Bruce Gordon has been custom building steel lugged frame touring bikes since 1974. His small company specializes in road and touring bicycles hand-built in California.
With the introduction of the welded Rock ‘n Road frame in 1989 the majority of his bicycle frames have been welded together, but he still offers custom lugged frames using the old-school stamped lugs and thin tubing from the 1970′s that collectors drool over. The BG Basic Load Touring (BLT) bike is designed for a very specific kind of bicycle touring.
“The most demanding type of touring is Self-Supported Loaded Touring. This is the type where you are carrying everything you need, which may weigh up to 50 or 60 pounds. Of this type of touring, there are several things that are required of a bike, and when I speak of touring, this is the type I think of; however, this is not to say that the other types [of bicycle touring] are not rewarding and fun.”
According to Mr. Gordon, loaded bicycle touring requires that the design of the bike take into consideration the extra 50-60 pounds of gear you will have loaded onto it during your tour. In short, this requires thicker tube walls, long chainstays, strong solid forks, and component parts supporting friction mode.
A bike that will handle a full touring load may weigh a few ounces more than others, but, being able to look at the scenery without having to concentrate on keeping the bike going straight is what the enjoyment of loaded touring is all about.
In 2004 the company began selling the models as framesets so that bicycle enthusiasts could outfit them with their favorite custom-selected component parts.
And Bruce Gordon can be a wee bit cranky if you catch him on a bady day