Days 1-21

For the fifth time in 1300 days of our nomadacy, we are lucky to be able to make a lengthy pause at Mom & Dad’s house. And for the second time, we made the stay into a sandwich, with an Amtrak-aided excursion in the middle, to and from Rett’s Dad’s house in New York. Both of these sandwiches were created for our nourishment in anticipation of a lengthy stay on a different continent, last time New Zealand, this time, South America.

But this time we had a secondary motive beyond the primary one of spending quality time with our family: I used the time, workspace, and stable mailing address to perform a major transformation on our bikes. Rett has long been jealous of people with fatter-tired bikes when we’re riding off-pavement, and in anticipation of a significant amount of gravel riding in South America, it was time to make a switch. Unfortunately our current 40mm-wide tires were already close to the widest size that would fit in our frames. Getting entirely new bikes felt like too major of a step, but there was another solution: shrink our wheels.

Our frames would still allow room for the tires to grow wider, the limit was the overall circumference of the wheel+tire. So by getting smaller rims (“650B”, or “27.5-inch”, compared our current “700C” rims), we could mount much taller tires in the same space. Theoretically, at least! The best measurements I could make suggested that 55mm-wide tires would fit, but it’s the sort of thing that you can never be completely sure about until you try it.

Since our self-built existing wheels have been essentially perfect over nearly 20,000 miles of loaded riding, I built the new ones up myself too (unfortunately needing to buy another wheel-truing stand, since my existing one is in our storage unit in Washington). Velocity USA (who made our previous rims) essentially custom-manufactured and direct-shipped our new ones to-order, since their new “Aero” model isn’t really stocked by anyone yet. They’re made from a higher-strength aluminum alloy produced by a company in Arizona, so despite my effort to get parts ordered ahead of Trump’s stupid tariffs, I unintentionally (but proudly) ended up with super-American rims anyway!

The rims and one set of our tires are tubeless-compatible (Schwalbe Marathon Almotion 650x55B; I ordered Marathon Efficiency 650x55Bs as an alternative just in case one model fit differently than the other), and while Rett wanted to go tubeless, I just wasn’t ready to combine the risk of a new, unfamiliar system with all the risks of South America. So we’re currently running with tubes. One annoying effect of the tubless-compatible setup is that the tire beads fit the rims far more tightly, and when seated in place, actually compress the rim inward, decreasing the spoke tension significantly. There is frustratingly-little understanding or agreement in the bike industry on whether the spokes should be tensioned to the ideal level before or after the tire is seated, so I sort of just tried to split the difference, and hope it works out! Our fatter tires then required fatter fenders (65mm, SKS).

Next, following a successful 500-mile test of Shimano’s new CUES drivetrain on Rett’s bike across Mississippi, it was time to make mine match. We now both have the same triple crank (our existing “9-speed” Alivio 40-30-22), and the same CUES 10-speed 11-39t cassette. But while I paired Rett’s CUES cassette/derailleur/chain with a CUES trigger shifter, I kept mine as a Microshift thumb shifter, attached to my beloved Gevenalle brake levers. Microshift doesn’t (yet?) make CUES-compatible shifters, but SRAM 11-speed shifters coincidentally have a cable pull close enough to Shimano CUES, and Microshift makes those. But that cable pull is larger than Shimano’s 9-speed, which means the shifter is physically larger, so I needed to order a new “OM” brake lever from Gevenalle to fit the new shifter. But it works! Somehow when I first tried the SRAM/CUES combo on Rett’s bike, it wasn’t 100% perfect (it was “good enough”, but I wanted “100% perfect” for her, so that’s why I switched her to the CUES trigger shifter). But on my bike it has hit that “100% perfect” target. Of course it has one extra click (11-speed shifter vs. 10-sped cassette), which seems to work better if I adjust it to be at the high (smallest cog) side.

In addition to a million other planned maintenance items (new cables/housing, bar tape, Brooks B-17 saddle for Rett to replace her sagged-out one, etc.), I also got hit with several unplanned items. My headset reminded me that I had needed to tighten its adjustment 10 months ago, and now 4000 miles later the bearings had become pretty rough and sticky. It was a challenge to find what the proper replacement model was for the FSA OEM headset on my Specialized AWOL, but after a bunch of research I guessed correctly with an FSA Impact ordered off eBay.

