26" tour tires -- available/future availability

[Houtsg]

Looking at a new Touring bike and am very interested in the Co-Motion Pangea for many reasons: tire clearance, common size w/other bikes and family member's bikes, should be rugged enough for the singletrack near my home.  Only concern for me is the range of good tires and future availability thereof.   Seems like Continental, Vittoria, and Schwalbe have a shrinking range of 26ers.   Do yiu 26" riders agree w/my perception, or am I worrying about a non-issue?  Any other reasons not to go 26"?

[pptouring]

I don't think there is a shortage of 26" tires. There may not be a large selection of "Touring" type 26" tires, but there are plenty of 26" tires out there that would work. When you say single track, what kind of single track? The Pangea is a great bike; however, it's not a MTB, so it's not going to carve up single track like a XC MTB.

Why the Pangea? What type of touring are you planning? I'm not trying to be nosey, but maybe I can help you decide.

Disclaimer: We own 2 Pangea Rohloff and 2 Nor'Wester Tours (now called Cascadia) bikes. The Pangeas are fairly new (since June), so we haven't had a chance to go fully loaded yet; however, we have done several overnighters with them. The Nor'Wester Tours have seen 3 European trips (Germany, Slovakia, Czech, Poland, Romania, Hungary, & Austria), many overnighters here in Florida, and thousands of commuting miles.

Have you looked at the Divide?

[Houtsg]

Why the Pangea? What type of touring are you planning? I'm not trying to be nosey, but maybe I can help you decide.



Have you looked at the Divide?

The singletrack around my part of the midwest is pretty tame in terms of technical: very little rock, few dropoffs/log crossings.  Want to be able to ride it, but not looking to "shred" or whatever the latest term is for more extreme mtb'ing...  As far as touring goes, the sky is the limit in the year's ahead.  Immediately, it will be S240s, and likely the Badlands of North/South Dakota next year.  Want to ride some/all of the GDMBR.  And of course, there's plenty of backroad highway to explore in the Midwest.  I have looked at the divide, but I'm not really thrilled with the geometry and how it would be affected when I ran a smaller tire.  Ultimately, the 26" wheel is a draw for me due to family member's 26'ers (we can share spare's {tires/tubes}on a tour, I own 26" mtb's {I can share wheels with myself}, I own/will be owning a couple other 26" wheeled bikes shortly.

By the way, how do you like the Rohloff, so far? 

[Houtsg]

I should have added that this will be the 90% of the time commute/tour/grocery-getter/gravel-grinder/ride-with-a-big-smile/I-believe-in-all-arounder-bikes bike...

[pptouring]

I can relate to having the same/similar equipment as your touring partners and this is the reason we have 2 Pangeas and not 1 Pangea and 1 Divide. :-) My wife fits much better on the Pangea than she does on her NorWester and would have on the Divide. We both have toe overlap on the NorWesters and none on the Pangeas, so this is nice. We each have well over 500 miles on the Pangeas and so far the Rohloff hubs are very nice. Going from 8 to 7 is sometimes a little tricky and gears 1-7 are a little loud, but I've been riding with Chris Kings and I9s for years and they're pretty loud too. If it were not for the fact that you want to have similar equipment, I'd suggest you take a look at the Americano or Cascadia for the type of riding you plan on doing. We've taken our NorWesters Tours on some pretty brutal terrain fully loaded and they handled nicely. The main reason for going with the Pangea is because we are looking at a round the world tour (fingers crossed) and we've discovered that once you leave the States and Western Europe, the roads (if you can call them that) are bad, so having larger/fatter tires should make the ride nicer. Anyway if you'd like to chat more please shoot me an email and I'll forward you my phone number.

ron