Jones Update

At one point this late winter, my bike fleet was effectively* down to just three bikes: my Bike Friday Crusoe, my Jones LWB, and my Ragley Marley (I say effectively because I'm not counting bikes for sale, or the tandem). The Crusoe fills the role of a road bike for me, and the Marley as the mountain bike, so I decided to turn the Jones into an all rounder. Again. This turned out to be a little prescient, as now with the coronavirus going on, I'm not sure I'll be doing all that much mountain biking in the near future. I've never had a serious crash off road, but it's probably my activity with the greatest potential. Now is not the time I want to visit a hospital.

Anyway, you can probably imagine the minor changes needs to turn the Jones from a capable mountain bike to a capable all around machine: gearing, tires, and a way to carry stuff. This is what I ended up with:

For gearing, I didn't want to spend all my time in the 32x11 combo, so I added a 38t narrow wide ring up front. I'll manually change gears when I need to go to a lower range. I ordered a red ring in an attempt to break up the boring blackness of the Jones, but it's a bit too much with the blue pedals:

I put one of my Wald baskets up front. It's a super easy install with all the braze ons on the Jones, though I ended up using a second stem to mount the top point of the basket. I ordered up a Rivendell shopsack that's a perfect fit.

For rubber, I had a Schwalbe SuperMoto for the rear, but the matching front tire had a broken bead. I'm trying this Maxxiss Grifter. It's comparable in size to the Schwalbe, reasonably priced at $30 or so, and seems to roll well.

I'm happy with how this turned out. The Jones is a fine handling bike, road or trail, and comfortable on either. I was doing a shake down ride through Dublin where I stopped to see what a little free library had in stock. A women walking by said, "that bike looks like it could do anything." That's a pretty succinct summary of the Jones right there.