Ahearne Cycles

Off Road Touring Mixte

TouringJoseph Ahearne4 Comments
“What is this thing?!” This past October at the Oregon Bicycle Builders’ Show, Jonathan Maus of bikeportland.org stopped by the booth and was looking at this crazy bike of mine. I tried to sum it up as succinctly as possible: “It’s a mixte off road touring 29er commuter monster truck thing, with a flask cage.” Something like that. The bike was hanging on a stand at the back of my booth. I’d been riding it for a couple of months without paint, and it had a nice patina of rust going. When Jonathan was done taking in all that information the only question he could think to ask was, “Why?” The only proper answer to that is, “Because I can.”

Rear Rack Build Process

ProcessJoseph Ahearne
I've taken a series of photos detailing the process of putting together a rear touring rack. As you can see, there are a number of steps involved. There are a total of thirty joints mitered (fitted) and brazed, including the u-lock holder. I receive a lot of requests for racks, and I don't know if people in general understand what all is involved in the construction. If you notice, a lot of custom builders out there are not willing to build racks. That's because they are tricky, time consuming, and it's really hard to make a rack that looks right, fits right, and does the job it's supposed to do. I have to admit, I have a sort of love/hate relationship with building racks. On the one hand, they are light (relatively), incredibly strong, and when built with the bike and painted to complement or match the