So the planning went selecting a proper trekking/touring bike, I had ridden 3000kms on the Surly Krampus now and I was never a big fan of the track rear end, a great bike to ride and the first steel hardtail I had ridden since the early nineties. Steel was such a forgiving ride and the slight weight gain over alloy was no real issue at all.
I decided I wanted another steel bike and had a hankering for another steel bike but more towards the Niner Ros 9 plus, the Chumba Ursa was only available in an 19 inch frameset and unless I went custom made there wasn't much in the 29+ steel frameset market.
Cambria bikes was having a big sale and they had the ros9 plus in a large frame (19 inch) and initially they informed me that at 6'2" it should be on the money size wise. So I committed the money to it and two weeks later it turned up at the post office. Great parts included with the frameset including forks, thru axles, headset bearings and bottom bracket device for single speed requirements. I swapped all of the parts over from the Krampus and had it built up over a weekend. I had a framebag and seatbag from Relavate designs, sadly the large frame bag does not fit well in the large Ros 9 frame. I fitted a 400mm thomson seatpost, I found that that was too short to suit my long legs and after a 35 Km ride I worked out that the frame was just too small even with a longer stem and a skyscaper seatpost fitted.
I found after an exhaustive search over the internet an XL frameset at Topfun bikes in Spain, so after a bit of mucking around I had that one on its way. I stripped the Large frame down and put all the parts away for the XL frame and promptly sold the frame.
The XL Niner finally arrived and once built up the difference between the frames was immediately noticeable, less seatpost sticking out. shorter stem and generally a lot more comfortable to ride. The framebag fitted well and seat bag too. An Aplkit Confucius handlebar was fitted which allows for a handle bar bag to work with it and be properly supported like the Jones hoop bars.
