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"The pleasure of travel increases in direct proportion to the decrease of baggage." |
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The Cycling Silk crew has opted for cheap, simple, rugged, steel frame hybrid bikes. Cheap, because we're impecunious students working with a ramen-noodles-and-peanut-butter budget. Simple, because the fewer moving parts on a bike, the fewer opportunities for things to go awry. While a mountain bike with full suspension would provide a cozy ride, our limited capacity to repair the bike means simple takes priority over comfortable. Rugged, because we'll be riding washboard mountain roads and sandy desert trails. Steel frame, because while this material is heavy, it's also extremely strong, surprisingly flexible, and most importantly, easily weldable by even the most rural of Chinese village welding shops. With any other frame material, like aluminium, we'd be totally out of luck if our frames busted in the backcountry of Xinjiang. Hybrid, because we'll be splitting our time between paved roads (ideal for road bikes) and backcountry paths (ideal for mountain bikes). We wanted to strike a happy medium. Bike, because we want to explore the modern Silk Road with the greatest possible freedom, independence, and mobility. With these stipulations on mind, we decided on the Jamis Coda Sport. But we're making some key modifications to render it suitably burly for expedition touring. We're going to switch out the gearing in favor of lower gears for those long, steep climbs in the mountains.We got rid of its thin road tires and added fatter, puncture-resistant tires with semi-slick treads for gripping gravel and ashphalt. We plugged in handlebar ends to relieve hand position monotony, and we switched out the normal pedals for campus pedals with both platforms and clip-ins. We stuck on sturdy steel racks and durable, roomy panniers, and tacked on a kick-stand. And in the end we hope we'll have a sturdy machine that will carry across Xinjiang and beyond. |
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Kate