Abundance of steel sport tourers/commuters

On Apr 20, 12:22*pm, "
wrote:
On Apr 20, 5:35*am, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:





On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:34:47 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
Some "dedicated touring bikes" are not as suitable for the task as
they should be. *I just read a cross-the-US tour report which
included 100% (n=2) of the Trek 520s in the group suffering from
broken rear racks and severely cracked rear rims.

wrote:
Hmm..... not good!
What abt Surly LHT or Novara Randonee bikes?
They withstand such stress

Tim McNamara wrote:
The LHT looks like a well executed bike; my LBS sells them and thus far
have had no customers coming back with broken stuff. *I've never looked
closely at a Novara; had I read this before I went to REI today to drop
off lunch for my wife, I'd have looked at one of those in the bike
department there.

I'm surprised the Bianchi Volpe, a perenially popular and
reasonable-out-of-the-box touring machine, gets little
mention here on r.b.t.

Maybe it doesn't exist or no shops stock it? *I heard you can't get
bikes that take racks and fenders in bike shops anymore.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Bianchi Volpe fits the loaded tour category. *Not the sports
tourer being discussed in this thread. *The Trek 520 and Cannondale
T800 take racks and fenders. *But are considered loaded touring
bikes. *Not sports touring bikes. *Sports touring being sort of a
compromise between racing bike and loaded touring bike but oriented
more towards racing than loaded touring. *Obviously Trek, Cannondale,
Bianchi dealers will likely have one, and only one, of the bikes just
mentioned. *If it is the right size, then the shop will have a bike
that takes racks and fenders for you. *If its not the right size, or
has any other incorrect attribute, then you can correctly state the
bike shop does not carry a bike that takes racks and fenders. *Well I
guess hybrid bikes will likely take racks and fenders. *And cheap
cyclocross bikes are made to take racks and fenders. *So more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

This appears to be the new sport tourer. http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/fx/75fx/
Look at the angles. In my size (the XL) -- just like an old Raleigh
International (or something along those lines). The effective top
tube is also a comfortable 60.3 -- better than the old school sport
tourers that usually had too short TTs in the scaled up, large frame
sizes. Rack mounts, etc. I guess the industry has decided that drop
bars are not comfortable.

I would say, hey, buy this thing and throw on some drop bars, but that
would be no cheap deal -- stem, bars and STI levers. That would be
about a third of the price of the bike. I think the Trek Pilot
occupied this niche previously, and maybe Mike can tell us why Trek
dropped it. The only other Trek sport tourer is the Portland, which
is a nice bike, but a little pricey for the sport tourer crowd. -- Jay
Beattie.

On Apr 20, 8:22*pm, "
wrote:
On Apr 20, 5:35*am, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:



On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:34:47 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
Some "dedicated touring bikes" are not as suitable for the task as
they should be. *I just read a cross-the-US tour report which
included 100% (n=2) of the Trek 520s in the group suffering from
broken rear racks and severely cracked rear rims.

wrote:
Hmm..... not good!
What abt Surly LHT or Novara Randonee bikes?
They withstand such stress

Tim McNamara wrote:
The LHT looks like a well executed bike; my LBS sells them and thus far
have had no customers coming back with broken stuff. *I've never looked
closely at a Novara; had I read this before I went to REI today to drop
off lunch for my wife, I'd have looked at one of those in the bike
department there.

I'm surprised the Bianchi Volpe, a perenially popular and
reasonable-out-of-the-box touring machine, gets little
mention here on r.b.t.

Maybe it doesn't exist or no shops stock it? *I heard you can't get
bikes that take racks and fenders in bike shops anymore.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Bianchi Volpe fits the loaded tour category. *Not the sports
tourer being discussed in this thread. *The Trek 520 and Cannondale
T800 take racks and fenders. *But are considered loaded touring
bikes. *Not sports touring bikes. *Sports touring being sort of a
compromise between racing bike and loaded touring bike but oriented
more towards racing than loaded touring. *Obviously Trek, Cannondale,
Bianchi dealers will likely have one, and only one, of the bikes just
mentioned. *If it is the right size, then the shop will have a bike
that takes racks and fenders for you. *If its not the right size, or
has any other incorrect attribute, then you can correctly state the
bike shop does not carry a bike that takes racks and fenders. *Well I
guess hybrid bikes will likely take racks and fenders. *And cheap
cyclocross bikes are made to take racks and fenders. *So more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.

