To carry or to hire?

One significant unanswered question is what bike to ride. If I take a bike should it be my road bike or my touring bike? The same question applies to hire bikes although I have yet to see a "light touring" bike like mine for rent.

The road bike's advantages are that it is lighter, has better brakes and a smaller "Q" factor. The Touring bike is more robust (cro-mo instead of carbon), takes a rack and hence panniers and has wider gearing. On the balance I think the touring bike is more likely. I can mix and match wheels and tyres as I see fit, with the 28mm Continental 4 Seasons a likely choice. They survived Melburn-Roobaix just fine. I'm willing to risk the road bike so long as I can carry enough stuff. Maybe I'll do a trial pack into the largest Ortlieb underseat bag and the largest handlebar bag to see whether that feels like three days' worth.

Hire or carry?

The other consideration, probably more important is to leave my bikes at home and hire in Firenze, but that depends on whether I can get exactly what I want from a hire company. In general they do not seem to be very flexible but I guess I have a year to negotiate :-) Because it makes the logistics so much easier this would be my preference, but I'm not riding 400km on a bike I don't trust and enjoy.

Almost every day I am exchanging emails with Lia at http://www.florencebybike.it/index.php?lang=en and we are slowly coming to an understanding.

Our heavy touring bikes are what you need.
You can't fit Ortlieb handlebar bags to our road bikes.
Our road bikes only come with 23mm tyres.

We'll get there maybe!