Our bikes!

So, this trip didn't start out as a bike trip.  We weren't quite sure what we were planning on doing, we new we wanted to go to Asia, we more or less decided backpacking would be the easiest way to get around, we hope to volunteer in Nepal for awhile.  But as I started to really plan the trip and started plannign the route (based on a highly scientific process of comparing ticket prices and weather patterns) I started  to realize that I spending a lot of time looking for places that we could cycle and rent bikes. Finally, we just decided that we really wanted to have bikes.  Initlially, our normal touring set-ups.  Then as we started looking into transporting bikes to and fro, we started to consider folding bikes.  We tried some used ones and the few new folding bikes that we could find in Portland, but we really wanted something that was going to be a bit burlier with more gears.  Bruce contacted Tern about some choices there, and after lots of back and forth about exactly what we wanted (do we need a generator hub? Would nine gears be suffcient? How much do we really want to spend?)  We decided to dget the Cadillac of the folding bike world (in our price range!) the Tern S27.  THis bike has all the bells adn whistles.   It has a highly adjustable handlebar that is super comfy. It has a generator hub for both front and rear lights and we added a USB port for charging things. Its got big fatty nice tires that will roll over everything (the are actually Schwalbe Big Apples if you are keeping track of such things).  It has both a front and rear rack that fit our normal Ortlieb bags with a little adjusting.  It's got disc brakes that stop on a dime.  It's also got a lot of cool little engineering pieces that make me think that Tern really ddid thiei homework.  The pump that lives in the seat, the stays on the rack to help keep your bags in place, etc.

So what is the price of all this awesomeness?  This little guy is ..well... not that little.  Its pretty heavy.  Moreso than our normal touring bikes but we decided that the extra bells and whistles that came with this bike are worth the trade off.  We could have gotten a more road-type folding bikee, but I already love how solid this bike feels and how it just has everything already there.  And we are not in a hurry, so we just going to enjoy the (slightly slower) ride...