With apologies to native Iowans and RAGBRAI'rs...western Iowa's just not a very exciting place to ride a bicycle. Maybe it is in reality, but spending so much time enjoying the great cycling in Italy makes coming back here and getting the bike out rather boring.
But there are a lot of dirt roads around here so Larry's been trying to keep things fresh and interesting by riding on some of them. EROICA it ain't...but there's some pretty scenery out there in places. And as you might guess, not much traffic, though there's never much traffic in western Iowa!
These roads might be more challenging with bici d'epoca but since our bikes for EROICA CA 2017 are still works in-progress, Larry dragged out his old LeMond Poprad 'cross bike instead.
This bike's gotta be more than 15 years old, purchased locally back when LeMond bikes were made by those people in Wisconsin who backed BigTex. Reynolds steel tubing tig-welded in LeMond's classic long top-tube and relaxed seat tube design. All the components are pretty much the same Campagnolo triple stuff as our road bikes with the exception of wheels, tires and brakes.
This bike's been mostly a winter bike, setup with road tires and fenders but for exploring dirt roads the Campagnolo Khamsin wheels and knobby tires are great! Smooth rolling on the pavement with plenty of cushion and grip on the dirt. I guess one could sort of call this old thing a "gravel bike" way ahead of it's time?
No comments:
Post a Comment