EPISODE 54
How to Choose a Bicycle for Touring and Bikepacking
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the vast array of choices when selecting a bicycle for touring or bikepacking, this episode offers essential guidance. In this lively discussion with Manuel Schürholz, co-founder of Bombtrack Bicycle Company, we systematically break down the confusing world of touring and bikepacking setups. You will gain valuable insights into choosing the right frame material, with a detailed look at why steel often remains the top choice for overall durability and remote repairability. The conversation explores critical components, including the practical benefits of tubeless tires, 1x versus 2x gearing options, and the undeniable importance of a proper professional bike fit for long-distance comfort. Plus, stick around to hear Manuel’s unbelievable origin story, from being a spectacularly unsuccessful mountain bike racer, to getting a stress-induced “ear attack” while managing German hip-hop artists, to accidentally creating an iconic bicycle brand. By the end of the episode, we hope that you’ll have gained a clearer understanding of the bicycle selection process and will be inspired to piece together your ideal setup.
Episode Transcript
Manuel: I think before diving into bicycles, just be aware of what your approach to bicycle touring would be. What’s your plan with touring? Are you just doing day tours in your local area or are you planning having, like, a big trip in a remote area? I think that’s the best basics to decide for a certain style of bike. And once you decided on that certain style of bike, you need to think further about the specifications of that bike.
Gabriel: You just heard Manuel Schürholz share his guiding principles for bicycle selection. The first and most important step in choosing a bicycle for touring or bikepacking is identifying the characteristics of your typical trips in terms of duration, location, and terrain. Deciding if you will be riding mostly on paved roads or primarily gravel roads and rugged backcountry trails will determine whether you need a touring bike, a gravel bike, or in some cases even a mountain bike. The second step, according to Manuel, is to dive deeper into the specifications, such as frame material, components, and of course the price tag. In today’s educational episode, Manuel walks us through the considerations to help you select the bicycle travel setup that is right for you. As a bonus, we’ll also learn about Manuel’s own evolution in the field, from very slow mountain bike racer to bikepacking enthusiast and co-founder of the highly respected Bombtrack Bicycle Company. So, if choosing a bicycle is not enough and you feel the need to also design your own and start a company around it, just do what Manuel did.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello bicycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to a different sort of episode of the Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. From the 2025 listener survey, I got a suggestion to expand the content of the podcast from pure storytelling to discussing topics that might be of interest to the community. One very relevant topic is how to choose a bicycle for bikepacking or touring. It’s a question that seems very simple. However, when you look deeper, you can instead easily fall into the proverbial rabbit hole and become completely overwhelmed by the huge number of possibilities. To help you, the listener, find the bikepacking or touring bike that is right for you, I am pleased to have with me today Manuel Schürholz, co-founder of Bombtrack Bicycle Company in Köln, or Cologne, Germany. Manuel, thank you for making time in your busy schedule to be a guest on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Manuel: Hey Gabriel, good morning and thanks for having me. Very nice. Finally we made it. We tried it for a long time already.
Gabriel: We made it.
Manuel: Yes, we made it.
Gabriel: I’d like to start off with a couple of basic definitions, because I think they are fundamental in helping a listener to find the right bicycle. So first of all, how would you define bikepacking versus bicycle touring?
Manuel: In the meanwhile, the term bikepacking, in my opinion, has become pretty diverse because there are hundreds of ways to go for a bike tour or for bikepacking, from credit card packing to having a tent or a baby bag. In general, personally, I think there’s not a big difference in between bicycle touring and bikepacking. It’s just that the term bikepacking took over, in my opinion, because even if you steer it to hostels in the evening time or something, you still have enough luggage with you, no matter if you’re a tourer or if you’re a bikepacker. In that sense, I would say it’s pretty similar. It’s just either you go the old-school style or you go the new-school style. Those bags attached to frames in general took over from those panniers that used to be very present, let’s say 15 years ago or 20 years ago. And still are of course, still are of course, because the use is still justified. It’s depending if you go on-road or off-road and so you have to choose your setup.
Gabriel: Even though you say that they’re very similar, you have mentioned a couple of key distinctions that come up when people try to differentiate the two. The reason why I started with this definition is I do think it affects the kind of bicycle that you would then use. So one thing you mentioned is on-road versus off-road. And I think generally people associate bicycle touring more with on-road and bikepacking more with off-road.
Manuel: And in general, I think it’s a matter of your state of mind. Everybody has a different approach to touring, bikepacking or just traveling by bike, I would call it. Some people are more after people in its culture. They even want to join the road or they want to make distance. Other feel better in remote areas, mountainous areas where you have off-road, you have nature. It’s also like a different approach to bicycle touring for everyone that’s the most ideal setup.
Gabriel: So that’s one distinction. And then you also mentioned the way that you carried your luggage. One way that would be you would put racks, either only a rear rack or maybe also a front rack, and then you would hang some bags, called the panniers, on those. Since you called it old-school, I like that. I’m an old-school guy, I’m a bike tourer using this definition. Let’s start off with the bicycles that are more where you decide you’re going to have racks and panniers, and you’re going to stay maybe more on-road. There’s nothing keeping you from riding off-road, but maybe the bike is not specifically made for off-road. What can we say about a bicycle like that?
Manuel: When I started taking a bicycle to somewhere, it was mainly on-road because those mountains weren’t that accessible as they are probably today, I would say. And it was more common to have like racks and panniers. I mean, it’s a long time ago and the mountain bike was just coming up. People started trying using racks and panniers off-road too. As soon as their reach was increasing to mountain areas and that kind of stuff, and they soon realized, OK, it’s not a stable ride, actually, because you have panniers mounted to a rack and it’s heavy going to the right to the left. In the early ’90s, when I did my first tour, either you go with a bicycle on-road or you take a backpack for going off-road to keep that stability, to keep the comfort, to keep the bike under control. So nowadays, there’s still, of course, on-road touring. There’s a lot of on-road touring. And for that, I would say the panniers and the racks are still more than justified because it’s very comfortable on the road.
