some responses to Steve Maas's post are indicated by ####...
The summer is drifting to a close, I haven't had a vacation yet (work, work, work: ain't I noble?!) and I'm starting to get an urge to do some touring. Maybe the California gold country or, perhaps, the Oregon coast.
So, the question arose: has anyone done any touring on vintage lightweight bikes? If so, it brings up a number of questions that might be fun to discuss:
1. What is the history of touring on older bikes? Did bicycle manufacturers produce products designed for touring, or did people just adapt what they had? If the former, what was available? If the latter, how?
##### Depends. I've owned everything from a built-for-touring with brazed-on pannier carrier OTB from the early 50s, to touring on a long-stay Dawes Double Blue designed for day riding.
2. If you were planning to do a serious tour on a vintage bike, how would you outfit it? Is there a particular frame you would use, or would you modify (ouch!) one? If so, how? What components?
#### I think that the most important accessory is the credit card, a magnificent substitute for 10 kg of camping stuff. In our humble experience in Oregon, in the East, and on RAGBRAI, great bike camping is rare in the US, it usually combines the worst aspects of backpacking (being the beast of burden) with car camping (noise, crowds).
3. Has anyone on the list gone touring in the 50s-70s, or more recently but on pre-1980 bikes?
#### We very much enjoyed hosteling in the early 70s in New England, B&B in a group in the late 80s (on tandem, VT and NH, but that was off-topic tandem). I just did RAGBRAI on 73 or 74 Cinelli SC, but that is fully sag-wagon supported (which is very nice).
4. Is anyone besides me interested in this kind of thing at all? Or do we just discuss racing endlessly?
##### please see notes above on relative worth of the tent and the credit card... :-)
Certainly, there has been some degree of long-distance bicycle travel in the past. The US Bikecentennial in 1976 included coast-to-coast trips by large numbers of people. I also occasionally encounter a story of someone who did an extraordinarily long trip by bicycle at times when it just wasn't the kind of thing people did--for example, a guy in Pakistan who claimed to have biked around the world in the 1950s. (As it turned out, he didn't quite do the whole world--but he did get as far as Saudi Arabia.) There's also the popular book "Miles From Nowhere" by Barbara Savage, which describes a world tour in the 1970s.
As for hardware--I noticed that the Trek 520, a highly respected touring bike, was first produced in 1983. There is one on eBay right now, #3694150617. Nicely made, although not top-of-the-line components; much like the modern version in that respect. Also, a recent eBay auction (#2262121409) was for a 1974 Schwinn Paramount, modified and tastefully updated for touring.
#### I have a 73 Paramount P-15 (first year with Shimano rear), and suspect that it owuld be lovely for a longer trip. Should have taken it to RAGBRAI.
Steve Maas
Long Beach, California, USA