August 13, 2019
What to ride?
The search for the perfect bike
Shopping as a leisure activity - as in weekend trips to malls in order to browse in stores just for fun - has never really appealed to me, but I've noticed an alarming trend recently. I like bike shops.
So many bags and gadgets crying out to be fixed to my bike. So many sleek two-wheeled machines. With motors, without, whatever. Online bike shopping can be good fun but browsing bricks-and-mortar is best.
So the task of buying two bikes to ship to Europe later this month has not in the least been an onerous chore. These bikes will not be returning to New Zealand but will instead see out the gaps between tours in suburban storage. This year, Paris. Next year, who knows?
Our two previous European trips-with-bikes have been in the company of our mountain bikes, full suspension, dropper posts, knobbly tyres and all. Both of these trips saw us mostly on mountains, funnily enough. Any road riding was hard work, for me especially. The climb up from Lake Konstanz to St Gallen was one very unforgettable hot day. Dehydrated and frustrated by the sight of any number of perky yellow Postbuses WITH bike carriers trundling up the hill, I melted down. Or had a meltdown... a fine distinction.
A very alarmed Tour Leader had to quickly retrieve me and bike from the charmingly green but insect-infested Swiss field where I'd chosen to, er, dismount.
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Anyway, this year's European adventure called for new bikes. With proper road tyres. Months of research have culminated in two very different styles of bike. We quickly discounted traditional touring bikes, with dropped bars, front panniers and the like. My extensive reading of journals on this site (well, it would be rude not to) has reinforced that our kind of bike touring is far removed from hard-core world travellers who seek out exotic and challenging routes. Have credit card, will tour. And on well-ridden routes.
Tour Leader has fallen for a Cannondale hardtail. With dropper post installed, he hopes he has a go-anywhere machine that will allow him to enjoy any off-road trails he stumbles across. Here it is, in its undressed state.
And me? I've gone hybrid. My Giant Rove is really an urban commuter, but came equipped with front suspension. It now also sports a dropper post for those downhill moments of fun. And both bikes have been fitted with snazzy Marathon touring tyres. I was understandably a little jealous of the out-there colour scheme of Bruce's Cannondale when I realised that mine, like the Model T, came only in black.
But, thanks to bike-shopping, some judicious accessorising has solved that problem. Isn't she pretty?
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5 years ago
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Two reasons for not doing so:
1. Buying earlier allowed us to customise and road-test our bikes
2. It costs nothing to fly them across the world, checked in from our tiny South Island airport all the way to Zurich.
So there was no real advantage in buying overseas.
5 years ago