Without taking Russell's sour attitude, there are other ways. One is
shopping the net, which I have done successfully three times already,
despite that fact that in beginning I didnt' know anything at all
about bicycles. (It is true I'd been cycling a decade or so, but I
bought my bike by telling my LBS, "I don't want any of this cheap ****
in your showroom. Get the importer of your best bikes here and we'll
find out what's the best bike he has. Tell him I'll give him priceless
publicity for taking the day or two days to come talk to me." And my
LBS even cleaned by bike. So I was entirely unsuited to shopping for a
bike on the internet, and was in fact prepared to write off my first
"grownup bike", so to speak, entirely as a learning experience. I
didn't need to but that could have been pure luck rather than skill;
we'll never know.)

So I see no reason why already knowledgeable people should whine about
not being able to buy a sport-tourer at their preferred LBS. They can
go on the net and buy a perfectly good sports tourer.

It's really easy shopping the net ir you observe some simple rules.
You need to know what you want. and it helps if you belong to some
newsgroup like RBT. With my last bike I found, for instance, Chalo's
advice on fat tackies invaluable; that was everything I had to go on
because nobody locally had Big Apples I could try. (There was also
some dud advice, like the guy who told me to settle for what I didn't
want and take a mountainbike, but the dud advice was in the minority).
Above all you mustn't want the bike so badly that you rush into
anything; patience to discover the essential facts, to find just the
right bike, to find just the right dealer (if the bike is at all
uncommon, and all three of mine were uncommon, two in fact exceedingly
rare, the dealer is more important than the price -- in one case the
manufacturer, Trek, saved my ass when the dealer proved to be slack).
If you're cautious and patient and *persistent*, it doesn't matter
that you start out ignorant, you can shop the net for even a way-out
novelty bike, never mind something common and widely understood like a
sports-tourer.

So when some sputtering clown like Russell Eaton insists that:
more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. And you should buy it.
you can say, as politely or otherwise as you see fit, "No thanks, I'll
just shop the internet for precisely the right bike."

Andre Jute
Five years from bicycle-ignoramus to enough expertise to buy the best
and service it myself

On Apr 20, 8:57*pm, Andre Jute wrote:
On Apr 20, 8:22*pm, "



wrote:
On Apr 20, 5:35*am, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:34:47 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
Some "dedicated touring bikes" are not as suitable for the task as
they should be. *I just read a cross-the-US tour report which
included 100% (n=2) of the Trek 520s in the group suffering from
broken rear racks and severely cracked rear rims.

wrote:
Hmm..... not good!
What abt Surly LHT or Novara Randonee bikes?
They withstand such stress

Tim McNamara wrote:
The LHT looks like a well executed bike; my LBS sells them and thus far
have had no customers coming back with broken stuff. *I've never looked
closely at a Novara; had I read this before I went to REI today to drop
off lunch for my wife, I'd have looked at one of those in the bike
department there.

I'm surprised the Bianchi Volpe, a perenially popular and
reasonable-out-of-the-box touring machine, gets little
mention here on r.b.t.

Maybe it doesn't exist or no shops stock it? *I heard you can't get
bikes that take racks and fenders in bike shops anymore.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Bianchi Volpe fits the loaded tour category. *Not the sports
tourer being discussed in this thread. *The Trek 520 and Cannondale
T800 take racks and fenders. *But are considered loaded touring
bikes. *Not sports touring bikes. *Sports touring being sort of a
compromise between racing bike and loaded touring bike but oriented
more towards racing than loaded touring. *Obviously Trek, Cannondale,
Bianchi dealers will likely have one, and only one, of the bikes just
mentioned. *If it is the right size, then the shop will have a bike
that takes racks and fenders for you. *If its not the right size, or
has any other incorrect attribute, then you can correctly state the
bike shop does not carry a bike that takes racks and fenders. *Well I
guess hybrid bikes will likely take racks and fenders. *And cheap
cyclocross bikes are made to take racks and fenders. *So more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.

