skinnyhips

Once Bob and I set our sights on our Northwest Adventure, we needed to develop a plan and a schedule and we needed to outfit ourselves for the ride.  Outfitting for both Bob and me included acquiring a touring bike suitable for loaded touring, along with the racks and bags that we’d need to carry our gear.  I took to craigslist and quickly found a great deal on a used Surly Long Haul Trucker – sort of the everyman’s touring bike – tried and tested by thousands of tourists around the world.  The Surly is not the lightest solution, but it is bullet proof and reliable.  Bob was originally going to go with a vintage road bike, but he also found a good deal on a Surly, so snatched it up.  He managed to get the newer Disc Trucker with mechanical disc brakes.  Mine was more the classic rim-brake fitted machine.  It is a bit of a hybrid in that the original owner had bought it in 2009.  He had a buddy who dented the frame, however, so his buddy bought him a new 2015 frame, onto which he changed over the components from his 2009.  I was lucky in that he had made a number of upgrades.  He had the Nitto Noodle handlebars onto which he had put cushy leather tape.  He also had the classic Brooks B17 leather saddle.  He had switched over to V-brakes in place of the stock cantilevers.  Finally, he had upgraded the stock front derailleur to a Shimano 105. Many experts out there, including Surly and custom builders like Bruce Gordon, are vehement about bar end shifters for their simplicity and ease of maintenance.  My Surly had bar end shifters when I bought it.  But I am way too used to the riding convenience of brake lever shifters, and I have had my current road bike Ultegra STI’s for 16 years with nary a problem,  I, therefore, found some almost new, lightly used Shimano 105 shifters.  It was a chore switching the shifters and preserving the leather bar tape, but I could not be happier with my Surly “cockpit” and shifter set up.  In comparison to my vintage Klein road bike, the Surly feels like a blue water cruiser, compared to a one-design racer – a bit heavy, a bit slow and ponderous, but incredibly cushy and built for long hours in the saddle.

Once we had procured the bikes, of course, we had to obsess about the racks, bags and lighting.  We quickly narrowed the field to Tubus racks and Ortlieb bags – they are the gold standard for engineering elegance, functionality and durability.  While on the road, the vast percentage of tourers carrying bags were carrying Ortliebs.  Once that decision was made, then the question was the best deal to be had.  Bob found an incredible deal online on a site in Germany – they were apparently doing a sale, because when I went to order from the same company, they no longer had the same deal.  It was hard to find a single vender in the U.S. that had both the Tubus racks and the Ortlieb bags that I wanted for anything close to what Bob paid.  I finally stumbled onto a site in Holland that had everything I needed at a really good price.  They not only had the racks and bags, but they also had the dynamo hub that I was looking for.  Buying overseas is not for the Amazon prime, instant gratification crowd.  I ordered my gear at the end of February and received it about three weeks later in mid March.

I ended up getting my Velocity Dyad rim and Wheelsmith double butted spokes on Amazon.  Once everything arrived I was able to dredge up my memories, and refurbish my neglected wheel building tools to get my front dynamo hub laced to the Velocity rim.  As in the past I took it slow, but ended up with a very tight, very straight wheel.  It was quite a feeling of satisfaction when I got my new Busch & Müller lights connected and powered with the new dynamo.

As is our want, both Bob and I obsessed about our lighting plans as well.  He went with some really nice, light-weight super nova lights and added a “the plug” steerer tube USB port to power his electronics from his Shimano dynamo.  I decided on the Busch & Müller lights with a built-in USB port and handlebar mounted switch.  My light set-up was a bit larger, and a bit heavier, but I could not be more pleased with the nighttime illumination it provides – enough to ride by, which came in handy on a number of occasions on our trip.