Gabriel: Versus the new school approach of bikepacking. You are putting your bags directly on the frame somehow and you’re not putting any racks on there.
Manuel: Those bags attached to the frame, they are more, let’s say, integrated into the bike itself. When it comes to performance in any mountain area, if you go switchback, downhill, or something, you don’t really feel the luggage, actually. It’s just a heavy bike, which you definitely feel if you would take a pannier and racks. And in the meanwhile, there are even some bikepacking companies that started off with having just the typical bikepacking bags attached to the frame, but they realized, okay, in certain conditions, like a mixture might even make the most sense. There are some racks that really keep your luggage stable, also in the streamline, not necessarily to the right and left, attached to your rack, but in the middle of your rack. So there’s a lot of options. The whole thing is actually just exploding during the last five years. Probably because of the pandemic. I don’t know, but people, they found out they can’t travel, they can’t fly and went out into nature and they discovered the backyards and they started to appreciate their surroundings, which I’m personally really happy about. If you need like a mental holiday, there’s no need to fly to the Andes. You can also take the Eifel or the Bergischen Land near Cologne, which has a similar effect as soon as you’re alone in nature and camping on the lake. But the typical nature of human being is, I want more, I want further, I want higher mountains. That’s the topic of the e-mountain bikes. People are not satisfied anymore with reaching one peak. They want to have three peaks a day. So they buy an e-mountain bike. You know what I mean?
Gabriel: Yeah, but, oh, gosh. Okay. That’s another philosophical issue.
Manuel: It is. Yeah, true.
Gabriel: Good. Well, let’s dive deeper into some of the factors that somebody might encounter when looking for a bike. And one of the main things I’d like to hear your take on is – and again, there’s no right answer – this is just to try to help people find the setup that’s best for them. As you said, one of the big things is frame material. If you just quickly look around, you’ll see there’s four basic frame materials: Steel, aluminum, carbon and titanium. I’d like to hear what might steer somebody to one of these materials over another.
Manuel: Yeah, it’s also very related to one’s approach when it comes to bicycle touring. I think the most deciding point is where do you go and how do you want to go? Also, what kind of budget you have?
Gabriel: Yeah.
Manuel: That’s another thing. And each of those materials, they have like an advantage and disadvantage. If you want a lightweight thing, which is not sustainable too much, unfortunately, then you’d rather go for carbon, probably. Just very, very roughly said, with carbon, you can imitate like a steel feeling, for example, so you can build the carbon frame, copying the performance of steel just with saving weight at the same time. Depending on the amount of layers you put into a carbon frame, can even create that similar comfort like a steel frame would have. There’s still a downside. As I mentioned already, it’s not too sustainable. It’s not necessarily a frame for a long-term ride, because as soon as you build like a carbon frame, for example, if you want to have the seat stays comfortable, you use less layers than, for example, compared to a down tube or like a top tube. Just that it’s reacting on certain bumps and certain movements, but at the same time, you have like very, very tiny scratches within the layers. So they break after the time, just because of the movement, of the constant movement. Personally, I’m very careful with carbon. If you maintain a carbon frame and if you’re willing to repair a carbon frame after a certain period. One thing that many people don’t know that you can repair a carbon frame, then it’s cool. And it’s also cool for me personally, if you are after a certain performance, if you’re doing bikepacking racing or something similar. And everything is blurred through media. If media tells you carbon is the perfect way to go, then I would say don’t believe it necessarily. Dive into it and compare those materials for your individual use.
Gabriel: I would like to add that although carbon is repairable, it may not be easily repairable anywhere in the world. So if you’re really in remote areas and you have an issue, you might have trouble getting the bike rideable again.
Manuel: Most definitely. And that would have been my next point actually, because I was mainly talking about performance and bikepacking racing. It’s not necessarily your most ideal material, because you might plan journeys in a remote area. Then you might get in trouble as soon as you have some problem with your frame. As you said, it’s not repairable on every corner of the world. I mean, in Germany, you have a few of those repairing stations, but it’s mostly not bikepackers going there. It’s more like road bikers and those guys who do performance riding. If you plan a journey very far ahead somewhere, I would suggest to go for a different material personally, just to be on the safe side. So you have titanium, aluminium, and steel. If you’re talking about aluminium, there’s a certain advantage also the weight. For a bikepacking rig, it might be very stiff. It’s good for performance. The frame actually does not really lose any impact you give with your watts. It’s super light and stiff, but that’s not necessarily what you want when you go to Africa or Kyrgyzstan, because it’s very uncomfortable, even though it’s light, of course, it’s depending on the tire width and tire size. So you can balance everything a little bit if you got an aluminium frame. But once the frame would crack for some reason, it’s another problem. Not everyone can actually weld aluminium. So even if you’re in Africa, also in Asia or wherever, finding an aluminium welder, it’s pretty difficult. Then you have titanium. It’s a budget thing. Titanium is a pretty long-living material. It’s performing pretty well, it’s saving weight and titanium hardly cracks. Yeah, it’s super crazy expensive. But on the other side, it’s the one and only frame. If you maintain it, if you’re careful, you can ride it the whole lifetime. And performance-wise, it’s pretty similar to steel. So if you don’t have the budget, we come to steel. That’s my most preferred material, my personal material when I go for bikepacking, simply because it’s the least compromise, actually, for myself. I’m not too much after having a lightweight frame. And it’s still not too heavy, because you just have one pair of socks too many in your luggage, or you drink too slow and have the third water bottle still filled, it’s all relative.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Manuel: And everything else is pretty ideal because it’s repairable. It’s super comfortable. It’s long-living, even if there’s some rust somewhere. I mean, a lot of people are being scared if they see like a spot of rust or anything. It would still survive. That’s also the most common frame material for bikepacker or bicycle tourers, I would say.