Without taking Russell's sour attitude, there are other ways. One is
shopping the net, which I have done successfully three times already,
despite that fact that in beginning I didnt' know anything at all
about bicycles. (It is true I'd been cycling a decade or so, but I
bought my bike by telling my LBS, "I don't want any of this cheap ****
in your showroom. Get the importer of your best bikes here and we'll
find out what's the best bike he has. Tell him I'll give him priceless
publicity for taking the day or two days to come talk to me." And my
LBS even cleaned by bike. So I was entirely unsuited to shopping for a
bike on the internet, and was in fact prepared to write off my first
"grownup bike", so to speak, entirely as a learning experience. I
didn't need to but that could have been pure luck rather than skill;
we'll never know.)

So I see no reason why already knowledgeable people should whine about
not being able to buy a sport-tourer at their preferred LBS. They can
go on the net and buy a perfectly good sports tourer.

It's really easy shopping the net ir you observe some simple rules.
You need to know what you want. and it helps if you belong to some
newsgroup like RBT. With my last bike I found, for instance, Chalo's
advice on fat tackies invaluable; that was everything I had to go on
because nobody locally had Big Apples I could try. (There was also
some dud advice, like the guy who told me to settle for what I didn't
want and take a mountainbike, but the dud advice was in the minority).
Above all you mustn't want the bike so badly that you rush into
anything; patience to discover the essential facts, to find just the
right bike, to find just the right dealer (if the bike is at all
uncommon, and all three of mine were uncommon, two in fact exceedingly
rare, the dealer is more important than the price -- in one case the
manufacturer, Trek, saved my ass when the dealer proved to be slack).
If you're cautious and patient and *persistent*, it doesn't matter
that you start out ignorant, you can shop the net for even a way-out
novelty bike, never mind something common and widely understood like a
sports-tourer.

So when some sputtering clown like Russell Eaton insists that:more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.

you can say, as politely or otherwise as you see fit, "No thanks, I'll
just shop the internet for precisely the right bike."

Andre Jute
Five years from bicycle-ignoramus to enough expertise to buy the best
and service it myself

On Apr 20, 2:42*pm, Jay Beattie wrote:
On Apr 20, 12:22*pm, "





wrote:
On Apr 20, 5:35*am, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:34:47 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
Some "dedicated touring bikes" are not as suitable for the task as
they should be. *I just read a cross-the-US tour report which
included 100% (n=2) of the Trek 520s in the group suffering from
broken rear racks and severely cracked rear rims.

wrote:
Hmm..... not good!
What abt Surly LHT or Novara Randonee bikes?
They withstand such stress

Tim McNamara wrote:
The LHT looks like a well executed bike; my LBS sells them and thus far
have had no customers coming back with broken stuff. *I've never looked
closely at a Novara; had I read this before I went to REI today to drop
off lunch for my wife, I'd have looked at one of those in the bike
department there.

I'm surprised the Bianchi Volpe, a perenially popular and
reasonable-out-of-the-box touring machine, gets little
mention here on r.b.t.

Maybe it doesn't exist or no shops stock it? *I heard you can't get
bikes that take racks and fenders in bike shops anymore.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Bianchi Volpe fits the loaded tour category. *Not the sports
tourer being discussed in this thread. *The Trek 520 and Cannondale
T800 take racks and fenders. *But are considered loaded touring
bikes. *Not sports touring bikes. *Sports touring being sort of a
compromise between racing bike and loaded touring bike but oriented
more towards racing than loaded touring. *Obviously Trek, Cannondale,
Bianchi dealers will likely have one, and only one, of the bikes just
mentioned. *If it is the right size, then the shop will have a bike
that takes racks and fenders for you. *If its not the right size, or
has any other incorrect attribute, then you can correctly state the
bike shop does not carry a bike that takes racks and fenders. *Well I
guess hybrid bikes will likely take racks and fenders. *And cheap
cyclocross bikes are made to take racks and fenders. *So more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

This appears to be the new sport tourer. *http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/fx/75fx/
Look at the angles. *In my size (the XL) -- just like an old Raleigh
International (or something along those lines). *The effective top
tube is also a comfortable 60.3 -- better than the old school sport
tourers that usually had too short TTs in the scaled up, large frame
sizes. *Rack mounts, etc. *I guess the industry has decided that drop
bars are not comfortable.

