I found a great touring bike and figured I'd share.
Here's the story...
I ordered a 06 Rocky Mountain Sherpa, sight unseen for my wife's birthday. I'd looked at everything out there and this bike seemed way ahead of the rest for the money. If you cruise over to bikes.combikes.comOpen ↗ you can take a look a the specs. Highlights are Deore and 105 level components. It retails for $1,400 USD and I was planning to pay that but the 07s are on the horizon and I caught this year's bike (virtually the same as 07) for a remarkable $1,000, and that's from an authorized dealer which keeps the *lifetime warranty on the frame* in place.
The bike came in today and here's a closer look than the Rocky Mountain web page gives you.
After putting this thing together and taking it for a short ride I'd have to sum things up by saying... AWESOME! 😄
These photos show the bike completely stock except for the saddle, which I changed out to one that Nancy has used in the past. I also pulled three stickers off the frame. One is the big green sticky that indicates the the frame is hand built with Reynolds 853 throughout. It was BIG and clashed with the frame color. The other two stickers were of the standard warning variety. Before long the bike will have a Brooks B17 or Champion Flyer like the rest of our tourers.
Since I'd never seen one of these in person, there were some surprises in store for me.
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Wow, a chain hanger. Every touring bike should have one. Well, it wouldn't hurt anyway.
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Rats, a disc brake mount we'll never use. Great paint job!
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No mounting problems for a rack that I could imagine though.
If I'm guessing right, the cable hanger for the rear brake has the added bonus of being a brake run-out adjuster.
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Oh hey, would you look at that! And it even came with the spokes for crying out loud.
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All kinds of room for wide tires and fenders here.
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Same holds true at the brake bridge. Oh and those are Shimano pedals that Nancy will actually be able to use for touring.
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More tire and fender clearance.
Other side with the bottle generator tab.
Last nice touch I can share with you photographically is this: pbase.com71595153.jpgOpen ↗ If your nice hand built wheels go all wacky on you right away then you know who blame it on. The builders autograph their work.
The only thing I'm not crazy about on the Sherpa is the road triple. That's easy enough to fix inexpensively but I wondered if RM could be persuaded to hook the 08s up with a 4x-3x-2x crankset so I called them. After all, someone was able to make Cannondale come around on their T Series tourers. I spoke to Rob at RM and he was very interested to what I had to say. The 07s are a done deal but if they hear enough about this, they'll likely do something about it for 08.
I'm not sure why I hadn't heard much about the Sherpa before. I wouldn't dream of buying a Trek 520 over one of these. It's not to say anything bad about the Trek; it's just that the Sherpa is too good for *me* to pass up.
This hand-built piece of work seems like it was dreamed up by a bunch of experienced tourers for themselves. I'm thinking about selling a bike or two to make room for a RM Sherpa of my own.
Add this one to the list of bikes worth considering.
Cheers