Gabriel: Yeah, and also its ability to carry a load. You talk about extra socks or extra water bottles. Some of the guests are really touring with 50 kilos, 60 kilos. It’s incredible what some people are pushing, and I think steel, it can hold up to this heavy stress.
Manuel: Definitely, definitely it can hold up. Aluminium is so stiff, it definitely breaks earlier than steel would, for example. It’s sign of the times, too, that steel used to be a little bit more affordable, but it’s getting really, really expensive. Same for aluminium. So this kind of budget thing that I just mentioned, also might a little bit become mixed up in the near future because carbon is getting really cheap while aluminium and steel is getting really, really expensive. So I’m not sure where it all will lead to.
Gabriel: That’s a good point. Let’s see, the next consideration is the frame geometry, because of course, there’s things you can do with that. So what are your thoughts about frame geometry?
Manuel: Personally, I like going to the mountains. So I like to climb, I like to descend, I like to be in remote valleys. And that’s my personal preference. And I decided to go for flat bar. I think that’s the most important geometry thing. I just enjoy it much more than I would ever enjoy like a drop bar when going for a tour. Meaning I have more control. I can have a look to the right, to the left, and I’m sitting more upright. When I go for a tour, I usually cycle for 10, 12 or usually, yes. I’m really depending a lot on a little bit of comfort. But there’s other individuals that really like drop bars, like a sporty position. They don’t really like to climb that much. For example, they want to make distance. They want to, I don’t know, reach the North Cape. Drop bars, it’s always more head down, tongue out. So it’s a bit individual. And I can recommend to dive into the topic before you actually buy your bike.
Gabriel: Yeah, so when I was talking about frame geometry, I was thinking a little bit more along the frame itself. Like some bikes have a more aggressive geometry. You’re lower down maybe for racing. Touring bikes tend to maybe have a longer wheel base, a little bit more relaxed. But you went straight to the handlebars, which is interesting. And for touring, one thing that I find is nice is being able to change your hand position. Flat bar is one consideration, but having something like maybe those bar ends, for example, just something to change up the hands if you’re spending 10 or 12 hours riding.
Manuel: Yeah, that’s what I actually have. I mean, just a flat bar wouldn’t be enough to, as you said, that’s completely right. So I have these kind of little steering horns, but mounted to the middle. So it’s not on the outer end, it’s more in the middle. I came actually straight to the handlebar because I think it’s been giving me the biggest impact because I tried everything for years. I even had a drop bar bike with a suspension fork, which is in the meanwhile pretty trendy. But I had it 10 years ago already and I tried it out. And it’s nice, but just the position on the bike, if you, for example, ride through the Dolomites, it’s just nicer on a flat bar.
Gabriel: Right.
Manuel: It’s also about the braking position. If you’re on a descent, let’s say in a mountainous area on a drop bar and your hands are in the drop, then you can imagine it’s a different thing than sitting on the bike upright and having everything under control. In most of the cases, you’re even slower. If you want to go quick, taking the bikepacking races when they came up years ago, like this Atlas Mountain Race, Silk Road Mountain Race, where bikepackers started to race, it kicked off and everyone had like drop bar bikes. In the meanwhile, almost none of them have stale drop bar bikes and they are chasing the speed. If you go for the Atlas Mountain Race, don’t choose a drop bar.
Gabriel: One of the biggest issues that people might have is not having the right fit on the bike, and that will lead to discomfort. You don’t need to be doing the Atlas Mountain Race to be uncomfortable on your bike. You could be along the Rhine and that’s the number one thing to avoid, actually. It’s so important to have a comfortable fit because otherwise, you’re not going to enjoy it, no matter where you are.
Manuel: Definitely, definitely.
Gabriel: So when I think about the comfort, sometimes people don’t adjust the height of their saddle correctly. That could be a problem. Do you have any tips?
Manuel: I mean, that’s the classical bike fitting that you can actually join. It’s possible in every bigger city where you can make a date and they will check everything, not only the saddle height, they will even check the position of your cleats on your shoes. If you go for clipless pedals. I too see some newbies. When it comes to bicycle touring, they have their saddle in most of the cases too low. And once they start cycling, they look like a frog. Usually, if you put the back part of your foot on the pedal, it’s also just roughly said, and the crank is going straight to the ground. It more or less plus minus should be stretched through the whole leg. Just choose your bicycle dealer. Just go to a bike shop and ask for every advice you can get. And they will take care of your saddle positioning too. If you’re very deep into the bikes, you can still consider buying it online and just assembling it yourself. But I don’t know, it wouldn’t be my taste.
Gabriel: I really like your recommendation, if possible, to get onto these fitting machines. It’s really cool. It’s basically a bicycle where the different tubes can be adjusted. You’ll sit on there, and you can get everything set up. And that’s really useful for getting the right fit. And of course, people who are very much into it can then take the numbers generated and have a custom frame made. We haven’t talked about custom frames because… the budget issue. But for people who have a large budget, they can have a frame made to the exact dimensions determined by this fitting bicycle, which is also a cool option.