I would say, hey, buy this thing and throw on some drop bars, but that
would be no cheap deal -- stem, bars and STI levers. *That would be
about a third of the price of the bike. I think the Trek Pilot
occupied this niche previously, and maybe Mike can tell us why Trek
dropped it. *The only other Trek sport tourer is the Portland, which
is a nice bike, but a little pricey for the sport tourer crowd. -- Jay
Beattie.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Trek 1.5 and 1.2 have one set of eyelets front and rear. No rack
mounts on the seatstays but you can get one of those adapters that
mounts behind the brake bolt. Drop bars with STI shifters. Sora.
Aluminum frames, carbon forks. $1100 and $880 retail price. The XL
64cm frame has a 61 cm top tube. Not a high end bike, but functional.

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/1_series/15/

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/1_series/12/

Andre, you spent upwards of 4 grand on a hybrid bike. When you ride
by people fall on the ground laughing their arses off at your
foolishness. You remind me of a person having the most tricked out,
fanciest Pacer or Gremlin. Your bike performs poorly in all
respects. It weighs 15-20 kilos? So its extremely slow on the flat
and uphill. This heaviness also makes its handling clumsy. You have
some puny rack bag on it so its unusable for anything useful like
getting groceries from the market. Your bike could be acceptable for
such a task, but you don't use it that way. If you were to put a non
cyclist on your bike, they would be immediately turned off from
cycling because of the poor performance of your bike. You are an
example of how to waste money.


On Apr 20, 2:57*pm, Andre Jute wrote:
On Apr 20, 8:22*pm, "





wrote:
On Apr 20, 5:35*am, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:34:47 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
Some "dedicated touring bikes" are not as suitable for the task as
they should be. *I just read a cross-the-US tour report which
included 100% (n=2) of the Trek 520s in the group suffering from
broken rear racks and severely cracked rear rims.

wrote:
Hmm..... not good!
What abt Surly LHT or Novara Randonee bikes?
They withstand such stress

Tim McNamara wrote:
The LHT looks like a well executed bike; my LBS sells them and thus far
have had no customers coming back with broken stuff. *I've never looked
closely at a Novara; had I read this before I went to REI today to drop
off lunch for my wife, I'd have looked at one of those in the bike
department there.

I'm surprised the Bianchi Volpe, a perenially popular and
reasonable-out-of-the-box touring machine, gets little
mention here on r.b.t.

Maybe it doesn't exist or no shops stock it? *I heard you can't get
bikes that take racks and fenders in bike shops anymore.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Bianchi Volpe fits the loaded tour category. *Not the sports
tourer being discussed in this thread. *The Trek 520 and Cannondale
T800 take racks and fenders. *But are considered loaded touring
bikes. *Not sports touring bikes. *Sports touring being sort of a
compromise between racing bike and loaded touring bike but oriented
more towards racing than loaded touring. *Obviously Trek, Cannondale,
Bianchi dealers will likely have one, and only one, of the bikes just
mentioned. *If it is the right size, then the shop will have a bike
that takes racks and fenders for you. *If its not the right size, or
has any other incorrect attribute, then you can correctly state the
bike shop does not carry a bike that takes racks and fenders. *Well I
guess hybrid bikes will likely take racks and fenders. *And cheap
cyclocross bikes are made to take racks and fenders. *So more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.

Without taking Russell's sour attitude, there are other ways. One is
shopping the net, which I have done successfully three times already,
despite that fact that in beginning I didnt' know anything at all
about bicycles. (It is true I'd been cycling a decade or so, but I
bought my bike by telling my LBS, "I don't want any of this cheap ****
in your showroom. Get the importer of your best bikes here and we'll
find out what's the best bike he has. Tell him I'll give him priceless
publicity for taking the day or two days to come talk to me." And my
LBS even cleaned by bike. So I was entirely unsuited to shopping for a
bike on the internet, and was in fact prepared to write off my first
"grownup bike", so to speak, entirely as a learning experience. I
didn't need to but that could have been pure luck rather than skill;
we'll never know.)

