For road and light trail touring I use my Quickbeam.  For more rugged trails I'm working on a setup for my Monocog or an as yet to be acquired geared MTB.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/14612032@N00/2732803422

There might be some interesting options in stringing together Parks in PA, MD, and VA.  Some friends have done a Caldonia(PA) -> Michaux(PA) -> Frederick Watershed(MD) - > Gambrill(MD) as a one day epic, with only about 15 miles of back road riding to hook them together, and I've thought it would make a good two or three day ride with a little more playtime in each park.  With a little effort and some more road riding you might add Elizabeth Furnace VA and points south (Massanuten [the Ring]? GW Forest?) to the mix, or turn east at Fredneck, MD and hit the Patapsco Valley. There may be other options for a further north start in PA as well, but I'm not familiar with them as much.   Might not be as remote as you are looking for, but who knows.

drjon's blog is here.  The bike he's talking about is here.

I had to wander by your blog to figure out what you were talking about.  Cool.

Do you know if there is a minimum allowable front chainring count(so as to not transfer too much torque into it)?

That is also my question.  I think the photo of the whole group in the manual shows a 33t on one of the cranks.  There is a thread on MTBr about them, and some folks are running 32 fronts.

Thinking, dreaming, lusting.    But probably not in the budget for a long while.  I'll probably just put an Alfine hub on the Monocog and get some good bags and upgrade my camping equipment instead.

It's always been sitting in the back of my mind as something I'd like to do.  But I'd probably do it on a motorcycle.  If you dig around on Advrider (do a search on TAT) you can probably find some gps tracks of portions of the route.  From what I recall it does a lot of twists and turns to keep things on dirt east of the Mississippi. That might make it sort of impractical for bikes unless you have a lot of time.

I'm John G here and on some forums, Hjalti on MTBr, a few others and my blog. I live, work and ride 95% in Frederick County, Maryland, home to some of the best road and mountain bike riding on the east coast.  I've been documenting riding every road in the county on a fixed gear.

46yo and a long time tourist since 1972, sometime mountain biker since 1988.  Since work and family tend to limit my time for epic journeys, I find a lot of my fun in overnighters or three day trips, and since geography limits my trail choices, I love stringing together multi surface adventures.  I'm having a good time moving from the 'fully loaded' mindset to a much lighter gear setup on my trips.

I'm salivating over the Salsa Fargo and hope to get one next spring.

Cheers!

Sounds good to me.  Might be just as easy to have a sticky thread instead of a whole forum.  That might depend on the traffic this site ends up with.

I like the two sided velcro straps with a buckle at one end that you can thread through and really cinch down, but you have to find a strong strap.

Last month I couldn't find my straps and used 2 regular 1" nylon straps to secure my sleeping system stuff sack to my bars.  No good photo but here is a side view:

Wow. Terrific report Mike, (and Scott too, on the other threads)

Ultimately I lost motivation to expend the energy to *pedal* up this thing and Scott did what he always does in that situation: Twiddled his 20 x 36 right on by.

Scott, care to elaborate on your drivetrain setup?  Or maybe oint me to where you've discussed it before? I'm loving some low gears.

I'd love to see some Euro content.  Trans-alps, LE2JOG offroad?  Send it all in.