I'm planning a tour on the US east coast from Boston, MA, to Washington, DC, this summer, traveling on asphalt and paved roads. I have a second-hand carbon frame road bike bought from some local two years ago that I’d like to use for my tour.
However, recently, after a test ride with the bike loaded (see pic for the setup), I'm unsure if it would be sturdy enough to last through the tour without getting a few flat tires and other annoying failures.
Moreover, I was learning to replace the tube for my bike tires recently, and found that the tire width is only 18c (not sure about this, please see pic for context), and based on what I read online, tour bikes, even if road bikes, typically use much thicker tires.
Please help me decide if I should buy a new bike for this tour or if my old road bike might be okay. Thanks!
by Comfortable-Gap-514
2 Comments
I think you’ll be fine on that, the East Coast greenway has some unpaved sections but nothing I would hesitate to ride that on. This is assuming you aren’t overloading those bags and are of average size yourself. The streets of the East Coast are somewhat littered with trash, more so than other parts of the country. Any tire can be deflated by a huge glass shard. Be vigilant and you won’t have much trouble with flats. This said wider tires are a bit more comfortable and don’t really slow you down at least up to 32mm, if money is no issue I would prefer to be on wider tires.
How heavy are you? If the additional weight pushes you over a reasonable weight that bike manufacturers would assume could ride the bike, then it seems reasonable that the extra weight won’t be of issue.
Also looks like you are running pretty light based on your bags in the picture so should be fine regardless.
18c is the width of the rim not the tire. Im not sure how wide your tires are but they look pretty worn out based on the side walls. You can stop by the bike shop and pick up some new tires that are wider if that makes you feel more confident. Or you can just send it and if it is a big problem im sure there is a bike shop along the way given that that is a very populated area.
Edit: Also please get proper water bottles made for cycling. The ones you have don’t have the little cut out that locks it in the cage so if you hit a bump they will go flying. Usually they carry less water than normal bottles so I like to keep a platypus or some other light bottle in my bag to refill.