NickGM

👆 100%. I'm all for drawing a line in the sand and leaving people's personal lives out of this.

Turn your back for one second and your prune juice has been spiked.

Makes one wonder how good Coppi's palmares would have been if he didn't have 4 of his best years take out by WW2. In the 4 years immediately after the war he was untouchable.

A few months ago I got a puncture (in my car, not bike) at the top of Swaartberg pass in the evening. I change to the spare, drove back down to Prince Albert and grabbed a beer at the lazy lizzard (I think that's it's name). The next morning I drove to some tyre replacement spot off the main road. It was about 7:45am and the mechanic said "I've been expecting you". I asked how on earth that could be true and he said he cycled past my car the previous evening while I was parked at the Lizzard and saw I had a replacement wheel. Within 15 minutes he had fixed the puncture, put the old wheel on and charged me something like R90. I felt like I was robbing them so I bought some home-made rusks while I was there. I was expecting to have to limp along to oudtshoorn to a tiger wheel and tire and wait around a few hours, but instead I was back on the porch of my BnB by 8:15am, dunking a rusk in my coffee and admiring my car's 4 matching wheels. On another evening, a few years ago, I was at one of the nice restaurants on the main road. I heard a rather difficult overseas visitor at the table next to me ask for "Baked Beans on Toast - because that's just what I feel like". It wasn't on the menu and I could hear the stress in the waiter's voice, but a few minutes later I saw someone from the kitchen staff run out into the night and return a bit later, presumably with baked beans because the guy got his wish. I returned to the same restaurant on the more recent trip and, low-and-behold, they had added Baked Beans on Toast to the Dinner Menu. So if you want people to stop moving there you must stop being so flippin nice! Or maybe time to adopt the "Montana" approach after everyone fell in love with movies like "Legends of The Fall" and "A river runs through it":

By no means an expert, but this is my experience: Geom: a traditional tourer will have longer chainstays. This makes more space for big panniers and gives a longer wheel base. They often have a lower BB too for stability. See the link to the surly bike further down. 460mm chainstays. It feels like driving a hearse. Material: steel is good for a number of reasons. I'm not sure I buy the whole "suppleness" thing but more importantly steel has very good fatigue properties relative to alu, and can be welded in the middle of nowhere without specialist skills. Gear range: normally traditional tourers have a bigger gear range, with 3x10 mtb group sets (or rohloff hubs) being popular. Whatever the case, if you are touring for months with heavy luggage and going through the mountains, then you need a better granny gear than most gravel bikes provide. A lot of it is semantics. You can "tour" on anything you want and you can "bikepack" on anything you want. But when people say "touring bike" most of the time they mean this (heavy load with panniers and sluggish steel bikes): https://surlybikes.com/bikes/legacy/long_haul_trucker And when they say "bikepacking" they mean this (lighter load with framebags and gravel bikes or mtbs): https://bikepacking.com/bikepacking-101/ Forum moderators on reddit will move your post from /biketouring to /bikepacking if you are only traveling with framebags and not panniers. I've seen it happen.

I was faced with the same issue a 2 years back. There are many international options, but not many available here. In the end I ordered a fuji touring disc off chain reaction cycles. I got it shipped here. The rand was a bit stronger than it is now and after shipping, tax and duties it came in under R30K. It was a fantastic bike and could handle a full load for a 3 month trans-continental trip without any issues. I'm not sure those bikes are still for sale though. Fewer and fewer companies make genuine touring bikes these days, which is a pity. On my trip only 5% of the other riders I saw had bikepacking setups. Bikepacking/gravel bikes have their place, but for comfortable long distance touring they are not the right tool for the job. So I would try https://www.cycletouring.co.za/ as recommended, the gent there (Grant I think his name is) is really helpful and he does stock those Vsf Fahrradmanufaktur bikes which are very popular for touring in Europe. Another option is finding an early 90s era MTB with no front suspension. Some of the very first specialized stumpjumpers are famous for making good touring bikes. Otherwise you may as well buy there as you suggested. Where is "there", btw?

Would also like to know a bit more. Enjoyed the pics so far, thanks.

To answer your first question, yes. You missed about 10 different people predicting this very post. I'm not saying anything you've said is wrong, in fact I completely agree with you and would like someone to explain it in a way that isn't "It costs that much because people are buying them at that price". But I still spat my tea out when I saw your post. Man this thread has doubled back on itself so many times it is beginning to bend space and time.

I couldn't care for the expensive bike banter but as you know, I love a good 90s movie or music reference. Double points on this one, a ripper. Celine and Peabo at their best.

