Two touring bikes of late, one fairly traditional 700c, rim braked drop bar bike shown sideways below. Blogger is a pain that way when phone posting and I'm not super savvy here. Cool bike that will be ridden across the country this summer. Traditional panniers and racks make for easy loading and lots of capacity.
This bike made me think more about racks and bags when making the next bike for myself. Most of the touring I do has a fair ammount of dirt in it and I prefer minimal baggage for better ride quality and moto ability. This one is a propper 29" mountain bike with big tire clearance. Main things of interest here are the racks and the bag setup. Although the custom bikepacking bags are top notch, I dislike some things about them, particularly how high the weight is and how hard it can be to load them. My racks and bags rely on plastic surrounds which are screwed to the racks to both protect the thin silnylon dry bags and to ease the frustration of loading. The small size of the racks keeps things light and the mass is fairly well centralized. Please forgive the sideways photos, will try to edit after this is posted.
In other news, two of my shopmates moved out, rack master Matt Feeney to the wilds of Oakland and Wayne to the burbs. I miss these folks dearly but the space is amazing particularly with the production run of Black Mountain Cycles cross bikes which is coming soon from my enterprise. Super excited to be working with Mike Varley, top notch guy and a neat project. Check blackmountaincycles.com for more info. Thanks
Cameron
