Brilliant post, thanks for sharing. Appears the s&s couplings were a great help transporting your Nomad. Very convenient bag to move around.
Great post. And I'm especially interested in the S&S backpack. But I notice on the sjs site's S&S backpack case product page - https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/transporting-bicycles/s-and-s-machine-backpack-case-black they state emphatically that:
Unfortunately we don't sell any bags specifically for fitting the S&S Nomad into. They won't fit into any of S&S' own bags and the only other bags we have are standard bike bags that don't require a bike to have S&S couplings to fit in them.
And this was specifically in regard to a customer asking if their Nomad (no size specified) would fit. But your Nomad clearly does. I'm confused. Do you suppose this is in reference to the fork/steerer length issue only?
Did you leave your forks in place or have to remove them?
Do you have any pics of the bag compressed to it's smallest size, and did you carry it with you on your tour or leave it at your start/end point? Again the product description on the site is confusing with two differing descriptions of it's compressed size:
When the bike is removed the case transforms into a regular size backpack
and
When the bicycle is removed the case can be made smaller, by any amount, by pulling the 6 side straps tighter until it gets as small as 26" tall x 10" wide x 3" thick.
Is 26" the minimum length (it sounds a bit long for a 'regular size backpack') or can it be flexed into a shorter package?
Sorry for all the pesky questions but I've been messing around with designing and making a portable/reusable box for my own Nomad for an upcoming tour and had forgotten about the S&S bags.
Thanks, Syd
I bought the S&S backpack from Niagara, I am in USA and they had the best price. I bought it in part because Co-Motion (a competitor to Thorn) commented on their website that soft cases appeared to do better than hard cases because airline personnel are more careful with soft cases.
I can't comment on why S&S says what they say on the case. If I recall correctly, Andy at Thorn has commented that he would leave his frame assembled if he had S&S just as a time savings. That is certainly an issue too, it takes a long time to get everything fit in the case. And almost as long to re-assemble it on the other end. And I found that I had to leave fenders at home due to size constraints. But in my case, Delta Airlines charges an extra $150 USD each way for oversize luggage. Delta is well known for being one of the most hostile airlines to cyclists, but unfortunately they are the airline that pretty much has all the routes covered from the airport near my home.
I just checked, my front fork (which I cut down) is 73 cm. I removed it from the frame.
It takes time to break down a bike for shipping, even the water bottle cages have to be removed. Tires have to be fully deflated. I also had to remove both crank arms. A side note: I had installed the self extracting mechanism on both crank arms (square taper), and one of those self extracting mechanisms came loose and self extracted somewhere in Iceland. So, to come home, I had to remove the other self extractor, and shift it over to my other crank arm to get both cranks off. And of course I did not have the proper tools for that stupid little self extractor. Bottom line, next trip, bring a genuine crank arm puller instead of trying to save a couple grams by using those self extractors. I have have three crank arm pullers, it is not like I am saving anything by leaving all three at home.
I put the fork inside the rear frame triangle for packing, and then I had to play around with the exact position of it because the middle of the fork was near the center of the case, and the two wheel hubs also are in the center of the case. And a Rohloff is a wide hub, the flanges are farther apart than they would be on a derailleur hub, so that makes the rear wheel pretty thick. Since I used Velcro straps to hold everything together in a bundle, that meant that shifting the fork a bit for fitting it in there is an iterative process of trial and error. Bottom line - getting the fork in exactly the right spot is time consuming because I have to half unpack the case just to move the fork a bit since I was padding and strapping everything together.
First time I put the bike in the case was this trip. It took several hours, but part of that time was stripping off fenders (that I did not take with me), etc. Second time I put it in the case, was in Iceland to come home and that time it actually took a bit longer to pack because I had not kept good enough notes on how to fit it all together.
The S&S Backpack case has four plastic side pieces that give it good structure. They are held together with Velcro and Velcro holds them in the case. If you get the backpack case, I found that the side pieces were a bit longer than the case really allows, but by leaving the corner Velcro a bit loose by maybe a cm or two, it fit rather well. Those side pieces mean that the case when compressed to its smallest will still be over 26 inches long because the side pieces are stiff and can't be made smaller.
I put the front frame piece in the case first. Then the front wheel. The couplers on the front frame piece have to be placed so that the wheel does not sit on top of the couplers, this is explained a bit later. I do not know if this is needed, but I cut a piece of stiff plastic tubing 135mm long and put that in the rear triangle with the skewer to protect it in case airline personnel tried to crush the case. Then I put the rear triangle (with fork in the middle of it) on the front wheel, the rear droppouts in a corner. Then the rear wheel on top. Then put the handlebars in. Since I have drop bars, this become rather complicated as drop bars and brake levers are a very odd shape and I just had to shift things around the best I could to fit them in, I found that I had to loosen brake lever mounts so I could turn them a bit.
Note a key factor here is that in one corner the rear dropouts of the rear triangle and the two wheels are stacked on top of each other, which has to be less than 10 inches (~25 cm) for everything to fit. That is why no part of the front frame member can be under the front wheel. I did not have this quite right when I tried to pack it to come home, that cost me quite a bit of time when I was trying to get it all in the case.
I neglected to mention above that I had padding between every part. I used some of that perforated rubber sheeting that is sold for lining shelves, I bought it at Dollar Tree in USA for $1 USD each, I think I used two rolls.
I also wrapped two sided Velcro straps around everything so that once the frame and wheels and handlebars were in, you could pick it up as one bundle that stayed strapped together. I suspect I used about 20 feet (~7 meters) of two sided Velcro.
