The year was 2013. It was a simpler time. Barack Obama had begun his second term as president. Lance Armstrong was still commanding mainstream media attention. And gravel, for the most part, was still mostly just very small rocks:
That last bit is significant, for it was also in 2013 that Giro–perhaps just a little bit too ahead of the times–launched something called the “New Road” clothing collection, which today would probably be called the “Gravel Road” collection:
The idea behind New Road, according to the video, was to “celebrate the diversity of cycling,” which is a pretty funny thing to say during a video consisting entirely of white bros. (As I recall, the New Road line consisted only of men’s attire, but in fairness to Giro by 2013 most cycling companies still hadn’t figured out that women ride bicycles.) And, being a white bro myself who still had a tiny bit of currency in the bike world, Giro apparently deemed me worthy of receiving a suit of New Road clothing to try out–including these bib knickers with a fly in them:
See?
Obviously nobody would ride around in a pair of bibs with a visible fly in them, so the Giro New Road collection also included a dedicated pair of baggy overshorts to wear over the bibs. The overshorts conveniently had like one tiny useless pocket, as opposed to the multiple pockets a cheap pair of jorts affords you. Basically, it was the modular road cycling bib system nobody had asked for, because nobody ever uses a fly–especially women, though again it was 2013, so you couldn’t reasonably expect anybody in the cycling industry to know how women go to the bathroom, now could you?
Anyway, as far as I know, the New Road collection quickly disappeared. (Though I do see Giro still offers a bib undershort with a fly, albeit now marketed to mountain bike bros.) As far as I recall I also never really wrote about my own New Road clothes, which could explain why I no longer have any currency in the bicycle industry. However, I mention all of this for one reason only, which is that I still wear the clothes, and I even wore the bibs on my vintage mountain bike ride yesterday:
I also wore the jacket from that same collection, which I do quite often during the winter. Sadly I don’t have a decent photo of it, but it’s warm, it looks good on and off the bike–and, as I mentioned the other day, it fits over a fanny pack:
All of this is to say that, while most reviewers will try something a few times, write about it, and forget about it, I’ll quietly integrate it into my life, use the hell out of it, and then finally let you know what I think about it seven years later, by which point it will no longer be available for purchase. And that’s gotta count for something, right?
By the way, I still haven’t used the fly.