Oregon Bike Tour: Planning and the bike

Ok, so I've been wanting to go fully loaded touring for a long time now. Thanks to Seth's motivation and supreme need for a real vacation, we planned to bicycle across Oregon to his family's ranch house in Joseph, OR.

Through an amazing amount of procrastination and logistical wizardry, we finalized a semi-thought-through plan of a lot of driving, some wasted days paying for a rental car, getting Danielle out to Joseph (without the bicycling part), getting back to SF, and of course, a lot of biking. To make a long story short, we decided to do the bike ride from Portland to Joseph, mostly along the Columbia River Gorge. A quick google maps search revealed that this trip would be a cool and fast 330 miles. Ummm, maybe a little longer since those are car directions.

I ordered a handful Oregon bicycle maps from the Oregon Department of Transportation. Pretty sweet and useful maps!

Ok, now all I needed was an appropriate bike. My daily commuter might not do the trick:



The 4 inch drop from saddle to bars would certainly give me a highly aerodynamic position, but might it also cause some severe back pain? The one and only gear combination (44x16) is great for my flat commute between home -> work -> Zeitgeist, but even this gear can cause me to run out of breath, slow to a crawl, and eventually start walking my bike when climbing the Valencia St. hill past 21st St! (Pedestrians, I know you're thinking, "There's a hill on Valencia?!?!").

Luckily, I have this habit of starting bike projects and taking my sweet sweet time. I've been working on this Fuji Touring Series III (s/n FL304070) since it was manufactured in 1983.

Ha ha, it didn't actually take 25 years to get this thing rideable; but it did take a full year to get it from this:



to this:



Sweet.

It's almost all original. Oh, except for the wheels, racks, rear derailleur, chain, cassette, brake levers, shifters, saddle, seat post, pedals, handlebar, stem, interrupter levers... What a vintage beaut!