I also used a home made center support to try to protect it if there was anything stacked on top of the case from crushing anything. I used some wood (I used Masonite, which I will not use again, it broke on the trip home) and two wooden dowels 9.5 inches long. I had a piece of Masonite in the bottom about 8 inches by 12 inches, the ends of two wood dowels screwed in with one wood screw each, I put the bike parts over that in the case, and when it was all in, I then screwed down another piece of Masonite on top. I plan to replace the Masonite with thin plywood next time. S&S sells center supports, I am also planning to look into those too, that may be more robust.
I put very little padding in the side pockets of the S&S case. If the bike was lighter I might have put some clothing in those pockets, but when I put the tools and spares in the case it was pretty heavy. I had to put the saddle and pedals in other luggage due to weight. I also could not fit the rear rack in the case. I use a Tubus Logo rack. The size and shape of that rack dictated the luggage that I used for my other stuff to pack.
Since I had a lot of void spaces in the S&S case, I put a lot of low density stuff in the case loose, like empty water bottles. I just threw that stuff in loose.
You can't underestimate the importance of a good luggage scale for packing a heavy bike, or any other luggage for that matter. To fly from home, I had two 49 pound bags according to the airline, the return trip the scale was in kg, I was just under that limit too.
I stored the case at the hostel in Reykjavik. I rolled the dice and won - I could have paid for secured storage where only hostel staff have access to the room but the cost for that type of storage was not cheap, so I stored it in the luggage room that any hostel guest had access to. (Hostel guests need to borrow a key, but they can access the luggage room unsupervised.) I was betting that nobody staying at the hostel would find any reason to steal a 26 X 26 inch nylon case. Fortunately it was still there when I came back three weeks later. I stored other luggage and stuff in the backpack case too. I left it unfolded so it was 26 X 26 inches, but I took out the side pieces and used the straps to strap it down to a thinner package, so it was about 2 or 3 inches thick when I stored it, that thickness was in part because of stuff I left in the case.
When I got it all assembled in Iceland, I found that I needed to spend a couple minutes truing up both wheels.
When I got home I wanted to try to make this process go better next time, so I tried to pack it all in the case, and figure out the best way to do it, while taking photos. And I found that getting the fork in exactly the right place was quite critical in an iterative process, and then I decided to just plan on putting the fork in a different bag on my next trip so I quit trying to write up (with photo documentation) the best way to pack it.
Different sizes and different handlebar types will of course pack differently, a smaller frame may be a lot easier to pack.
Comprehensive post, excellent.
May I ask about costs?
Costs for your time there rather than flight costs since they vary from destination.
Many thanks
Matt
Total cost was about $2,600 USD, but I have not added it all up yet, so call that plus or minus 10 percent. That includes $750 for air fare and $100 each way for extra baggage.
I did almost all my own cooking. Bonus grocery stores have very good prices, but they can be hard to find once you are far from Reykjavik. I put all Bonus locations in my GPS while still at home so I would know where to go grocery shopping. I bought a burger, fries and coffee once and the cost was almost $30 USD. And after I ordered it, that was when they told me that WiFi was an extra cost. The couple times I got Fish and Chips, it was about $15 or $20. I probably had no more than six or eight prepared meals during my month there, the rest were meals I made.
I had five nights in hostels, and camping 22 nights. Camp fees without a power hookup were usually in the range of 1,000 to 1,800 ISK which is roughly $8 to $15 per person which usually included shower facilities. Some campgrounds were quite crowded, which makes me suspect that they never turn anyone away, which can be an advantage to a cyclist that is looking for a tent site at the end of the day.
One of those nights in a hostel, I decided at the end of a rainy day that a hostel looked pretty good instead of camping, thus had no reservation. Fortunately they had room. The other four nights I made reservations months in advance.
Alcohol is very expensive. Beer sold in grocery stores has a very weak content, you have to go to the state run stores to get the good stuff. Iceland is unusual in that you can buy at their duty free store upon arrival from elsewhere. I bought a liter of Aquivit when I arrived at their duty free store, it was about a quarter of the cost that I would have had to pay later.
I you bring a stove, bring a butane/propane mix type stove, Bonus has the cartridges for about 800 ISK (at 123 to one USD, that becomes roughly $7 USD) for 450 grams of fuel. The Gaz cartriges I saw at Bonus were the threaded type ones that most MSR, Primus, Optimus stoves work on. I saw some of the non-threaded Gaz canisters on free shelves in campgrounds, but I do not know where they bought them. I brought a liquid fuel stove but the TSA (the airline security people in USA) often confiscates gas camp stoves so I also brought a butane/propane stove as a backup. I found several half full canisters for the butane stove on the free shelves at campgrounds, so I often used that instead of the liquid fuel stove. If I went back, I would leave the liquid fuel stove at home.
Great photos, I cycled in Iceland in 1991, my second ever foreign cycle tour (first was Norway). Fantastic place for touring and have always meant to go back but never made it yet!
Looks like you went on the Kjolur interior crossing road?
When I was there I crossed the interior on the Spregisandur route, very cold river crossings!
Yup, F35. There were a couple places where streams crossed, but they were so shallow you could keep your shoes dry. I was there about a week after it opened for the season, so the rivers i am sure where quite high and cold so a bridged route was clearly preferred in my opinion.
A few more photos:
1. Doing a two pot meal on one stove works, you just have to keep moving the pots back and forth to the stove to keep them hot.
2. This beer at the state run store was roughly $4 USD. But, it was really good.
3. Fork inside the rear triangle.
4. Packed but the center support was not yet in the case.