwhile, the yet to be named Lynskey SS sits and waits.  Bigger fish are falling into the frying pan as we will talk about in the next blog.