Manuel: It’s a very nice option. And the budget is even OK, I would say, when it comes to custom bikes. I mean, of course, it’s a little bit more expensive than a serial bike from any bigger manufacturer. But still, I think the whole audience of bikepacking and cycling touring is enthusiastic enough that they wouldn’t buy any cheap serial bike. And it’s also about a certain relation in between bike and rider. And I think it’s very, very worth thinking about a custom frame. But on the other side, in most of the cases, you need to wait for it. You really need to wait for it, because like a custom manufacturer, they can do like ten frames a year, 20 frames maximum.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s right.
Manuel: Yeah, it could happen that for your next trip, bike won’t be ready.
Gabriel: Yeah. You need a long wait time. That’s a good way to introduce the next topic, which is that when you have a custom frame made, you often get to also choose the components that go on that frame. So this is a great way to move into that. So many options with components and we we’re not going to dive into all of it because it’s again overwhelming. But one of the main things that you need to keep track of is the gearing of your bicycle.
Manuel: Yeah, in general, I would say it’s not about the value and the cost about the gearing group set, because even the cheaper group sets, they can be sufficient, and it can be enough for touring. You don’t necessarily need like a Shimano XT group set because an SLX or even lower is doing the job fine, in my opinion. So you can save some money here. You have to think about if you want to have 1x or 2x and both have like an advantage and disadvantage. Weightwise, it’s almost similar if you go for 1x or 2x.
Gabriel: So, just to explain the terms, that’s referring to the number of chainrings.
Manuel: In the front, yeah. The number of chain rings in the front, you go either for two chainrings or for one chainring. If you go for one chainring, you have the similar range. It’s just that you have a much bigger cassette, which is heavy. And in the end, it’s not a weight advantage. It’s more like a maintaining advantage because you don’t have a front derailleur, you don’t have like an additional cable. There’s no need to adjust anything. So it’s much more comfortable to run 1x in front. At the same time, you might be missing the gear in between, depending, because the overall range is similar, meaning the lowest and highest gear are more or less similar. But everything in between is more detailed when it comes to 2x. That’s the main difference where it comes to gearing.
Gabriel: At what point would it be advisable to go for the Rohloff internal gear hub?
Manuel: I like all those shifting hubs, not only Rohloff. I also like the Shimano hubs. They are pretty heavy, all of them. It’s very expensive, but you don’t really need to maintain it. You just assemble it and it’s running for a lifetime. It’s pretty fascinating, actually. But you need a special frame that is actually also recommended or confirmed by Rohloff themselves to run their hubs. The gearing and the range is similar to all of them. So that’s a third option, of course, yeah.
Gabriel: If you are going with a custom frame, it could be made to accommodate this.
Manuel: Definitely.
Gabriel: But also the price tag is high. So I think you need to be fairly serious to warrant a Rohloff or similar internal gear hub.
Manuel: The price tag is definitely high, but it’s a matter of taste. It’s similar with going electronic or mechanical shifting. The most important thing is that the lowest and the highest gear they suit your plans, actually, especially when you’re climbing a lot. Rather take a lighter gear, so-called granny gear, than a too-heavy one, because you have to imagine your bike might become heavy during your tour because you’re carrying more and more food and more and more water and it’s getting steeper and steeper. So rather go too light than too heavy, because downhill and descending, you can just let it roll anyway.
Gabriel: Well, I always say, when in doubt, get more gears.
Manuel: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, perfect.
Gabriel: Good. Then the next thing that kind of fits in there is a discussion about wheels and tires. I guess there, one of the things that has come up is tubeless tires.
Manuel: It’s very, very established and most common, actually, tubeless. Personally, I prefer tubeless over tubes for various reasons, not only the safety reason, also the tire pressure. You can ride lower tire pressures, which is very ideal if you don’t have a suspension fork or if you’re looking for comfort.
Gabriel: Right. This is, of course, for off-road riding.
Manuel: Exactly. Even when I go on-road, I prefer having less pressure on my tires than I would use on-road when not touring. It adds like a certain factor to comfort in any way, on-road or off-road.
Gabriel: I find that fascinating, because traditionally it was always like, oh, you have to have this super high pressure on road bikes. And even that’s being challenged now.
Manuel: It is. That’s what they said for decades. But it’s very simple to understand, actually, because you just have to imagine the picture having a little stone on the road or any not-too-smooth surface. And if it’s like a high-pressure tire, it’s just crashing against that little stone, like a wall, and if it’s like a low pressure, it just eats that little stone and just ride over it. I think that picture might express it pretty easily, to imagine that lower pressure can be even faster than a higher pressure. Another factor why I’m preferring tubeless is the rolling resistance somehow. It’s definitely a different feel if you ride a tube or if you ride tubeless. I’m not sure why, not from a physical point of view, I don’t know, but it’s a huge difference. If you go tubeless, you will feel immediately that it’s like a more smooth ride. It’s lighter, of course, and that was the major point. I never swapped back to tubes, because the feeling is so different riding tubeless than riding tubes.
Gabriel: Have you ever had a problem with a tubeless tire that you couldn’t repair out on the road somewhere?
Manuel: Yeah, I mean, there’s always like a little risk left, of course. I had it once or twice or three times. I think almost in every case, it was the tire’s sidewall. It was just cut by a big rock, and if it’s huge, then the milk cannot really fill the hole.
Gabriel: Seal it.
Manuel: Can just not seal it, yeah. And then you think about what to do. I mean, there are different hacks, so it’s possible, and I made it every time, either with putting, for example, a five-euro thing in between and sticking it in there. If you have like a sewing material, then you can, of course, sew it. In most of the cases, actually, I repaired it and rode to the next village and either bought a new tire or put a tube in, to be honest, but it’s very seldom. The similar problems you face with tubes.
