On Monday, December 4, 2017 at 11:26:51 AM UTC-8, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-12-03 14:34, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 1:06:52 PM UTC-8, sms wrote:
I was just in Los Altos today and noticed that Chain Reaction is
gone. This is the store owned by Steve and Mike Jacubowsky--Mike
used to post in this group. Their Redwood City store is still
open.

I was surprised to see it gone. That store was located in an area
where people have high disposable incomes, and was the only Trek
dealer in the area. They said that parking and rent were issues.
The space is still empty and they closed about 2.5 months ago, so
no one is a rush to rent it. That shopping center can get very
crowded because there is a popular Trader Joe's and a popular
produce store, and an unpopular Rite Aid store. Also there's both a
Starbucks and a Peet's coffee.

I never bought a bicycle from them, my only Trek is a tandem and
when I bought it Chain Reaction didn't have the size I needed in
stock, even though they were cheaper than the place I ended up
buying it from. For all the other bicycles we've bought in the past
25 years or so Trek did not have any models that met our needs, and
Chain Reaction is a Trek-only store. But I know a lot of people who
bought expensive carbon-fiber bicycles from them, one multiple
times after the carbon-fiber frame broke. They were a very well
thought-of shop for Trek buyers.

Trek has a bike for everything. https://www.trekbikes.com/ They even
have bike-packing bikes.
https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/b...colorCode=grey


I am quite certain I'd rip out those tiny rack mounts within the year:

https://trek.scene7.com/is/image/Tre...=0&cache=on,on

This is how it's done right, four 1/4" diatemer bolts and so on:

http://www.analogconsultants.com/ng/bike/Muddy4.JPG

If the industry only understood that you need a bunch of clamped on arms to hold 20lbs of luggage! What are they thinking! More bolts . . . more arms!

BTW, the idea of bikepacking is not to put 100lbs on a rear rack. The idea is to divide the load between front and back. http://www.bikepacking.com/news/2018...acking-stache/

Bikepacking is an actual thing. It is not "Joerg-ing" or Superbad-Cameron-Park- Gnar riding with CPUs. It involves packing a relatively modest load of camping gear and food, typically in soft packs. People who haul cargo typically ride cargo bikes. If I were in your shoes, I'd skip the rear suspension and go with a rigid fat bike, being that you're probably bottoming-out your rear shock with your massive, incredible, impossibly heavy loads.


-- Jay Beattie.