More words from Arn about bikes (Wed 2/17)

A few words from the bike guy about some of the setups that I've seen. People are on all kinds of different rigs. The vast majority are mountain bikes. I'd estimate that only 15% of the people we've seen are on road bikes albeit with beefier tires. They seem happy with their setups.  Rigid forks are much more common than front suspension. Everyone with a rigid fork also has front panniers. Only one guy with front shock has panniers using a home made very slick mounting system reinforced to his stem.  We've only seen 3 trailers. Two bobs and one homemade Chilean contraption that apparently was made for twenty bucks.  While I have no experience with trailers, I am struggling to see the benefit.

In terms of cool bike setups, I've seen four things of note.

First there are a number of people with Rohloff hubs. There is no question in my mind that this is the superior transmission system for the Carretera. Less external parts to get destroyed by the road and weather. Expensive but worth it. The only tradeoff is that an unlikely failure is a trip ender.

Next, I've been shocked by the number of busted racks and brazeons. Fully a third or more of the people we've met have had failures. Most of the problems were with front racks or front brazeons. I was concerned initially with the mounting system for the Old Man Mountain racks that we have, but I'm more than just a little impressed by them now.  Spend the money, like Ortlieb panniers, Ergon grips, Schwalbe Marathon XR tires and Rohloff hubs. They are the gold standard.

We've seen a number of people with front hubs that can generate power to recharge battery packs and then USB devices. The utility of this for us is low as we are not camping enough to need this especially as we are carrying a rechargable USB recharger from IMAX Power that can recharge our iPod Touches like 6 times on one charge.

A final cool thing of note are a couple of frames with builtin racks. These rear racks seem absolutely bulletproof. Apparently made by a German framebuilder.

Our strategy for lodging has been pretty simple. Mostly choose the best value in town that has availibility. Sometimes, like last night, it is a room in a hospedaje. These range from about $15 to $30 per person per night. Sometimes it is a cabaña and occassionally it is a fancy pants lodge. Our least favored choice is camping. Both times we camped so far were by choice and both spots offered dinner (as well as rooms).  So, if you were taking the camping as emergency approach, you could save a great deal of space and weight if you are willing to forgo a cooked meal in an emergency and instead feast on chocolates, bread, etc.  To me, this is a good tradeoff as you could get rid of the cook kit, stove, cleanup kit, and fuel. We've only used the stove for one meal so far.  Continuing, we brought with a nice gravity water filter that we have yet to use. Instead, I would bring iodine or other tablets for emergency use.  Looking forward on some of our future days and ride options, we probably only have one forced camping option and even that might be avoidable with a long day of cycling. More on this in another note.