The bike

I will be riding a Specialized Roubaix Elite. The bike is not quite two years old and has taken me through two cycling tours totaling about 3000 miles. I have trained another 7000 miles on it. I love this bike! It weighs approximately 19 pounds before I started adding stuff to it. Filling the water bottles is 3 pounds. The aero bars and the under-seat saddle bag add a couple of more pounds. I do not use aero bars while training at home, but find them useful on tours when riding an average of 80 miles per day requires other positions for the hands.

I am using tire liners for this tour to cut down on the number of flat tires. We will see how it works. Most flat tires are on the interstate where riders pick up little wires from radial tires that have disintegrated on the road. I had 15 flats on my last trip across America and 13 of them were on the interstate. We ride about 250 miles on the interstate. That might be surprising to some, but it is legal when that is the only road in the area to travel on as is the case through the southwestern desert. The downside of the tire liners is that it does slow the bike some. I will likely make up for it by not changing flat tires. At least, that is the plan.

Tom