Hermit's WoodshedBike touring should be a great vacation!
At NAHBS in Austin we met Russ Roca and Laura Crawford, the couple behind The Path Less Pedaled and The Epicurean Cyclist
They are in the middle of an “open ended journey” and they are doing it on bicycles. When we saw them they had their Brompton folding bikes with them preparing to ride the Adventure Cycling Northern Tier route. I wish them luck and will be following their adventures.
I remember riding through downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada on my first self supported bike tour with homemade rear panniers which, when the bike hit a rough patch, bounced around and came un-hooked from the rack. Luckily they didn’t fall completely off because the gang of homeless men accosting me from a vacant lot as I rode past would have been happy to relieve me from my load and probably my bike if I had stopped. Needless to say, since that tour I am a little more finicky about my equipment.
On my up-coming tour I am using front and rear racks made by Nitto in Tokyo, Japan. These are made of nickel plated, tubular Chrome-moly steel with simple and solid attachment hardware.
The Nitto Campee front rack comes with detachable low-rider panels for attaching panniers. I have removed those, because I don’t have low rider panniers. The panniers and bags I will be using are the subject of another post. The aluminum struts attaching the rack to the fork eyelets in these photos are sold as separate accessories. The struts which come with the rack are made to attach to cantilever brake posts.
This seems like as good a time as any to look at a couple different fork blade/eyelet/brake combinations. Eyelets are the small, threaded holes drilled into the sides of the fork or into tabs which are then welded onto the dropout (the piece on the end of the fork blade…where the wheel axle attaches). Some bikes have one eyelet on the fork dropout and some have two. There is only one on each dropout on my bike, so the rack and the fender strut clamps will share the same hole. A bike with two dropout eyelets allows a little more flexibility in attaching racks and fenders.
Not all bikes have eyelets on the forks. What? How can that be? Well, some people don’t want to carry stuff on their bikes, believe it or not. For the person who actually uses their bike, however, the more eyelets the better. OK so how about the mid-fork eyelets? On most touring bikes these are located to facilitate “low rider” racks such as the Tubus Tara or the Tubus Duo. And on really well designed touring bikes, like Surly’s Long Haul Trucker, there are two mid-fork eyelets on each fork blade…one on the outside and one on the inside. The Tubus Duo was actually made with that bike in mind. On some bikes, like my Rivendell, the eyelets are located higher on the fork, and these will not work with low-rider only racks. Bikes such as Rivendell, with higher fork mount braze-on eyelets seem to work best with the Nitto type hardware and designs.
Many touring bikes will also be designed for cantilever style brakes. These brakes are mounted on special posts which are welded on to the fork blades. Some racks like Old Man Mountain brand Cold Springs and Ultimate Low Rider models attach directly to these posts with provided replacement bolts. Others, like some Nitto models attach to these posts with a special, double ended brake bolt or stud.
I got a little carried away and off topic with this post, but it felt like a good time to get into some rack details. Hopefully it might give you, good readers, some things on which to cogitate. In the next post I talk about my dual Schmidt E6 headlight setup, about which I am unnaturally excited.
Back in the day there were not a lot of choices in lightweight backpacking or bike touring stoves. The bike hermit used (and still has) a Svea brand stove. Aside from being dangerous, unreliable, inconsistent, inefficient, heavy and difficult to use, that stove is great. Nowadays there is a better selection of stoves from which to choose, with various models burning everything from white gas to isobutane/propane to denatured alcohol to sticks. The different fuel sources all have pluses and minuses and most people will have a preference for one or the other based on their own demands.
My most recent experience has been with the Primus EtaPowerTrail EF Stove
This is an isobutane/propane stove so the fuel source is a sealed canister with a screw fitting for a fuel line which connects to the burner. The fuel is pretty easy to find at most outdoor stores and even Walmart, so even though you can’t fly with it or ship it, you can get it on route.
The kit I purchased includes the burner unit with fuel line , a base, a windscreen, a 1.7 liter aluminum pot with a lid and a pot handle.
This is not the most compact stove available but it has some features I like.
Namely;
-Relatively large and very stable base.
-Windscreen
-Easy to light
-Great heat output Boils about 3 cups of water at 32 degree F. ambient temp. in about 4 minutes.
-1.7 liter pot is good for cooking pasta dishes or for making freeze dried food with water left over for coffee or cleaning.
-Separate, light, easy to use pot handle
-Piezoelectric start precludes need for matches
Pressing the piezoelectric ignition button creates a current in the wire which is suspended over the burner plate and a spark generates between the end of the wire and the plate, igniting the fuel coming through the line from the canister. If the wire gets bent and is too close to the plate, no spark will generate and the wire needs to be re-positioned away from the plate surface until the spark is visible when the ignition button is pressed.
Even though this might appear to be a complicated kit, it is well made and durable. I need to be more diligent in making sure all the connections are tight between uses. The entire kit (minus fuel canister) weighs about 27 ounces or 765 grams. Now I see on the Primus website they have a stove that is slightly lighter but much more compact, the Primus Eta Lite
The Primus ETA Lite Stove sets a new standard for compact, all in one backpacking stove… [More]
I think when it is time to get a new stove for Sky King we may be looking at that one.
| The Bike Hermit didn’t write this but he thinks it’s funny. Actually, this was posted on the Touring pages of bikeforums dot net
Easy to get lost for hours on those pages. Don’t forget to come back! A Beginners Guide to Cycle Touring: How to prepare |
| Step 1: Get a spagetti-strainer and several small sponges. Soak the sponges in salt-water and paste them to the inside of the spagetti-strainer. Place the strainer on your head. Find a busy road. Stand by the side of the road and do deep knee-bends for 8 hours. This will acclimatize you to a day’s ride. Step 2: Take some 200-grit sandpaper and rub your rear-end and the insides of your legs for about 20 minutes. Rinse with salt-water. Repeat. Then, sit on a softball for 8 hours. Do this daily for at least 8 days. Step 3: Each day, take two twenty-dollar bills and tear them into small pieces. Place the pieces on a dinner-plate, douse them with lighter fluid and burn them. Inhale the smoke (simulating car-fumes). Rub the ashes on your face. Then go to the local motel and ask them for a room. Step 4: Take a 1-quart plastic bottle. Fill it from the utility sink of a local Step 5: Get some of those Dutch wooden-shoes. Coat the bottoms with 90-W Step 6: Think of a song from the 1980’s that you really hated. Buy the CD and play 20 seconds of that song over and over and over for about 6 hours. Do more deep knee-bends Step 11: Headwinds training: Buy a huge map of the entire country. Spread it in front of you. Have a friend hold a hair-dryer in your face. Stick your feet in |
Useful tips for anyone planning a bicycle tour, trip, journey, expedition, whatever
you label it. Hope you have enjoyed this page.
Those who know me know the bike hermit is a beer drinker with a cycling problem. But I think that is a common thread. It appears that many fellow riders appreciate a barley sandwich or two at the end of a riding day. Or any day. So I thought I would post these videos of me making a batch of homebrew.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJlm7oFQf18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZwVCM1OCJw
