Purchasing a Bicycle

Bicycles:Depending on where you are going, you may or may not need really good bikes. For a one or two week trip, use whatever bike you have. It may not shift perfectly, it may shake and rattle a bit, but it will get you where you are going. On the other hand, if you are planning an extended trip, good quality bikes that can withstand the demands of hard touring are essential. I also learned the hard way that fit is critical. I would strongly suggest finding a local bike store that deals with touring gear - they are a great source of info!

We’ve been around the block a time or two as to what we wanted in a bike. Over the years, we’ve toured on a wide variety of bikes – touring specific bikes, mountain bikes, and road bikes. We like to think we’ve figured out what works best for us – but then we find out about something else…

One of our priorities was a steel frame. I realize there are people out there who will say it doesn’t matter – if your frame breaks apart nobody will be able to weld it back together and you’ll need to get a new frame anyway. I totally agree with that. However – a more likely scenario is that the frame won’t completely break into two, but rather you’ll break a small braze-on or something. That can be successfully repaired if you have a steel bike. (Many years ago, as I loaded my bike on a bus in India, I broke a small braze-on that held my brake cable in place. Fortunately, I was able to get it welded back together in the small village I was in and we continued on our way. If my bike had been aluminum, I’m not sure where I would have had to go to get it repaired.) Even though we wanted steel frames, we couldn’t find a steel bike small enough for the kids – so we ended up with an aluminum bike for Davy.
Low gearing is essential – as low as possible. Honestly, we don’t care about the high gears at all – if we are going fast enough to use a great big chain ring, we’ll coast. If you are lugging heavy loads up steep hills, you want low. Low, low, low.
I wanted butterfly handlebars; John wanted drops. We all have different preferences, and the important thing is to go with what is comfortable for you. We have all found that two (or even three) layers of handlebar tape is a good thing.
John and I have rim cantilever brakes. Davy has disc brakes. If we had it to do over again, we would most likely go with disc on all three bikes – they have greater stopping power and seem to last longer. However, they do make putting a rack on the bike difficult if at all possible. We also had a drum brake installed on the tandem to give it a bit more stopping power. With all that weight, having more brake power is a good thing!
Wheel size makes absolutely no difference if you are riding in the US or someplace where you can find all sizes of tires. However, in many parts of the world, 700c tires are difficult to come by, so seriously consider getting 26” wheels if you plan to tour the world. Unfortunately, a bike large enough for me with 26” wheels was unavailable in the USA at the time I needed to buy my bike. I could have paid a lot to get one shipped in from Europe (where they are very common), paid an outrageous amount for a custom bike, or go ahead and get the 700c. In the end, we opted for the 700c bike, figuring that we could pay for a plane ticket back to the USA to pick up a new wheel if needed, and it would still be cheaper than getting a custom bike made.
A note from John. Especially in Central America and, I’m assuming, South America, many people use a bicycle as their main mode of transportation. The bikes are basically mountain bikes which means parts for them are plentiful and cheap.
There are two philosophies in choosing a bicycle for the trip: Buy an expensive bike with high quality parts and hope nothing on it breaks or go with a basic 26” mountain bike with your favorite components. We went with the first option and already had to replace a brake handle with one ordered from the States. Our wheels, disc brakes, and hubs are all non-standard and if damaged or broken would have to be ordered from the States. We’ve already met someone stranded waiting for a part to arrive for their Phil Wood hub.

If you are comfortable touring on a standard mountain bike, the second option should be considered. Pretty much anything that goes wrong with your bike can easily be fixed locally. Except for the higher end bicycle shops in the cities, the quality of these parts are not that great but should last for a reasonalbe amount of time.

What bikes are we riding? John and Daryl ride a custom Rodriguez tandem. I am riding an REI Novara Randonee (I swapped out the handlebars for butterfly bars and put lower gearing on), and Davy uses an REI Novara Safari .

