>>1218045I agree that the nashbar touring bike is great value, and almost the same as a fuji touring, but there are reasons to pay the $1000 over $700
>3rd bottle cage bosses under downtube >2 mid fork bosses instead of 1, so you can run oversized cages there instead of a rack >Lugged Chromoly fork over unicrown hiten fork (that's the biggest reason)>Elios 2 tubing over Elios 1 tubing (is that better? I don't know, but probably) It's just a nicer frameset. The paint in blue looks a lot better as well. Also a shadow mech. Probably weighs less. $300 is not an enormous price difference either, when you consider that really nice steel framesets start at $1200 for the frameset alone.
They are both nearly perfect for touring though, aside from not having a Dynamo. It's kind of crazy that so many people buy expensive meme bikes when these heavy ol gal's will be faster up a climb loaded in 26x34 than whatever dumb adventure bike with road gearing.
