Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Morphine lives again


Well, the time has come for me to get a touring bike together. The first question was what kind of bike do I want for this? It has to be tough and trail worthy, with plenty of cargo. The only logical choice was an extracycle. It extends the bike, and has a weight rating of two hundred pounds. The next question was what frame do I use? First, I tried bolting up to my Paradox. I was questioning it while bolting up because I was going to miss this bike. It rides amazingly well, I've jumped it, spun it, dropped off things on it and had a great time doing it. It felt like paralyzing a good friend. When I'd figured out all the little problems, it turned out the bottom bracket was far too close to the ground.

So, in the end, the Morphine from Banshee's days of yore came to be the best choice. I mean, this frame has been on the wall since my Amp showed up. It was time for a rebirth, a renescance of burly bikedome. So now I have a very practical xtracycle. It's the F-350 of long bikes.

So I got it together. The next day I went for a little twenty five mile ride to see how it felt. I threw on a little weight, my rain gear, some tools, a few bottles of water and a few cans of beer. I went to Carbondale, pushed hard here and there, broke a sweat but nothing went wrong with the bike. I like to think of it as a testament to the great bikes Banshee has always built.