Trailers: Both John and I pull trailers for two reasons:

Extra carrying capacity
Take the weight off the rear wheel

John has pulled a BOB the entire trip (and our whole last journey as well), while I started off with an ExtraWheel and switched to a BOB after 5000 miles. I wrote a series of reviews about the ExtraWheel:

Basically, my conclusion is that I prefer the ExtraWheel for its maneuverability, but the BOB is more durable.

Actually – I prefer no trailer at all, and if we didn’t need the capacity I would be carrying panniers only. Other cyclists, on the other hand, prefer the trailer and choose to ditch their panniers and go with trailer only. From discussions among cyclists, it appears the trailer/no trailer debate comes down to personal preference. Some of us prefer the feel of a nice, tight little package with everything piled on the bike itself. Others prefer the feel of the trailer. There is no right answer – go with what feels best to you.

Panniers vs trailer

A note from John: Depending on the circumstances I would sometimes go with a trailer and sometimes I wouldn’t. I really like the compactness of not having a trailer, plus it handles better and is easier to park, to pack in an airplane, and to negotiate city streets. If at all possible I’d go without a trailer. On this trip, however, we have to carry two person’s worth of gear on the tandem. Add this to the fact that we have both winter and summer clothing, homeschooling material, and a computer we have a lot of stuff! No way I’d be able to fit it all in four panniers unless I stacked a lot of it on the racks.

Which brings me to the next point – putting too much weight on a bike and going down bumpy roads is asking for trouble. That’s how things break - from the spokes to racks to stress fractures in the frame. Since we’ve done over 400 mile on dirt roads in Alaska and expect many more in South America, I think having a trailer is a must. We traveled with a family riding on two tandems who had gear stuffed in their panniers and heaped on top of their front and rear racks. With under 1,700 miles of riding they had already managed to break their Old Man Mountain rack, a Phil Wood hub (a heavy duty one made specifically for tandems), and blew out four 1.95 Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires! We’ve put our bikes through much more and haven’t broken anything yet.

Tires: We are now diehard converts to Schwalbe. After dealing with hundreds of flat tires on our last trip, we switched to Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires this time. As of now – with nearly 8500 miles on our bikes – we’ve had only a handful of flat tires.

On our last trip, our biggest problem – bar none – was those nasty little wires from the black carcasses of retreads littering the side of the highway. We considered ourselves fortunate if we made it through a week with no flats. Now, with the Schwalbe tires, the wires pose very little threat. We have had a few work their way through, but very few. Most of the few flat tires we’ve had have been caused by pieces of glass cutting the tire.

We have no idea how many miles we’ll get on our front tires – we haven’t worn any out yet. Our rear tires are getting a variety of mileage – mine (700 x 35) are wearing out at around 4500 miles, while John’s (26 x 1.95) are lasting around 5000 miles. Davy, with very little weight on his bike, hasn’t worn out anything yet.

Slime vs No Slime: A big debate among cyclists – do you use slime against flats? Or not? Here is John’s response to that question after our 2006-07 journey with the triple bike:

If someone asked me what the hardest part of the trip was, without hesitation I would say fixing flat tires. No doubt about it. Nancy thinks I fixed 50 or 60, but I believe it may have exceeded 100. It seems that in each bike store we visited the first things we bought were either tubes or patch kits; we even wore out one of our pumps!

We started the trip with "goop" or tire sealant in our tubes, that nasty stuff that squirted all over us and our equipment when a tire blew. The big disadvantage of goop is that our tires couldn't be patched when the goop didn't plug a puncture. This happened several times. Even when I carefully and meticulously applied a patch to the tube, it would only last several days before the goop would work its way through the patch and make another mess (one contributing factor to this could have been the extreme weight on the two tires on our triple). That necessitated using more tubes which put us in a desperate situation a few times when we rode remote areas with no place to purchase additional tubes.

Because of this we switched over to using puncture resistant tire liners between our tube and tires before we went into Mexico. We did have slightly more flat tires, but were able to successfully repair them with patches.

Purchasing a Bicycle and Gear for Your Next Tour