Fuji touring - why so hard to find?

[Titiritero]

the suspension forks with 40mm of travel (which seem to be almost unavoidable) seem a bit pointless to me.

100% agreed!

Also had the "pleasure" of lifting a few of these Trekking bikes out of the container at the local tip; two people needed
because they weigh a tonne and an entire afternoon to strip all the shit off and parts. Funny how they claim
low weight aluminium frames then add a 1 kg crappy suspension seat-post, a ½ kg adjustable stem and the aforementioned
very low-tech steel spring suspension forks. I don't quite get the logic about dynamo hubs since LED lights
are so efficient and compact now, plus rechargable batteries are much better - made sense a while back but for casual
recreation purposes they are just extra lard.

The frames are not even that light, but yes, Germans love to accesorise. Dynamo lights are another thing though. Until recently, the traffic law made compulsory to use dynamo lights, and that is why most German bikes had them. Only bikes below a certain weight (mostly road bikes) were allowed to have battery lights. This has thankfully now changed. And the StVO (German set of traffic laws), although it seems some obscure term that doesn't relate to most international cyclists, is so important that most bike lights of the world, and all the dynamos (SON, Shimano, SP, etc.) are made so they are compliant with it, because Germany is a huge market for them. The reason your front dynamo light has 2.4w and your rear 0.6w is because back in the times a guy with a funny moustache was running the country someone redacting the law thought it was the right thing. And here we are.

Nevertheless, once I've tried them, I'm a dynamo hub convert for utilitarian bikes. No worry of charging or replacing batteries, no worry of forgetting them on the bike to come back and see them gone, and plenty of power all the time, any time. And because here everybody has one, the market is very competitive and you can get a front wheel with a cheap Shimano hub, complete, for about 50 EUR. The bikepacking crowd loves them to charge all kind of gadgets while in the wild. I have a bad experience with rechargable bike lights, most take longer to charge than what they take to discharge, it's not easy to make them both small and long-lasting.

 

[hamster]

Agreed on dynos - I built a wheel with an XT dyno a few years ago for my tourer. It charges stuff and provides unlimited lighting. It all came into its own a couple of years ago when travel arrangements went awry and I ended up in Lille at 7pm with 50 miles to ride to Cambrai.
I wouldn't tour without one now.

 

[Woz]

Don't get me wrong about the usefulness of a dynamo (in fact I was within an inch of keeping one dynamo hub from the tip find for a 26" city visit / village errand bistro bike, but bailed out when I considered a faff with different length spokes which I didn't have).

The point I'm making is that most recreational part time cyclists would not plan, and probably would make efforts to avoid to ride in the dark,
especially in very rural areas with absolutely zero street lighting. The food and wine / beer coma is usually setting in when the sun goes down
at the camp site ;-)

Same sort of thing with mud guards if you get what I mean; a trade off between occasional utility and a waste of space when not
riding in the wet. It all just depends. Personally, if there is a slim chance of being caught out in the dark, I pack a couple clip-on LED lights
with the other essentials like inner-tube, tyre levers, allen keys, chain rivit, etc.