Max I've got two things to say:
1. First a hot take: It's 2025; the Bombadil is a road bike. It is possibly the nicest backroads loaded touring bike ever made. That's what it is. There are much much better dirt bikes than the Bombadil. The Bombadil is one of a kind, possibly never to be matched, but it's a road bike. It's an incredible bike, a valuable bike, and a very hard bike to replace, but it's a road bike. An overbuilt and beautiful road bike. Categories get blurred, but we could call it an all-road bike, or a country bike, but it is not a mountain bike, or even a hillibike. 2. Riding on SOFT anything requires WIDE tires, IMO. Running truly WIDE tires requires disc brakes. That's just the way things work. Whether it's a Tanglefoot or a La Cabra, or something else, a drop bar bike for soft stuff is simply not a Rivendell. There are lots of great bikes out there to do that. If somebody would sell me back my ORANGE powder coated 56cm Bombadil, I would set it up as my loaded touring bike. My search through the list tells me that Max's Bombadil is a 60cm, so I'm not going to make an offer on it. Bill Lindsay El Cerrito CA On Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 9:50:18 AM UTC-7 maxcr wrote: > Hi Bunch, > > Can you please talk me out of my latest crazy idea. As the title says, I'm > considering parting ways with my 2TT blue Bombadil to free up funds and > space for a Tanglefoot Moonshiner. > > As always, I feel like I have too many bikes and too many projects for my > lifestyle and available time. Yet, I find myself looking at bikes and > wondering if they would be a better fit for my stable and whether I should > give them a try (as an aside I just acquired a NOS Quickbeam prototype > built by Curt Goodrich and painted by Joe Bell in a deep cobalt blue which > I need to build - why do I keep doing this?). > > Back to MTB: The logic is as follows: as beautiful and elusive as the > Bombadil is, it is very similar to my Hunqapilar in terms of capabilities. > They are both beautiful in their own right, but they are comparable frames. > For whatever reason, I'm in love with the Hunqa, it's my most comfortable > bike and don't have any plans to sell it so it's the Bomba that might go to > the chopping block. Now, the Moonshiner is described as a bike for 'super > chunky ATV trails'. To be honest, I don't go out to the mountains in > Vermont (or anywhere else) that often, but I am sometimes tempted by the > rides organized by Analog Cycles and I feel like might end up underbiking > with my 2.1" Thunderburts on the Hunqa. > > This might be heresy for this group, since the moonshiner would have more > modern components, disc brakes and 3" tires. I don't have much experience > with any of these new fancy looking parts, but for context I'm looking at > this: > https://analogcycles.com/products/tanglefoot-moonshiner-large-demo-sram-gx-rival-12-speed > > (another cool alternative would be a Jones spaceframe) > > The biggest con to this whole endeavor is that if I sell the Bomba, it's > unlikely that I could replace it later since they just don't come up for > sale ever and I don't want to regret letting it go. > > What do you all think? > > Thanks > Max > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/7d5730aa-5ed2-4eb9-8df6-0734793256a5n%40googlegroups.com.
