Trans America bike journey

This post starts a new segment about my upcoming trans America bike trip in May. Firstly though, I'll need to transform my '08 Gary Fisher 'Big Sur' hardtail mountain bike into a touring machine. I see that a lot of people out there have questions as to how to retrofit mountain bikes with the proper equipment for touring, so I'm going to do it here and show you how.

One less car

This is a great bike already. I put well over 1000 miles on it just this summer doing mountain bike patrol on the Virginia Creeper Trail for the US Forest service as an EMT. The componentry is great, but I'd like to put drop bars on it for more hand positions. This in turn means that I'll have to switch my hydraulic juicy 5 brakes out with a mechanical road set and road levers that fit my new bars. The rack is made by Old Man Mountain, a small company out of California that makes bombproof racks, but specializes in racks for hardtails with disk brakes and even rear suspension. I have the "Red Rock" model for about a year now, and I've been very pleased with it.