So I see no reason why already knowledgeable people should whine about
not being able to buy a sport-tourer at their preferred LBS. They can
go on the net and buy a perfectly good sports tourer.

It's really easy shopping the net ir you observe some simple rules.
You need to know what you want. and it helps if you belong to some
newsgroup like RBT. With my last bike I found, for instance, Chalo's
advice on fat tackies invaluable; that was everything I had to go on
because nobody locally had Big Apples I could try. (There was also
some dud advice, like the guy who told me to settle for what I didn't
want and take a mountainbike, but the dud advice was in the minority).
Above all you mustn't want the bike so badly that you rush into
anything; patience to discover the essential facts, to find just the
right bike, to find just the right dealer (if the bike is at all
uncommon, and all three of mine were uncommon, two in fact exceedingly
rare, the dealer is more important than the price -- in one case the
manufacturer, Trek, saved my ass when the dealer proved to be slack).
If you're cautious and patient and *persistent*, it doesn't matter
that you start out ignorant, you can shop the net for even a way-out
novelty bike, never mind something common and widely understood like a
sports-tourer.

So when some sputtering clown like Russell Eaton insists that:more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.

you can say, as politely or otherwise as you see fit, "No thanks, I'll
just shop the internet for precisely the right bike."

Andre Jute
Five years from bicycle-ignoramus to enough expertise to buy the best
and service it myself- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

In article ,
Tim McNamara wrote:

In article
,
landotter wrote:

On Apr 19, 12:03*pm, Tim McNamara wrote:
In article , *John
Forrest Tomlinson wrote:

In any case, i don't think that dedicated touring bikes are
available at a lower price-point than Soma bikes.

Some "dedicated touring bikes" are not as suitable for the task as
they should be. *I just read a cross-the-US tour report which
included 100% (n=2) of the Trek 520s in the group suffering from
broken rear racks and severely cracked rear rims.

Did the hilarious stock fenders survive such a grueling test?

There are no reference that I saw to the fenders breaking. I was not
astonished by the rims cracking, since that's not an uncommon problem
these days. I was surprised by the racks breaking (in both cases, the
hardware attaching the rack to the seat stays).

Did they specify the hardware? A touring bicycle will
have braze-on, threaded ears for attaching the rack to
the seat stays.

--
Michael Press

Oh dear, dear Russell. None of my bikes are breaking my balls and my
back, like your fashion-victims' road bike do to you, dear Russell. No
wonder your temper is so foul. -- Andre Jute

Sneerin', jeerin' Russell Eaton gave a convincing display of ignorance
and prejudice and envy:
Andre, you spent upwards of 4 grand on a hybrid bike. *When you ride
by people fall on the ground laughing their arses off at your
foolishness. *You remind me of a person having the most tricked out,
fanciest Pacer or Gremlin. *Your bike performs poorly in all
respects. *It weighs 15-20 kilos? *So its extremely slow on the flat
and uphill. *This heaviness also makes its handling clumsy. *You have
some puny rack bag on it so its unusable for anything useful like
getting groceries from the market. *Your bike could be acceptable for
such a task, but you don't use it that way. *If you were to put a non
cyclist on your bike, they would be immediately turned off from
cycling because of the poor performance of your bike. *You are an
example of how to waste money.

On Apr 20, 2:57*pm, Andre Jute wrote:

On Apr 20, 8:22*pm, "

wrote:
On Apr 20, 5:35*am, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:34:47 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
Some "dedicated touring bikes" are not as suitable for the task as
they should be. *I just read a cross-the-US tour report which
included 100% (n=2) of the Trek 520s in the group suffering from
broken rear racks and severely cracked rear rims.

wrote:
Hmm..... not good!
What abt Surly LHT or Novara Randonee bikes?
They withstand such stress

Tim McNamara wrote:
The LHT looks like a well executed bike; my LBS sells them and thus far
have had no customers coming back with broken stuff. *I've never looked
closely at a Novara; had I read this before I went to REI today to drop
off lunch for my wife, I'd have looked at one of those in the bike
department there.

I'm surprised the Bianchi Volpe, a perenially popular and
reasonable-out-of-the-box touring machine, gets little
mention here on r.b.t.

