Again, this is for all you bike nerds out there.
(Because I really don’t have anything else to write about at this point, so…)

I sat down recently and took a hard look at the Romic (my bike), my soon-to-be work-horse, which will be acting as the loaded in “Fully Loaded” and will put the tour in “Tourist.” I realized that I needed to be more objective because I really did love the Romic just the way it was, yet I wasn’t really putting enough thought into how the bike would fare outside of Brooklyn, or the U.S., for that matter. I was neglecting to consider the real and likely possibility that I’ll have to fix or replace parts halfway around the world.

When looking for the perfect touring bike — pre-Romic — I did have a few things in mind as far as international travel was concerned, things that fell under the no-hope-of-finding-a- proper-bike-shop column, such as a steel lugged frame that can be welded by a handy tradesman in some small village in Loas, and a cantilever brake system which will allow the use of 26 inch rims, a standard tire size worldwide and available in many widths to accommodate road and off-road applications. All I got when searching for these two things together was a very short list of pricey handmade bikes. I did find a few old steel lugged frames from the 70’s and 80’s with fair price tags but built for the road with caliper brakes and some without braze-ons for a back rack. There were also a number of steel mountain bike frames that would have solved these issues and I was beginning to move in that direction. But I have always planned to stick to the roads, albeit many will be unpaved, so deep down I was hoping for a steel lugged road bike that I could use as a touring hybrid.

And I got lucky! Out of sheer boredom during some downtime at work, I did a search on Craigslist with absolutely zero expectations and, buried deep in the pages, found a lonely post about to expire titled– “Steel lugged Romic road bicycle w/ 650b rims Campy Campy Campy.” The rest is history. Turns out that they were not 650b rim but 26 inch–even better. The Campy thing usually refers to vintage Campangnolo components, which translates as “spendy spendy spendy” but this was a Campangnolo drivetrain that was neither old enough or new enough to be expensive. That said, the seller could have priced it much higher than she did… but I don’t know, no one was interested. Perhaps unsure of the odd rim size, not knowing that you could fit a normal 700cc road wheelset on it. And The Romic sure would look sexy with some 700’s.

So anyway, I’ve made some upgrades! That’s right, The Romic just got a whole lot unsexier. First of all I have chosen the Kalloy Trekking (butterfly) handlebar. I’m using a quill column adapter to change the threaded to a treadless type stem; this makes it easier to detach the bars at the column when packing the bike into a box for air travel. I also replaced the 8 speed drivetrain, based on the indexed 9 speed Shimano bar-end (aka barcon) shifters. I love these old shifters but the new ones are designed to fit at the end of bullhorn road bars or fastened to the downtube. Apparently, a lot of people like them and wish they could mount them to their flat bars, including Paul from Paul Component Engineering, who engineered this cool little mounting platform called Thumbies. I mounted them next to some simple break levers and voilà, problem solved. Next, a new 9 speed derailleur which means a new 9 speed cassette. I went with a Shimano derailleur, but I wanted to keep the beautiful Campagnolo hub plus avoid the trouble of building a wheel. The problem is that Shimano index shifting is not compatible with Campagnolo cassette cog spacing. Again, with some cool engineering, this time from jtek engineering, the problem is solved. They came up with a small ratio changing pulley that adapts different brands of shifters with derailleurs with cassettes called ShiftMate. Later, it turned out I would need to update the rear hub anyhow and having already bought the Campagnolo cassette and the ShiftMate adapter I went with a new Campagnolo hub. It all works perfectly.