Jill had two more touring cyclists drop by for a “Warm Shower” the last two nights (click here for info on WarmShowers). These fellows were from Australia. Pictured above is Hank as he was getting set to leave this morning.
The other bloke was already gone, off to Starbucks then on to the skateboard park down by the wharf. He’s carried a skateboard with him for their entire adventure. They flew into Vancouver and bought their bikes there. Their route was through eastern Washington to the Columbia, along the Columbia, through the Gorge into Portland, on to see the Columbia terminate into the Pacific, then down the coast all the way to Santa Barbara. When they arrive in Los Angeles they’ll leave their bikes and fly to New York for eight days, returning to Los Angeles to ride to the Mexican border, then fly home to Sydney. What an adventure.
Things to note on Hanks setup above (clicking on the image presents a larger version of same):
♦ The stacked up stuff on the rear rack. Typical long haul; load it up, bungee it all down.
♦ The creative placement of the “handlebar bag”, very cool.
♦ The disk brakes and an advantage I had never considered.
Hank had broken 19 spokes by the time he rode into an Arcata bike store with four
of them unrepaired. Yet he could still ride with the wheel WAY out of true because
the bike has disk brakes. With brakes stopping on the rim and his size he probably
would not have been able to ride with two spokes broken, amazing to me who has
broken many a spoke while touring. Disc wheels may be in my future!
One Response to “Australian Hank’s very interesting rig”
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This is interesting! How fun to have the cyclists like this come right to your front door! So now something to think about:
Disk brakes are very nice, the hydraulic ones stop a bike super faster, no question. They are, however, a huge pain to keep adjusted. Instead of just keeping your wheel true, now you need to keep two round things true. If that disk goes out of whack, forget it, you aren’t going anywhere without some huge rubbing or taking the disk off. Also if you close the calipers with the front tire off, you have to use a screw driver to pry the damn thing open, possibly damaging your pads. When you take off and put the wheel back on, if it’s not perfectly aligned, guess what? Brake rubbing! When they get dusty, they get very noisy. If it were be I’d get a wheel correctly built or stronger, rather than changing brakes to fix a bad wheel. If you have wheel troubles, get a better wheel. If you want to brake better get better brakes. That’s my opinion anyway.