We’re also eying some gravel rides and events, for research purposes, of course :), to understand what this “new” kind of riding means in terms of bicycle tourism and rural communities. There are so many backroads to interesting destinations and classic mixed terrain routes from Portland that we haven’t really explored yet. We plan to experiment with a rackless softbag/bikepacking system on the Warbirds for mixed terrain, multi-day tours.

They are a better fit with our preference for trips that originate from our doorstep. Fatbiking and bikepacking have exploded onto the scene, but since we choose to be car free in Portland, getting out to where those bikes really come to their own means a lot of pavement riding or navigating a Rube Goldberg puzzle of light rail and regional buses. We’ve also started doing more road rides and venturing into gravel riding. While not quite ultra light, we’ve learned to pare down quite a bit! Check out our Gravel Getaway story.

Many will remember that we started with traditional fully loaded touring rigs, segued into lighter multi-modal touring with Bromptons, and for the last 3 years have been doing shorter trips with less overall gear on our Vayas.

To paraphrase much wiser men/women than I: mutability is the only constant. Over the years, our interests and style of riding has changed over time. The Warbirds are Salsa’s dedicated gravel racer and for some readers will seem like an unlikely departure for us (it doesn’t even have fender mounts!). This weekend, we added two new bikes to the flock – Salsa Warbirds. The simultaneously familiar and strange feeling of throwing a leg over a new bike and pedaling it home for the first time. There is nothing quite like new bike day, is there? The hand wringing anticipation as you wait for the call from the bike shop that your bike is ready to go home with you.

Salsa warbird