The barrel-adjuster on my front brake caliper was frozen, and it snapped off when I used a wrench to loosen it. I might have been able to hack in a new barrel-adjuster, but I figured messing around with brakes that I would soon need to slow down 300 lbs. of me+bike in the Andes mountains wasn’t the wisest idea. Luckily a bike shop in Oak Park had a TRP Spyre randomly in their stock (perhaps the only one in the Chicago area), so I was able to replace it (maintaining compatibility across our bikes) shortly before we left for New York.

Upon return, when packing up the bikes, I noticed that the spacers were frozen to the steerer tube on Rett’s fork (due to aluminum-steel galvanic corrosion, and likely water that had filled her stem at one point and run down to the steerer tube). This prevented the fork from being removed from the frame, and while there was currently no need to do so, better to find a way to unlock it in Mom & Dad’s garage rather than a tiny village at 15,000 feet. No amount of Liquid Wrench, etc. seemed to break the spacers free, but the Internet advice (simply hammer down on the top of the steerer tube, with Dad’s help) did the trick.

The upshot was that the bike-rebuild/maintenance was nearly a full-time job for me for the three weeks we were at Mom & Dad’s. That means it was a really good decision to take the train north from Memphis, since I wouldn’t have had nearly the time I needed if we had spent those weeks riding instead. And while the unexpected issues were all a time-consuming pain in the ass, they would have been far more of a pain (and perhaps even risky to our limb and life) if not discovered until we were in Peru.

The last time we did the parent-sandwich, we didn’t bring the bikes with us to New York, since we figured the extra cost and effort wouldn’t be worth it. But this time, it was a requirement to have them with us, so that we could test out and break in what are effectively new bikes. We started with (and the weather cooperated with) riding ourselves to and from the train stations on either side of our overnight train from Chicago to Syracuse.

Day 22

15.1 mi / 12.3 mph / 83 ft. climbing
Home: Amtrak Lake Shore Limited

Days 23-35

21.5 mi / 9.9 mph / 1289 ft. climbing
Home: Ken’s House in Skaneateles

The hilly, misty ride from Syracuse to Skaneateles was an immediate good test, and every ride we did after that provided new challenges, giving us confidence that both our bikes and our bodies would be ready for South America. Initially I hadn’t noticed a substantial difference in feel despite the 40% increase in tire size, but when we were able to ride uphill near-effortlessly on a large-rock gravel access road to a solar installation (which we’d turned down mistakenly), all the work suddenly became worth it. We also tested them out on more “normal” gravel, and even a walking path of muddy wood chips.

On our last big ride, we completed our traditional circuit around Skaneateles Lake. But this time, we finally tried a “short cut” that I never thought we were capable of on our seven previous circuits: from the southern tip of the lakeshore, we headed up Vincent Hill Rd., which converted the 800-foot climb out of the valley from its normal 5-mile distance to a mere 1.5 miles (half on gravel). That makes the average grade 10%, and sections rose up to 17%. And we did it! With all the extra weight of our bags on our bikes too (for only the second time around the lake)! While we’ll still face worse in the Andes, It was a big boost to our confidence going forward.

Day 36

21.2 mi / 11.7 mph / 688 ft. climbing
Home: Amtrak Lake Shore Limited

Days 37-41

15.0 mi / 11.1 mph / 69 ft. climbing
Home: Mom & Dad’s House in Park Ridge

Returning to Chicago, we had a few days to get the bikes (and everything else) packed up and ready for our flight to Peru. On our first trip (of multiple!) to REI, we had lucked into used cardboard bike boxes, brought home squeezed into my parents’ Tesla, for the easiest bike-box acquisition thus far. The new wheels add a significant amount of weight to our bikes, but I was still able to get them both (just!) under the 50lb. weight limit (having a scale was definitely helpful!)

I feel simultaneously ready, and scared shitless!