Maybe it doesn't exist or no shops stock it? *I heard you can't get
bikes that take racks and fenders in bike shops anymore.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Bianchi Volpe fits the loaded tour category. *Not the sports
tourer being discussed in this thread. *The Trek 520 and Cannondale
T800 take racks and fenders. *But are considered loaded touring
bikes. *Not sports touring bikes. *Sports touring being sort of a
compromise between racing bike and loaded touring bike but oriented
more towards racing than loaded touring. *Obviously Trek, Cannondale,
Bianchi dealers will likely have one, and only one, of the bikes just
mentioned. *If it is the right size, then the shop will have a bike
that takes racks and fenders for you. *If its not the right size, or
has any other incorrect attribute, then you can correctly state the
bike shop does not carry a bike that takes racks and fenders. *Well I
guess hybrid bikes will likely take racks and fenders. *And cheap
cyclocross bikes are made to take racks and fenders. *So more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.

Without taking Russell's sour attitude, there are other ways. One is
shopping the net, which I have done successfully three times already,
despite that fact that in beginning I didnt' know anything at all
about bicycles. (It is true I'd been cycling a decade or so, but I
bought my bike by telling my LBS, "I don't want any of this cheap ****
in your showroom. Get the importer of your best bikes here and we'll
find out what's the best bike he has. Tell him I'll give him priceless
publicity for taking the day or two days to come talk to me." And my
LBS even cleaned by bike. So I was entirely unsuited to shopping for a
bike on the internet, and was in fact prepared to write off my first
"grownup bike", so to speak, entirely as a learning experience. I
didn't need to but that could have been pure luck rather than skill;
we'll never know.)

So I see no reason why already knowledgeable people should whine about
not being able to buy a sport-tourer at their preferred LBS. They can
go on the net and buy a perfectly good sports tourer.

It's really easy shopping the net ir you observe some simple rules.
You need to know what you want. and it helps if you belong to some
newsgroup like RBT. With my last bike I found, for instance, Chalo's
advice on fat tackies invaluable; that was everything I had to go on
because nobody locally had Big Apples I could try. (There was also
some dud advice, like the guy who told me to settle for what I didn't
want and take a mountainbike, but the dud advice was in the minority).
Above all you mustn't want the bike so badly that you rush into
anything; patience to discover the essential facts, to find just the
right bike, to find just the right dealer (if the bike is at all
uncommon, and all three of mine were uncommon, two in fact exceedingly
rare, the dealer is more important than the price -- in one case the
manufacturer, Trek, saved my ass when the dealer proved to be slack).
If you're cautious and patient and *persistent*, it doesn't matter
that you start out ignorant, you can shop the net for even a way-out
novelty bike, never mind something common and widely understood like a
sports-tourer.

So when some sputtering clown like Russell Eaton insists that:more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.

you can say, as politely or otherwise as you see fit, "No thanks, I'll
just shop the internet for precisely the right bike."

Andre Jute
Five years from bicycle-ignoramus to enough expertise to buy the best
and service it myself- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

On Apr 20, 1:07*pm, "
wrote:
On Apr 20, 2:42*pm, Jay Beattie wrote:





On Apr 20, 12:22*pm, "

wrote:
On Apr 20, 5:35*am, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:34:47 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
Some "dedicated touring bikes" are not as suitable for the task as
they should be. *I just read a cross-the-US tour report which
included 100% (n=2) of the Trek 520s in the group suffering from
broken rear racks and severely cracked rear rims.

wrote:
Hmm..... not good!
What abt Surly LHT or Novara Randonee bikes?
They withstand such stress

Tim McNamara wrote:
The LHT looks like a well executed bike; my LBS sells them and thus far
have had no customers coming back with broken stuff. *I've never looked
closely at a Novara; had I read this before I went to REI today to drop
off lunch for my wife, I'd have looked at one of those in the bike
department there.

I'm surprised the Bianchi Volpe, a perenially popular and
reasonable-out-of-the-box touring machine, gets little
mention here on r.b.t.

