#weswilliams

Certainly part of the fun of this endeavor is deciding how to setup a bike for such a trip. I'll be riding (resurrecting) my Willits 'New Sheriff.' I bought this bike from Wes Williams in 2000. This was the dawn of the 29er revolution, so going with a custom builder was the only way to get a bike with this wheel size. I've always loved the model name. 

I bought this bike to ride off road. I used it for several years as my primary trail bike on some very demanding terrain. Being rigid and having dropbars was interesting, but, while workable, proved to be a challenging trail setup. I also envisioned this bike being a great gravel road bike. To maximize its possible uses, I asked Wes to add all bosses and eyelets necessary to load it with racks. In short, I thought of this bike as the one bike. It wasn't designed to do anything well, but it could do more than any other bike with some minor configuration changes. 

Because I was using this bike less and less on trails, I converted the drvietrain from a triple crank to a 2x9 setup a few years ago. This change was a good move, but the lack of lower gearing gave me pause for this trip. I went as low as I could go by swapping the cassette for a 12-34. I think my 1-1 ratio (34-34) should get me up almost anything hauling a loaded trailer.