Gabriel: And also, if you gash your sidewall, even if you have an inner tube, the new tube is going to want to stick out where the tire is gashed. So gashing a tire is bad tubeless or tube.
Manuel: Yeah, it’s bad.
Gabriel: Okay, that’s a pretty clear recommendation. This is one of your clearest recommendations so far. Tubeless.
Manuel: Yeah, but it’s still based on my personal preference, yeah?
Gabriel: Sure, sure.
Manuel: Some people often go crazy with tubeless because you have to get familiar with repairing tubeless stuff and all that. It’s different. Yeah, once you’re skilled, it’s not a problem at all. Most of the times, it’s just the first barrier that people say, ah, no, I go for tubes because they don’t really want to take care of how to repair it in an emergency situation.
Gabriel: What about tire width?
Manuel: Yeah, I mean, there’s a big trend at the moment for having wide tires in general, and everybody’s talking about tire clearance at least at the moment on the industry and on the bicycle market, but they’re not talking about the rear ends, for example, about the chainstay lengths because the wider the tire is, the more it affects the geometry of a bike. So it’s not really possible to talk about a certain tire clearance or tire width only, without considering the frame geometry. So the wider the tire gets on the gravel bike, for example, the longer the rear gets, which affects your climbing skills, for example. Also, like a tire wheel size is also another thing because we have 650b, coming, which also affects the bike’s geometry. Yeah, but if the media are talking about tire widths or 32-inch wheel or 650b would be dead or something, don’t believe them. Don’t believe the hype, it’s not true. Yeah, I mean, if you’re 170, there’s no sense for you going for a 32-inch gravel bike, for example, or a bikepacking bike. And similar for a two-meter guy, like a 650b. It’s not really the most ideal thing.
Gabriel: You’re right, it would look pretty funny to have a very small frame with huge wheels on them.
Manuel: That’s what we do at Bombtrack, for example. We adjust the wheel sizes per frame sizes just to have the original geometry, the bike’s geometry scaled down to like an extra small size or small size, because like a 700c or 29er would affect the bike’s geometry too much, including toe overlap and all that kind of stuff that comes along. I’m 192, I have like a Beyond Extra Large, and it’s a perfect fit. It’s really perfect, and I have a long in-seam too, so I have 91 in-seam. Similar with other models, like the Arise Tourer we have, and the Extra Large fits perfectly for my size. You have different models, if you take the Arise, for example, the Extra Large, the steer tube is super, super long. We have variations of that Arise model. We have also like a touring model with light system and racks and stuff. Every of our model has certain characteristics, and the characteristic of the Arise is, for example, it even comes with a steel fork. So that’s a classical, very enthusiastic and typical steel bike with own dropouts, with an own invested cast fork that even passes the mountain bike ISO standard. So this is a pretty, pretty strong bike.
Gabriel: That actually brings up a couple of points that are interesting that we haven’t talked about yet. We talked about the four materials. We have not discussed specifically that there are these kind of mixes where you will have a frame that is steel, but a fork that is carbon, for example. The main benefit is weight savings to have the carbon fork?
Manuel: That’s the main benefit.
Gabriel: Okay. If you want to go for racks, it’s very important that the frame have eyelets that allow you to bolt on the racks in the rear and in the front, potentially. And not all bikes do that. And like we talked about with the more bikepacking setup, the frames may not have these eyelets, and you’re using other means to fasten them. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Manuel: Providing the eyelet is more or less like a standard for anyone who wants to offer like a touring bicycle frame, and that should be definitely included. And it is actually included in most of the cases, I think.
Gabriel: But for example, eyelets in the fork is less common. There are many bikes that don’t provide anything for a front rack.
Manuel: That’s true. That’s true, and that’s also a bit depending on the fork’s material, because putting like a rack on the carbon fork is also very risky. There are hardly any carbon forks out there on the market that actually can carry a rack. We do have one. We just developed one two years ago, and there’s another one from Rodeo Labs, an American company that’s actually following a different concept by providing the same stability and weight-carrying possibility. That might be one reason why it’s so seldom in the front, because eyelets will just break out of a carbon fork. Yeah. And then you can still go for aluminum fork or steel fork. You have to make that aluminum fork that heavy so it’s not breaking, that it’s not really reasonable anymore. You could even go for steel fork then. I think the carbon one, because most of the bikes they are assembled with a carbon fork, you can put a mudguard on there, but very seldom like a front rack.
Gabriel: You would have to have these fork bags that you see that are attached in a different way.
Manuel: Yeah, you can, but still, it’s limited when it comes to the weight. Better just like a sleeping bag or like a drinking bottle. If it’s getting really heavy, it’s getting risky. Even if it’s three mounts and the load is divided onto three stress points, it still is actually very risky. And we also have bikes in our assortment that have like a normal carbon fork in there, not our MGV fork. That’s the name of the fork that can carry weight. But we have like a more affordable bikes and it’s constantly got warranty requests, because people just put a lot of weight on the carbon fork and the eyelets, and they just cheer out. And that’s no warranty, unfortunately.
Gabriel: The last point that I had was regarding the budget. We have seen from other guests that actually you can take any bicycle on a tour, even a long tour. But of course, if you get a super cheap bike, you’re going to have to worry about breakdowns, because the parts are just not going to be able to hold up. And some people are okay dealing with that. They like adventure. They like, I don’t know, that a crank falls off on the road or something like that. There’s something for everybody. Given the budget consideration, and we’ve talked all of these different places where you can spend money, custom frames, a Rohloff hub, titanium. In your opinion, where do you think you get the most bang for the buck, as they say? What would you really want to make sure if you had a certain budget was solid when you’re going, let’s say, on a longer tour and you don’t want to have unexpected breakdowns?
