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C YC L E S E N S E WHERE are the $300 TOURING BIKES? Here’s why we don’t have them by John Schubert company is offering touring bikes in the entry-price portion of the market. Let’s look at that entry-price portion of the bike market and check out the specs of some really good inexpensive bikes. thousand or two. What if it were a six- or seven-figure numIf anyone asks me for the best deal in an entry-price mountain bike, I point him ber? What if your average bike buyer were as likely to get a to the $330 Specialized Hardrock XC and touring bike as he now is to get a mountain bike or comfort say, “Shop around and see if you can top this.” It has a high-tech aluminum frame bike? More people would tour. Because they could. And that dispenses with mere tubing for a semi-monocoque configuration. It has a some of them would threadless headset. The RST suspension find touring as captifork has 80 mm of travel. You get a vating as you and I seven-speed freewheel, V-brakes, and an do. assortment of other high-end technology This isn’t just that screams “buy me.” And the bike is theory. It’s historicaloptimized for two-hour jaunts in the ly established fact. woods. Back in the Jurassic A person trying to challenge the era, when I was a Hardrock XC’s value crown might point teenager and Lyndon to the Jamis Cross Country 2.0, which, at Johnson was presi$385, has an aluminum frame with an dent, most of us impressively gusseted head-tube area, an bought touring bikes. RST suspension fork, and a threadless They were crude by headset. today’s standards, Mountain bikes got you down? At with their steel rims the low end of this price range, the and 10-speed driveDiamondback Wildwood comfort bike has a cartridge-bearing trains, but by gum you could slap a rack on them and go places. And people did so — in droves. Among my college chums, crank spindle, two inches of suspension travel in an SR fork, a welded aluminum frame, and a quick-release seatpost. bicycle touring was fairly popular, right up there with whiteAnd almost any bike company you could name would have water sports and certainly more popular than rock climbing or excellent mountain and comfort bikes in the $300 to $400 price cross-country skiing. That’s why the newly-founded range. These are the bikes that snag the college commuter marBikecentennial was able to recruit 4,000 people to ride the ket, the new year’s resolution market, and the “gotta buy my TransAmerica Trail in 1976. Equipment wise, it was easy. You already owned a bike, and teenager a bike” market. Now let’s look at road bikes in this price range. touring was an obvious use of that bike. You grabbed a sleeping bag out of the attic, bought some panniers and a rack, and you But … there aren’t any. were ready to go. So go up a hundred bucks and what do you find? Today, most people don’t already own touring bikes. They Well, first of all, you won’t find touring bikes. So you have mountain bikes, road bikes, and comfort bikes. And no broaden your search for any bike with dropped handlebars. $3 40 ADVENTURE CYCLIST JUNE 200 7 ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG GREG SIPLE Would there be more bicycle tourists if most teenagers and young adults owned touring bikes? I sure think so. These days, touring bikes sold each year add up to, at most, a low four-figure number — a What you find are skinny-tire go-fast bikes. The $550 Fuji Newest 4.0 and $535 Jamis Ventura Sport are typical of these entry-level road bikes. Their prices are about as cheap as dropped-handlebar bikes get. Both of them have aluminum frames — one has a steel fork, neither has suspension. Both have eight rear cogs and three front chainwheels. Frankly, to the customer who measures value by counting the high-tech goodies for the buck, machines like that Rockhopper XC look more tempting. And if you hold out for a genuine touring bike? The Jamis Aurora, enthusiastically reviewed in these pages two years ago, is one of the cheapest, and, at $850, it’s in a whole ‘nuther price range. (Let’s be fair to the Aurora: it has nicer components than those cheaper bikes.) But why? Why can’t road-bike buyers have cheaper bikes? Why can’t your neighbor who might like to go touring with you get started as cheaply as he can get started mountain biking? Of course, part of the reason is psychological — we just don’t think of the fact that cheap mountain bikes can be used for touring. And our retailers are unlikely to tell us, or to stock the Old Man Mountain racks that allow you to put panniers on your suspension fork. But if you narrow the question to “why can’t drop-handlebar road bikes be cheaper?” the biggest single reason is an unintended consequence of innovation. That innovation is integrated brake/shift levers, which have become nearly mandatory on road bikes. It’s almost impossible to sell a bike without them, and has been so for over a decade. And they are expensive. (Shimano’s integrated levers have dozens of moving parts.) That component alone kicks road bikes up in price range, resulting in the cost figures I gave earlier. The high relative cost of integrated brake/shift levers is a bit counter-intuitive, since the brake and shift levers on today’s inexpensive mountain bikes are so nice. But that’s the way it is. To my knowledge, the number of bike companies offering the cost savings of down-tube shift levers has dwindled to zero. About two years ago, the last holdout, Fuji, stopped selling such a bike. Well, what about bar-end shift levers? They’ve been around for decades, and in terms of mechanical complexity, they are about the same as down tube levers. The answer to this question has two parts. The first part is a marketing question, which hard-core touring cyclists may not appreciate. Among us cyclotourists, bar-end levers are fairly common. Many of you who buy custom, cost-is-no-object touring bikes use them. But in the rest of the universe, the only place you see barend shifters is on the ends of aerobars used by triathletes. So bar-end levers are a rarity, and they’re not on the buying public’s radar screen. The second part is a price question. Since bar-end levers are only sold to freespending triathletes (and a few cycletourists), the only vendor, Shimano, only offers them in the pricy jewelry-like Ultegra line. They’re actually more expensive than Shimano’s entry-level integrated brake/shift levers. There you have it: an entire important price/use category of bicycle doesn’t even exist because the buying public is picky about its shift levers. Fooey. Shift over to your computer and tell technical editor John Schubert your contrary opinion at [email protected]. Simply the best The passionate goal of our development team: A touring tire that can do everything. The result: MARATHON SUPREME. Extremely light (460 g/37-622). Astounding grip on wet roads (new Magic Compound). Maximum High Density puncture protection. The best of the Marathon series. www.schwalbetires.com ADVENTURE CYCLIST JUNE 200 7 ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG 41