Nomad in the Alps

[AndrewClark]

I got back on Sunday from a 2 week camping tour in France on my new
 Nomad. I flew into Geneva on Easyjet and rode down to Nice over a few
 lumpy bits.

 Approx 850Km, Columbier, Aravis,Saises,Madelaine,Telegraphe,Galibier,Izoard, Var,Payolle and then a long loop down one side of the Gorge du Verdon and back across the country to the south of there and down to Nice.

 I didn't bother splitting the Nomad, just put pipe insulation around
 the tubes and packed it in a big poly bag. No damage.

 The bike handled very well, although the good roads and light camping
 load made things easy. Brakes were very good, I didn't miss my Maguras
 at all!

 I didn't have much chance to ride the bike before I left, no more that
 200Km I'd guess and so hadn't lubed the chain, meaning to do this when
 required on the trip. About 7 days into the trip I noticed that the
 chain was looking very "wet" and that there was more oil on the
 sprocket and lots of black on the hub itself and on the adjacent
 stays.

I've sent a picture of this to Thorn and Andy Blance says it's just "sweat oil"

A few pictures here http://www.flickr.com/photos/94297813@N00/

[jcabuckley]

ndrew,

looks like you had fun, i did the same 2 years ago on a road bike - pah! i now have an rohloff RT and my chain does the same BTW.

kind regards, Jonathan

[lewis noble]

Mine 'sweated' like that initally, gradually became less.  It looks most unlikely that there is a problem.  And what a holiday!!  Well done.

[Bill]

Sweat oil, eh?

I've got about 250 km on mine, no tours yet. Maybe in September.

I cleaned the chain after a dusty mountain bike ride, to get the grit off it. I lubed it with Boshield which is supposed to be a dry lubricant, but the next couple days it had black sticky stuff on it, which I wiped off.

Sweat oil?

[AndrewClark]

Caused by changes in air pressure apparently. It had been up in an ary-plane and then had a few 1000M changes of altitude in the Alps before this happened.

Experienced users report nothing to worry about.

[douggiefox]

Hi Andrew

Great pictures!

Interested to hear how u got on with Easyjet, costs etc.

Best

DF

[AndrewClark]

Absolutely no problems with Easyjet. £15 fee each way for the bike.

Ride to airport, pipe lagging on main tubes (left on for 2 weeks). At the airport remove pedals and turn bars sideways, wrap bars in bubblewrap. Partially deflate tyres (nonsense but they insist!)

Put bike into big poly bag and seal with an Arno strap http://www.ctcshop.com/product.jsp?style=29977

Gave the nice chap at oversized baggage a hand getting it through the X-ray.

There were about 20 padded bike bags at Liverpool airport on the trip out, I saw them stacked on a trolley and being slung roughly onto a conveyor.

At Geneva all the bikes were brought to baggage reclaim on a separate trolley.

Back to Liverpool I wasn't too happy when my bike came through on the main conveyor belt with the suitcases though!

[AndrewClark]

Forgot to say - Easyjet now have a 1 checked bag policy so I had a cheap nylon holdall into which I put 1 pannier, tent, sleeping mat and a few other bits. The other pannier went as hand luggage.

At the other end poly bag and holdall were scrunched up and went into the bottom of the panniers.

[douggiefox]

Hi

Amazing.  I'm gonna give that a try!  Always hired bikes in the past but my new RST is just the job and the £15 each way certainly covers the hire cost.

Had to look up what an Arno strap was - lol!

 
Best

DF