Manuel: I know many people actually that would now mention the tires, and I might be one of them. It’s pretty interesting, but in the end, that’s the most resonating thing you feel when riding that your tires are really stable, rolling, not worn. That’s the thing, actually, you feel more than cheap gearing or, I don’t know. The tires are very important when it comes to touring. It’s more important than you might think, because once a crank fell off, as you mentioned the crank, it can always can happen. You can have a broken spoke, you can have stuff, but it’s really difficult to avoid. But having really shitty tires can just kill all the joy when it comes to touring, in my opinion.
Gabriel: Okay.
Manuel: And I agree, it’s not on the overall cost for a bike. Your bike can also be too expensive. Imagine you go with electronic shifting and these kind of stuff, following certain standards like a T47 bottom bracket or whatever. If you go far away, think about like a mechanical brake, for example, because then you won’t have any problems. You still get down every mountain, can really end up in a disaster if you’re going hydraulic and you don’t know how to repair it on road. We just had it recently that one of our guys, he went to Morocco and he couldn’t repair his bike, because his bike was on a different league than the local bikes. There was no way to repair it anymore. So this can happen as well. Don’t consider the most ideal stuff based on its pricing.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s a great piece of advice. It won’t help you if your bike is not rideable.
Manuel: No, definitely.
Gabriel: Is there any other aspect of bicycle selection that I’ve missed?
Manuel: One thing which I really like and which I think is very interesting as well is this kind of coupler where you can just split a bicycle frame for trips where you take the train or even take the airplane and you have to carry or transport your bike. It’s very expensive, but I really like it. That’s actually in the top tup and the down tube. You can decouple a frame in the middle of it, just fold it somehow, roughly said, and just take it. I think that’s a very interesting thing we might have forgotten during our conversation.
Gabriel: We did forget it, but actually I shouldn’t have forgotten it, because just a couple of episodes ago we had guest Judi Desire who decided to split up her normal touring bike. Earlier we had another guest, Dominic Gill, who had a tandem and for tandems I had always heard of course S&S couplers, that makes sense. But Judi decided to do it on her regular bike and she of course had to find a certified welder who would do it. She also had the Ritchey quick disconnect for the cables to make those work out. After that initial investment, which is substantial, she was very excited about not paying any airline fees because the folded bicycle was within the dimensions, but of course it wasn’t a Brompton. It was a full-size bike once you put it together. So I think that’s an excellent point and yeah, works for tandems and regular bikes.
Manuel: I love it. It’s just expensive.
Gabriel: It is. It is expensive. So yeah, it’s a lot of airline fees when you do the return on investment.
Manuel: I mean when it comes to Bombtrack for example, that’s the thing. I mean we are very enthusiastic and we are bicycle tourists since we actually were born and my partner who’s the second half of the brand, he’s very into brevet and this kind of stuff while I’m doing the backpacking and touring.
Gabriel: A brevet is a long-distance unsupported road cycling event where riders follow a set route and pass through checkpoints within specific time limits. It is not a race, but a personal challenge just to finish. Standard distances are 200, 300, 400, 600 and originated in France in the late 19th century and the term brevet comes from the French word for “certificate.”
Manuel: At a certain point during our career we realized we have so many different touring and bike touring models. As you mentioned before, you can go on a tour with every bike and you can have a similar joy with every bike and we went very deep and down to have offering various kind of bikes when it comes to material, when it comes to a landscape surface and that kind of stuff.
Gabriel: Well, since we’re talking about you, I want to use the remaining minutes to get a little bit about your background. It sounds like you started bicycle touring at about the same time I started, in the early ’90s.
Manuel: I grew up in the Black Forest, which is a mountain range in southern Germany. The period when I grew up there was no real computers or any digital stuff. So I spent most of the time in the woods actually and started cycling pretty early, at the age of 12, 13. I got my first mountain bike and I was just exploring the woods and mountains around me. So that’s how it somehow started, because there was no distraction, there was no digital anything. So I was out. I really had fun with it and very soon I always started racing mountain bike. My background was really mountain biking. At that time it was like racing around oil barrels and that kind of stuff. It was super early. It was 1990, ’89, ’90, ’91, that area and I had so much fun that I even entered the national racing series but I was very bad. At that time there weren’t too many races so I had my team. I had a sponsor which I had swapped every year again because I was always ending up among the last five. I just thought there’s something nice jumping into a van, going to a race somewhere in Bavaria or somewhere. Probably the first signs of the joy of traveling. I don’t know. I was I continued being very bad but I wasn’t a big problem to be honest. And then when I was 16 I did my first cycle tour and I’m still thankful to this day to my parents that they let me go when I was just 16. We were four guys, four friends. We just took off where we were living in the northern part of the Black Forest and just crossed the whole Black Forest through the Westweg. It’s called the Western Way. Then going to Schaffhausen, going to Lake Constance, then into Austria. During that three-week trip we rode until the Lake Garda in Italy and we just let it flow. There was no Komoot. There was no digital maps, nothing. We just rode and slept in any barn and were catched up by any farmer’s place when it was raining. A typical adventure. It was really super good. That was really like a life-changing moment. And then I was a little bit irritated for a certain time and I got even weaker in racing afterwards. And the year after, when I was 17, I took another friend of mine and we did like an Alp crossing from Oberstdorf also to Lake Garda seven days. We did the AW1. I’m not sure if you know that one? It was like the first Alp crossing path that was set up in the early ’90s by Ulrich Stanciu from BIKE Magazine. I had racing clothing on during the seven days and at that time everything was pink and neon yellow and that kind of stuff. But I was actually doing classical touring and we also met some other bicycle tourers, and they were looking at me coming straight from a race somehow. It was really bizarre but after that seven days, that was the situation that completely changed my mind from racing to touring. And since then I think more than half of my holidays ever I did with bikepacking.
