I had been preparing for this trip, mostly in my mind, more than 6 months in advance of leaving. Geno had expressed interest in retracing a trip he had ridden about 5 years ago. To avoid some of the issues Geno had experienced during the first trip he found a couple extra campgrounds to shorten what had been some very long days. For me it was going to be an out the front door (alright garage door) trip and back, with 16 days between the beginning and the end. I would find out if I really liked extended loaded bike tours since the longest I had experienced prior to this one were 5 to 6 days in length.
I named the touring bicycle the Green Machine or GM for short. I bought the frame off the web. Thank you, Bike Nashbar. It is a touring frame with all the needed threaded bosses plus double eyelets at each drop out. One down side to ordering off the web was the web site did not specify bottom bracket height from the ground so I took a guess it would be low for stability but found out it was normal like most recreational bikes are. Therefore the frame is one size to big, a 58 centimeter frame versus a more appropriate 56 cm. One compensation was to shorten the stem length. Putting my leg over the top tube can be a problem for an old guy and shoe marks on the top tube attest to the strain. The components were pieces and parts from various sources, my personal stock and from various retail sources, Rivendell and Patriot Bicycles, my LBS. I built it up several years ago but did not tour on it until the summer of 2008. I have since averaged one multi-day tour per summer. I also use it as my climbing bike since it has a 30 X 34 low gear although for loaded touring I would prefer a 28 X 34 low.
Previous tours had informed me I would need better racks to mount my panniers. I researched various styles or types of racks. An article in Jan Heine's Bicycle Quarterly had taught me what structural components to look for in a well-made bike rack. The original rear rack had all the structural components of a good rack, it was made by Blackburn, but the mounting apparatus interfered with my rear V brake. It only took me two years to realize it did interfere. Then followed the usual speculation in my head why did it take so long to figure out? I finally decided on an Old Man Mountain made by White Rock as it seemed to have the flexibility to fit most bikes.
The first or original front rack was suspect from the beginning. It presented problems from the beginning. The mounting brackets did not match my bike's threaded fork bosses so I had to use the provided adaptors. When I mounted my bags they had to fit around the adaptors, which was always a challenge. I took the racks off and remounted them two or three times before I began touring and a couple times during touring. There had to be a better rack out there! My thinking about this rack was if the fork bosses matched then these would be perfectly OK but I wasn't to be blessed with matching fork bosses. The spring catalog from Adventure Cycling provided me with the solutions I needed. As mentioned above I ordered an Old Man Mountain and for the front the Arkel AC Lowrider Rack.
They arrived in early May. If you glance up at the title you might notice early May is only a couple weeks before we left. I did not order these through the bike shop as I had run out of time and decided to go the Adventure Cycling route, as I knew they had what I needed. I had waited this long for a couple reasons. The first reason had to do with one of my goals for this cycling season, which was to ride a century a month as sanctioned by the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association. My first century ride in January, on my birthday, ended with me mounting my touring bike in my pickup rather carelessly. When my son, who had come to pick me up after I had ridden 96 miles, went around a corner and the bike slipped in the fork mounts. The forks bent at the dropouts. I took the fork into the bike shop I work at and realigned the dropouts, but I had doubts about the reliability of the fork. Thus I asked Scott, the owner, to order for me a new fork with threaded bosses. I chose a Surly chrome-moly fork offered by Quality Bicycle Products. Scott needed to put together an order sufficient to allay shipping costs so it took a couple weeks. It was the end of February when the new fork arrived and I was able to install it with a new yellow Origin 8 headset. It was then I began to research replacement carrying racks for the bike. The second reason is more obscure, and of course has nothing to do with procrastination.
I have all the tools needed to mount a rear rack and for the Old Man Mountain all I needed was a 4 mm Allen wrench and a 10 mm open-ended wrench. The Old Man Mountain rear pannier rack package included: 2 aluminum right angled brackets, 2 aluminum slotted extender bars, 2 M6 by 20 mm bolts for the V brake studs or posts, 2 M5 by 16 mm bolts for the dropout eyelets, 4 M6 by 16 mm bolts, 4 M6 stainless nuts, 10 stainless washers and explicitly written instructions with pictures. Unfortunately attaching to the seat tube stays’ threaded bosses still interfered with the V brake. An alternative mounting solution was to attach the rack via the V brakes studs. The two M6 by 20 mm bolts and the right-angled brackets were needed as well as the slotted extender bars (these would be needed to mount the rack regardless). The right-angled brackets were mounted to the brake posts using the long bolts. The right-angled brackets attached to the extender bars with the 16mm bolts and nuts. And the extender bars attached to the rack with two more 16mm bolts. The extender bars and the rack both have slots so adjusting the rack to level is pretty easy. The rack sits high with appropriate clearance above the fender. My REI Novaro panniers snapped on like they were made for each other. Pannier removal was also easy.
Installation of the front rack was just as easy using the same tools. The Arkel Front Low Rider Rack came with 2 M5 by 45 mm bolts, 4 M5 by 25 mm bolts, 4 M5 nyloc nuts, 10 M5 washers, 4 M5 aluminum spacers and adequate written instructions. There were two sets of instructions, one for a boss drilled all the way through the fork and the other for a threaded boss not going all the way through the fork. My Surly fork was of the latter design. I attached the rack to the dropout eyelets using my own M5 bolts, as they were not provided. Not mentioned in the parts list are the 2 slotted bars. These are attached to the rack using the 4 M5 by 25 mm bolts and nyloc nuts with one pair in the racks vertical slots. The 2 M5 by 45 mm bolts in conjunction with one spacer per bolt were slipped into a bar slot then screwed into the fork. Rack levelness is accomplished by moving the bar in the rack’s slots up or down as needed. In my case it was very minimal adjustment. As stated the instructions were adequate for the job. Perhaps a person more mechanically challenged may find installation a challenge if their fork doesn’t quite fit the two sets of instructions. The REI Novaro front panniers (they do not match the rear panniers) fit beautifully, going on or coming off the rack.
I have no reservations concerning either rack. Between them I could haul 73 pounds of stuff, 40 in the rear and 33 in the front. My goal was to haul 40 pounds in the rear and 20 pounds max in the front. I have no way of weighing my stuff so weight distribution was a guess.
All the preparation I had made in my mind and in fact was necessary as we were confronted with the wettest spring in some time. A couple days before leaving Geno emailed the rest of us asking if we wanted to delay a day or two to avoid the front forecast for our start day. The “us” mentioned before were Frank, Bob and Geno plus myself. I advocated for staying with our start date as my bike had fenders. What we hadn’t figured on was how fickle the weather was going to be for the rest of our trip. We were rather optimistic ‘normal’ Northern California springtime weather would appear and our trip would proceed as projected in our mind’s eye, i.e. riding in sunshine.
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