Maybe it doesn't exist or no shops stock it? *I heard you can't get
bikes that take racks and fenders in bike shops anymore.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Bianchi Volpe fits the loaded tour category. *Not the sports
tourer being discussed in this thread. *The Trek 520 and Cannondale
T800 take racks and fenders. *But are considered loaded touring
bikes. *Not sports touring bikes. *Sports touring being sort of a
compromise between racing bike and loaded touring bike but oriented
more towards racing than loaded touring. *Obviously Trek, Cannondale,
Bianchi dealers will likely have one, and only one, of the bikes just
mentioned. *If it is the right size, then the shop will have a bike
that takes racks and fenders for you. *If its not the right size, or
has any other incorrect attribute, then you can correctly state the
bike shop does not carry a bike that takes racks and fenders. *Well I
guess hybrid bikes will likely take racks and fenders. *And cheap
cyclocross bikes are made to take racks and fenders. *So more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

This appears to be the new sport tourer. *http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/fx/75fx/
Look at the angles. *In my size (the XL) -- just like an old Raleigh
International (or something along those lines). *The effective top
tube is also a comfortable 60.3 -- better than the old school sport
tourers that usually had too short TTs in the scaled up, large frame
sizes. *Rack mounts, etc. *I guess the industry has decided that drop
bars are not comfortable.

I would say, hey, buy this thing and throw on some drop bars, but that
would be no cheap deal -- stem, bars and STI levers. *That would be
about a third of the price of the bike. I think the Trek Pilot
occupied this niche previously, and maybe Mike can tell us why Trek
dropped it. *The only other Trek sport tourer is the Portland, which
is a nice bike, but a little pricey for the sport tourer crowd. -- Jay
Beattie.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Trek 1.5 and 1.2 have one set of eyelets front and rear. *No rack
mounts on the seatstays but you can get one of those adapters that
mounts behind the brake bolt. *Drop bars with STI shifters. *Sora.
Aluminum frames, carbon forks. *$1100 and $880 retail price. *The XL
64cm frame has a 61 cm top tube. *Not a high end bike, but functional.

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/1_series/15/

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/road/1_series/12/- Hide quoted text -

Do you think they would take fenders? It looks pretty tight. I don't
see any reference to fenders in the reviews either (although I have
not fly-spec'd all of them) -- Jay Beattie.

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:22:07 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Apr 20, 5:35*am, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:
On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:34:47 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
Some "dedicated touring bikes" are not as suitable for the task as
they should be. *I just read a cross-the-US tour report which
included 100% (n=2) of the Trek 520s in the group suffering from
broken rear racks and severely cracked rear rims.

wrote:
Hmm..... not good!
What abt Surly LHT or Novara Randonee bikes?
They withstand such stress

Tim McNamara wrote:
The LHT looks like a well executed bike; my LBS sells them and thus far
have had no customers coming back with broken stuff. *I've never looked
closely at a Novara; had I read this before I went to REI today to drop
off lunch for my wife, I'd have looked at one of those in the bike
department there.

I'm surprised the Bianchi Volpe, a perenially popular and
reasonable-out-of-the-box touring machine, gets little
mention here on r.b.t.

Maybe it doesn't exist or no shops stock it? *I heard you can't get
bikes that take racks and fenders in bike shops anymore.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Bianchi Volpe fits the loaded tour category.

Yeah, like Muzi says in the text quoted above.

Andre, you ride a girls hybrid bike. Some grandmas might be envious
of your bike.


On Apr 20, 4:56*pm, Andre Jute wrote:
Oh dear, dear Russell. None of my bikes are breaking my balls and my
back, like your fashion-victims' road bike do to you, dear Russell. No
wonder your temper is so foul. -- Andre Jute

Sneerin', jeerin' Russell Eaton gave a convincing display of ignorance
and prejudice and envy:



Andre, you spent upwards of 4 grand on a hybrid bike. *When you ride
by people fall on the ground laughing their arses off at your
foolishness. *You remind me of a person having the most tricked out,
fanciest Pacer or Gremlin. *Your bike performs poorly in all
respects. *It weighs 15-20 kilos? *So its extremely slow on the flat
and uphill. *This heaviness also makes its handling clumsy. *You have
some puny rack bag on it so its unusable for anything useful like
getting groceries from the market. *Your bike could be acceptable for
such a task, but you don't use it that way. *If you were to put a non
cyclist on your bike, they would be immediately turned off from
cycling because of the poor performance of your bike. *You are an
example of how to waste money.