Gabriel: That could be a number of people, but going into bicycle manufacture is the next step which how did you get into that?
Manuel: Was a little bit by coincidence.
Gabriel: Accidental?
Manuel: During my lifetime I was very very lucky and happy. I always used to earn my little money with my hobbies and my enthusiastic loves and preferences, which is mainly bikes and music. That’s just my girlfriend on top but…
Gabriel: Oh. Yes.
Manuel: I’m not making my money with my girlfriend.
Gabriel: No, quite the opposite.
Manuel: Yeah, that’s true. Going back to the moment when I reached Lake Garda after my seven-day Alp crossing and deciding not to continue with racing I followed my other friends’ preferences, which was music. And I was very into music as well. I was playing an instrument and I had a little local band and once I decided not to spend my weekends at races but in clubs playing with the band, the whole music thing took over completely. When I finished school I went to Cologne from the Black Forest, and Cologne is a place where Bombtrack is located and where I still am. Yeah and then I had my usual education and scholarship and all that kind of stuff, which was in the music industry.
Gabriel: What kind of music were you playing?
Manuel: I am still playing. I’m playing the guitar. All kinds of music. You always end up at jazz anyway somehow. When it comes to profession, I ended up in the music industry and I worked for a record label so I got all my education and all my, in German you say Ausbildung.
Gabriel: Yeah, like your apprenticeship.
Manuel: Yeah, yeah. As I was the youngest of the whole team, of the whole record label, at that time the hip-hop, the rap music just went to the roof. I was the only guy somehow understanding what those kids were after, because I was that age as well, even though I was in apprenticeship, I was already doing the job as product manager, which is like managing a product, like a CD. And you have to manage that release. And then I was a product manager for various fans and acts like Groove Armada. I’m not sure if you know them? Or Curse, who’s a German rapper. So I managed all those people. Make a long story short, I got an ear attack at a certain point just because the pressure was too high. I had so much budget, I had really over a million budget. I had releases that were actually supposed to went top 10 in the German charts at that time. And it was so much pressure and I really suffered from everything, and I got an ear attack. And that ear attack that actually opened my whole state of mind.
Gabriel: What do you mean an ear attack?
Manuel: There’s like two different versions of having an ear attack. So the one that is pretty known is that tone you hear on a consistent basis, like wheeeee.
Gabriel: Tinnitus.
Manuel: Yeah exactly, tinnitus. The other version of an ear attack is that you lose your balancing stuff, because you have two liquids in your ear. If they melt, you lose everything. You don’t know if you’re standing, sitting, lying. You don’t know anything and you’re just vomiting all the time.
Gabriel: Oh yeah. That’s like Ménière’s disease.
Manuel: Yeah. I mean you feel like being in space. It’s really horrible.
Gabriel: Oh, neither of those are good. Which version did you get?
Manuel: The second one, with the balance.
Gabriel: Oh wow. Oh, that’s terrible.
Manuel: It took some time until they actually found out what it actually is, because I started vomiting and the whole room was turning for days and weeks so it’s really difficult to describe. It went away, after I think two or three months.
Gabriel: That’s a long time.
Manuel: Yeah, yeah. You have to calm down. You have to go somewhere you’re not distracted at all and you have to find your inner peace, inner middle, and just concentrate and just calm down. You can hardly do anything else. I went to the Black Forest and just sat it out, somehow. But the more important thing is that it opened my eyes. I was really like a young career guy, in the early 20s, and with a lot of pressure and I immediately found out that’s not the thing I actually am after. I’m too young for that kind of shit and I’m not born to end up in that capitalistic thing and yeah. So I quit that job afterwards and I started just to concentrate on doing music. So I was touring for years but I was always in need for a second side job. And I had various second side jobs, just to be on the safe side, because you never know what to expect the next season, the artist you are playing for – because I was like a musician for rent – is still successful. And there was one guy I knew for a longer time already, doing BMX bikes. That’s Harry from We The People. I knew he made it to being the biggest BMX brand of the world, and one day he just asked me if I would be interested in establishing and setting up like a little wholesaling business. And I said, “Yeah, I’m always looking for a side job.” And that was 2007 and in the end that’s how I ended up in the bicycle business, because I set up Traffic Distribution, which is like one of the main wholesalers nowadays in Germany for left field and alternative cycling. I left Traffic pretty early and passed it on to a successor just because I found out it’s mainly about buying and selling, and it’s less about bikes. I started working on that vision, Bombtrack, in parallel for the same guy, Harry, a very idealistic guy as well. And he said he likes the idea and, yeah, he just provided some playing money for the beginning, just to test out waters if it would work out. Yeah, and it did. Nowadays I’m still doing a little bit music but that’s my side job, and bike is the main thing.
Gabriel: And what was the idea?
Manuel: The origin was a bit different and it’s also a bit like a coincidence and it wasn’t that planned. As I said, I entered that company which was doing BMX and they had various BMX brands. So they had We The People but they also had like smaller ones with more affordable BMX bikes. And one of them was called Radio, Radio BMX. When I was setting up Traffic, I was also selling our own bikes, the Radio bikes, and it was 2010 when the big trend and hype of fixed gear bikes came up. When I went to Cologne from the Black Forest I also joined like a local team over here, just that I can enter the track, the velodrome, just for cycling after work. I was already very close to track bikes in general. I was fascinated by the minimalism and by the functionality and also by the way it rides and I just loved it.
