For most of us, a bicycle is a dazzling companion in daily life. When you pedal and the bike speeds beneath you; when you lean into a turn, feeling the solid frame beneath you; when you’re sweating and charging up a hill with full abandon—your bike is your most reliable partner. You must really enjoy skipping over potholes with it.
But once you add touring accessories, your bike becomes a different kind of companion. It’s still a bike, but maybe not so flashy anymore. With panniers attached, it looks more like a pack mule. Turns become slower (though the solid feel remains) because you can’t ride as fast. When you want to sprint or climb quickly, it’ll still be happy to join you—as long as you’re not too tired. And you can forget all about hopping over potholes. Though you might miss out on some thrilling experiences, it will stick with you for thousands of kilometers without complaint.
The same bike can have both personalities. A good touring bike can be your laid-back companion around town, as well as your tireless pack horse on long journeys.
If you want to buy a touring bike, you may need to place an order—few shops keep them in stock. And as Murphy’s Law would have it, even if they do have one, it probably won’t be your size.
Here’s a big secret—and I can tell you confidently—that’s why you shouldn’t worry about not being able to test-ride a touring bike: touring bikes actually ride pretty much the same as regular bikes.
Really? You don’t need to worry about things like sluggish handling or poor braking. And touring bikes aren’t hard to control at all. I’ve been road-testing touring bikes for 31 years, and I can tell you—you don’t need to stress too much. Touring bikes generally don’t require special handling skills.
So how do you choose a suitable touring bike? And how can you keep it from gathering dust when you’re not on a long trip?
For riders who don’t want to dive into technical details, here’s a simple answer: find a shop with staff who are always eager to meet customer needs, and buy a real touring bike. These staff members can help you with the technical stuff—they’re usually quite enthusiastic about it. If you like, you can switch to thinner tires so your bike feels more like a racing model. (The shop folks won’t believe this, because they haven’t done the kind of comprehensive testing and field trials I have.)
Mass-produced (i.e., more affordable) bikes include many big-name brands: Surly, Salsa, Cannondale, Fuji, Kona, Rocky Mountain, Novara, Raleigh, and Jamis. Some trendier brands might be a bit pricier, such as Co-Motion, Independent Fabrications, Bruce Gordon, Waterford, and many others.
But if you’re interested in the technical details, then please read on. We’ll go over touring bikes comprehensively, examine their various features, and tell you what to watch out for in each aspect.
What Should a Touring Bike Have?
Let’s start with the full-metal frame of a touring bike. Many of your friends might buy carbon bikes because they don’t go on long trips. But you’re different.
Your bike needs to withstand scratches from luggage and the bumps of the road. If your bike is made of steel, aluminum, or titanium, you don’t have to worry about scratches. But with a carbon frame, you’ll need to be extra careful, constantly dealing with terms like crack propagation and stress analysis.
Maybe someday someone will make a carbon frame that’s truly ideal for touring, but so far I haven’t seen a successful example.
But here’s something that might cheer you up a bit: the lightness of carbon frames is often exaggerated. A good steel touring frame weighs about 4 to 4.5 pounds depending on size and other factors, while an aluminum frame is just half a pound lighter. Carbon frames—if you can find one sturdy enough for touring—might save you another half pound. That difference is about as noticeable as skipping KFC for two weeks—you won’t feel it at all.
Every touring bike I recommend has a metal frame, so I don’t need to list them all individually. But if a shop tries to sell you a carbon hybrid or mountain bike, I strongly advise you to say no.
Next, we need excellent torsional stiffness. While this is mostly determined by the brand’s craftsmanship, since you’re still reading, you might as well learn a bit more.
Torsional stiffness refers to the frame’s ability to resist twisting under load. The luggage you put on a touring bike is much heavier than what racers carry on their bikes. Especially the stuff in your panniers is most likely to cause frame twist. Racing bikes don’t need to carry panniers, so they don’t need high torsional stiffness. But if you actually mount panniers on a lightweight race bike, you might notice it swaying—that’s because the relatively flexible frame’s natural frequency has been excited.
A good touring bike can be your long-term travel companion
The most effective way to prevent swaying is to have a large, steep top tube. For example, Cannondale’s oversized top tube is designed to be fairly steep, giving it excellent anti-sway performance. The steel frame of the Co-Motion Americano has a 1.25-inch top tube, which can also handle the job well. Many other steel frames on the market have 1.125-inch top tubes, which is generally fine. Pre-1990 frames usually had only 1-inch top tubes, and their sway issues were quite obvious. But newer models have solved this problem.