> Well, this would depend on how you are riding. For the most part it > is silly, not skilled riders who attempt high speed with a loaded self- > contained touring bike. When you have 60+ pounds of gear, bikes do > not stop fast, no matter how nice the brakes.
I've done fully loaded touring before. Even carried enough equipment to shoot two weddings from point to point. With a high trail bike, it works very well. What happens is that a heavy front load slows down the steering to the point where even at low speed it's quite manageable (no noticeable wheel flop). To stick low trail on the bike at that point just makes the bike sluggish and unresponsive. No thanks. And even with a credit-card touring load, the long reach Shimano brakes on my tandem stop us just fine (320 pounds). With a full touring load, we go up to 340 pounds on the tandem. I haven't tried it on the new bike, but I'm also confident we can do so. During our 2003 Tour of the Alps, I overtook a motor home coming down the backside of Grimsel pass on that afore-mentioned 320 pound bike: http://picasaweb.google.com/piaw.na/TourOfTheAlps2007Edited#5088391799535009522 Yes, you can call us crazy, but at no point did that descent feel scary to me, even while over-taking the motor-home. In subsequent years, I did the same thing on my single (in which I can't go quite so fast because of aerodynamics), and it's just as fun. I think if you are uncomfortable at speed with your bike, no amount of steering help with the geometry is going to help you become comfortable. I have friends who are comfortable coming down Fedaia pass (what Jobst calls the fastest highway in the Alps) at 100kph with a credit-card touring load. I'm not brave enough to chase them, so I'd hardly call myself the most skilled rider in the world. In any case, these skilled riders all prefer the high trail fast-steering road bikes that Grant Petersen (among others) developed a taste for over the years, and I don't think it's a coincidence. To give you an idea of how skilled some riders get, I once chased a local racer-type down Kings Mountain Road. At one of the corners both my tires slipped a little. My friend barely blinked, and kept going, handily beating me down the hill after I decided that deliberately skidding my tires around a corner was a bit more than I wanted to repeat. And yes, I gave up trying to beat her down hills after that. -- Piaw Na http://piaw.blogspot.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Bicycle Lifestyle" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/bicyclelifestyle?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