Gabriel: Okay.
Manuel: Yeah, it just exploded pretty quickly, and there was like a certain niche coming up, which was called fixed freestyle. And people took those track bikes and made tricks on it, like backspins and riding fakie and all that kind of stuff you can do with a fixed gear but you can’t do with a normal bike. And I was just watching to it and then I realized, okay, they all break their frames. The frames are breaking and breaking. Breaking all the time. They are doing stuff with those bikes that those bikes are not intended to do because they come from the velodrome. They come not from trick biking in any way. And I was talking to Harry, the guy I just mentioned, the guy who gave us the money and gave the go and the green light for Bombtrack, and we just saw one bike after another popping up. They weld a gusset into the frame, where it was already very known and established that these gussets, they cause stress points on that certain area and it won’t work. We knew it already and we’re just thinking, hey let’s do one really stable fixed freestyle bike, just to show off how a BMX company would approach that topic. With all the experience Harry had for 10, 15, 20 years already. We just started developing for that little Radio BMX brand, like a black sheep bike, which is not a BMX bike but a fixed freestyle bike.
Gabriel: So it was you and Harry.
Manuel: And another guy. It was Rich, and he was the product designer for the BMX bikes. He left for New Zealand for some years ago. It was Rich, Harry, and me. I had the least input, actually, from a technical point of view. I just started to market that bike and to sell it and that kind of stuff. But it was a pretty small team on point, I would say. And we just released that bike and that bike caused like a huge… I mean there was everywhere. It was in the media, because that sport was not established yet at that point. There was no real brand taking care of that sphere of fixed freestyle. There were just like little custom welders, they tried to do something. The bike was very requested straight from the beginning, so we ordered just for Germany like 50 pieces and they were gone within the day. It’s successful, that kind of scene. In the meanwhile, it’s actually dead, you know. So it was just like a small phase of, I don’t know, three, four, or five years.
Gabriel: That’s fascinating and that means I need to ask about the origin of the name Bombtrack, because Bombtrack has kind of a musical sound to it.
Manuel: Yeah.
Gabriel: It’s actually a song by Rage Against the Machine, which I’m sure you know.
Manuel: The main amount of people actually think the origin is Rage Against the Machine but it isn’t. It’s not the origin, but it was a very welcome second meaning.
Gabriel: And so how did the name Bombtrack come about?
Manuel: That bike was called Radio Bombtrack, and it was called Radio Bombtrack because it’s a track bike. Yeah, the first part of the of the name, a bomb, is actually it’s more, it’s like a more like an urban thing in it, with graffiti bombing because that fixed freestyle used to happen in skate parks and this kind of Bombtrack was more like an attitude thing, riding that skate park with an attitude, and with a track bike and that kind of stuff. That’s how we end up with giving the name to a certain bike. And then we were thinking, okay, we have to tear out that certain model out of Radio BMX, that BMX brand, and just create an own brand around that bike. We released our first all-road, any-road bike, which is a gravel bike today, but that term, gravel bike, didn’t really exist in 2010 yet. Steel with carbon fork. It’s still existing today, it’s the Hook. We were thinking a lot of what bikes to add and all of a sudden at a certain day I remember Harry coming into my office and said, “Hey, we need a name for the brand until tomorrow.” Yeah, we had no better idea than to give the bike model’s name to the brand name, and we decided to go for Bombtrack, at that night. Unfortunately, to be honest, we weren’t that happy about one or two or three years later. At that point we felt very bad. We were thinking, oh damn. Shall we just call it BT? No, there’s GT. Shall we call it just Track? Oh no, there’s Trek with “e.” Then we had BTB. No, there is BLB, which was like our fixed gear friends from London, Brick Lane Bikes. But in the end it’s established. In the meanwhile, people get it and they know we are so left-wing you can hardly be more left than we are.
Gabriel: At the end of the day, the familiarity is what makes people not think about it so much as literally “bomb.” But I must say the word “track” is pretty cool for you because it has the cycling and the musical sides to it. A track is a song on an album and so the word track is brilliant.
Manuel: That’s true. We are very into music. There’s music running all day in our office and we have like our own Spotify playlist. If you google at Spotify for Bombtrack, you’ll find like a playlist with more than 1,000 followers.
Gabriel: The official name of the Spotify playlist is BOMBTRACK RIDES, all in capital letters. It’s a high-energy set that will pump you up no matter where you’re riding. When struggling to complete a better song to listen to than “It Only Hurts When I Breathe” by Cop Shoot Cop?
Manuel: Yeah, yeah. We love music and we are still doing music. It’s a bit different music we listen to, because I mean it’s just Marcellus and me. I was just talking about Rich, the BMX guy who had started the brand with and moved to New Zealand. And Marcellus at that time, he was still studying product design and engineering, and he was already very close to the brand and his background is cycle messenger and he’s the second half since 2015 already. So, long time, 11 years. And we’re just sitting in our office and we just do soundflash all day, because he is way into heavy metal, which I’m not.
Gabriel: Oh wow. Yeah, I don’t think I’d be able to take heavy metal all day, every day.
Manuel: Yeah, no, but it’s pretty funny. There’s always some certain variations that work, mostly the instrumental part of it. As soon as nobody’s screaming, it’s cool.
Gabriel: It’s been so great to both hear about yourself and, yeah, all your insights on bicycles. I know your knowledge goes way deeper, but this is a great intro. I hope the listeners will find this useful.
Manuel: It definitely feels like we just scratched the surface, somehow. But yeah as soon as your listeners are motivated to drive deeper, we reached our goal.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife, Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Manuel: I’m honestly feeling pretty comfortable, as soon as you said you will edit everything. So it’s perfect.