Were they? I remember a few people on MTBs but the only nastiness I experienced the whole day was having to pedal down chappies harder than I had to pedal up it. Luckily the wind was there to dry my quiet tears.

I rode in 1F and after the first half hour we were joined by a chap from 6C. He must have had great legs yesterday!

There it is. @Phillippe Coetzee I got my first road bike about 7 years ago but before that rode MTB a lot and was fairly fit. I just didn't understand how my friends (who were on the same level as me) could go out and ride weekend races at average speeds > 35kph and when I did my little solo franschoek road ride (75km) on sundays I would be happy if I could average over 28kph. I didn't understand how it was possible (which I think is where your head is at now). But I did my first few races and my seeding got better. After about 4 races I was riding in 1A and I remember after the first hour of riding I looked down at my garmin for the first time and saw that we'd ridden 37km already. We did that whole 100km route at 36.5kph and I didn't actually feel that tired. It was a huge WTF moment. Had I gotten much better? No, not really. I was still riding solo to franschoek at an average of 28kph. Getting to the point where you can join a fast group does take a lot of work obviously. You need to be fit and you need to climb up the seedings. Riding > 200km per week, intervals, being light (ie: diet) - all very important. But my point is, riding in a fast bunch added another 8-9kph for free. Disclaimer: my best is 3:11 but I seem to pick the wettest windiest CTCTs to give it my best go, and also I'm just not that strong of a roadie! The point remains though.

I have rollers and an indoor trainer (Wahoo Kickr). Rollers are great but they will never give you a hard workout. They are good for recovery, loosening up your legs, improving your pedal stroke and improving your balance. And burning a few calories. I really like mine, but without much in the way of resistance they don't really get your heart rate up too high and probably haven't added many watts to my legs. They are also cheap and robust, and pack away nicely under your bed/in your cupbard/etc. But... you can't ride on one with mtb tires. You will need slick tyres. The Kicker core is a bit beyond your budget. But for winter and riding in the week when the roads outside are too busy, it has been a game changer. I've drunk the cool aide, joined zwift and follow training programs on there. I really enjoy it. I'm sure there are second hand options out there for resistance type indoor trainers within your budget, I think that style are called "wheel on" trainers. I don't know much about them, so I'll leave that up to somebody else.

That's what you say, but the reality here is that you never gave up, and never let us down....

Just catching up on this. Wow. Sorry boet, I hope the recovery goes well.

If the problem persists (despite exercises), go and see a Biokineticist. I had lower back pain that stopped me from riding longer than a few minutes. And I wasn't new to riding. It just slowly got worse. 3 sessions with a biokineticist fixed it. Every injury and problem is different but I'm saying this because, while core exercises are great, in my case before any of that begun I categorically needed somebody to see which part of the "machine" was at fault, so that we could start sending signals to it again and strengthen it up. And I needed that same person to watch and reinforce these new movements once I'd started to get them right. In my case I wasn't pivoting correctly about my hips and the muscles (and signals to those muscles) were just not firing. It didn't take the bio long to figure it out and retrain everything to work the right way. That was 4 years ago and I've been pain free since then. This is obviously just my opinion based on my own history. I'm just suggesting this as an option if you find exercises are not helping. They are free so try them first. But no amount of planking would have fixed my issue.

I've watched a number of his videos over the years, so was surprised to see this one pop up: I wonder if he took the time to meet the legend that is @Prince Albert Cycles

You should call your Harley "Dog". It's a cool name for a motorbike and I like symmetry.

And unlike woolies stuff, a banana comes in recyclable "packaging"

SOMA frames imported by David Malan via his company https://everydaycyclesupplyco.com Fantastic to deal with, but it's a boutique brand and the Rand:Dollar being what it is makes prices steep. I owned the wolverine frame and it was a joy to ride.

Oh right... because they tighten around your shoe like a boa constrictor! Geez that took me some time. Sorry. Don't mind me.

There are options though:

Thanks for this info. Please keep us updated if you find out anything more, as this is a very popular road for road and mtb riders.

This is the spot where my incident happened: Not surprising, it's where there is a little path and where the barrier ends. I've posted about my experience a few pages back on this thread; it was pretty disorganized and opportunistic. No weapons involved and may have just been some tikkop trying to scare me. But I have now heard of two more serious incidents at the exact same location. I still see loads of people cycling over the pass (both in real life and strava). For now I don't think I'd ride over there solo until it calms down, but that's just me. In the long term I can't see it becoming a real hotspot though, that road is just too busy.

That's exactly the place. Thanks for the notification. Bit of a bummer that my main route out of town is a bit of a no-go for now. Confiscating the bike is great for the owner but an incident like this also happens once a month now.