On Apr 20, 2:57*pm, Andre Jute wrote:

On Apr 20, 8:22*pm, "

wrote:
On Apr 20, 5:35*am, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:34:47 -0500, AMuzi wrote:
Some "dedicated touring bikes" are not as suitable for the task as
they should be. *I just read a cross-the-US tour report which
included 100% (n=2) of the Trek 520s in the group suffering from
broken rear racks and severely cracked rear rims.

wrote:
Hmm..... not good!
What abt Surly LHT or Novara Randonee bikes?
They withstand such stress

Tim McNamara wrote:
The LHT looks like a well executed bike; my LBS sells them and thus far
have had no customers coming back with broken stuff. *I've never looked
closely at a Novara; had I read this before I went to REI today to drop
off lunch for my wife, I'd have looked at one of those in the bike
department there.

I'm surprised the Bianchi Volpe, a perenially popular and
reasonable-out-of-the-box touring machine, gets little
mention here on r.b.t.

Maybe it doesn't exist or no shops stock it? *I heard you can't get
bikes that take racks and fenders in bike shops anymore.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The Bianchi Volpe fits the loaded tour category. *Not the sports
tourer being discussed in this thread. *The Trek 520 and Cannondale
T800 take racks and fenders. *But are considered loaded touring
bikes. *Not sports touring bikes. *Sports touring being sort of a
compromise between racing bike and loaded touring bike but oriented
more towards racing than loaded touring. *Obviously Trek, Cannondale,
Bianchi dealers will likely have one, and only one, of the bikes just
mentioned. *If it is the right size, then the shop will have a bike
that takes racks and fenders for you. *If its not the right size, or
has any other incorrect attribute, then you can correctly state the
bike shop does not carry a bike that takes racks and fenders. *Well I
guess hybrid bikes will likely take racks and fenders. *And cheap
cyclocross bikes are made to take racks and fenders. *So more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.

Without taking Russell's sour attitude, there are other ways. One is
shopping the net, which I have done successfully three times already,
despite that fact that in beginning I didnt' know anything at all
about bicycles. (It is true I'd been cycling a decade or so, but I
bought my bike by telling my LBS, "I don't want any of this cheap ****
in your showroom. Get the importer of your best bikes here and we'll
find out what's the best bike he has. Tell him I'll give him priceless
publicity for taking the day or two days to come talk to me." And my
LBS even cleaned by bike. So I was entirely unsuited to shopping for a
bike on the internet, and was in fact prepared to write off my first
"grownup bike", so to speak, entirely as a learning experience. I
didn't need to but that could have been pure luck rather than skill;
we'll never know.)

So I see no reason why already knowledgeable people should whine about
not being able to buy a sport-tourer at their preferred LBS. They can
go on the net and buy a perfectly good sports tourer.

It's really easy shopping the net ir you observe some simple rules.
You need to know what you want. and it helps if you belong to some
newsgroup like RBT. With my last bike I found, for instance, Chalo's
advice on fat tackies invaluable; that was everything I had to go on
because nobody locally had Big Apples I could try. (There was also
some dud advice, like the guy who told me to settle for what I didn't
want and take a mountainbike, but the dud advice was in the minority)..
Above all you mustn't want the bike so badly that you rush into
anything; patience to discover the essential facts, to find just the
right bike, to find just the right dealer (if the bike is at all
uncommon, and all three of mine were uncommon, two in fact exceedingly
rare, the dealer is more important than the price -- in one case the
manufacturer, Trek, saved my ass when the dealer proved to be slack).
If you're cautious and patient and *persistent*, it doesn't matter
that you start out ignorant, you can shop the net for even a way-out
novelty bike, never mind something common and widely understood like a
sports-tourer.

So when some sputtering clown like Russell Eaton insists that:more than
likely there will be some piece of crap in the bike shop that takes
racks and fenders. *And you should buy it.

you can say, as politely or otherwise as you see fit, "No thanks, I'll
just shop the internet for precisely the right bike."

Andre Jute
Five years from bicycle-ignoramus to enough expertise to buy the best
and service it myself- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -