As the temperature grows colder I seek warmth and respite upon the ruined carriage roads of the lower Hudson River Valley:
Such seasonal detours require me to traverse irregular surfaces, and whether it’s the ragged roads themselves or the act of riding a bicycle upon them, in today’s parlance we refer to it all as “gravel:”
To ride gravel you of course need a gravel bike–plus a gravel helmet, and gravel shoes, and even a gravel water bottle cage:
Presumably one should also go so far as to fill one’s bottle with gravel water–or as it used to be know, “crushed ice:”
Nevertheless, I have recently been doing my graveling on a so-called “cyclocross” bike–and a plastic one at that:
Yes, it’s heedless and foolhardy, but that’s what I signed up for when I agreed to be the Classic Cycles Old Crap Test Pilot:
And if you think riding a relatively new (circa 2012) bike doesn’t incur the same degree of risk as riding, say, a 48 year-old titanium bike you can literally feel flexing beneath you, then I beseech you to think again. Indeed, many an Old Crap Test Pilot has been lulled into complacency by the alleged superior reliability of modern componentry, only to learn the hard way that whether modern or vintage, disaster is always just a loose fastener away. I was reminded of just that when the drivetrain on the plastic bike’s drivetrain grew increasingly noisy recently, and a quick inspection revealed that the crank was working its way off the spindle:
I don’t generally make a habit of carrying a 10mm Allen key with me, so I was unable to tighten it up on the spot, but fortunately I was nearly home when I made the discovery. Hopefully I didn’t do any damage to the interface while unwittingly riding it in its loosened state:
I suppose we’ll find out, and having since judiciously applied a torque wrench to the bolt it will stay put, but in the short term I’ll carry the appropriate tool just in case.
Technical difficulties notwithstanding, I’ve been enjoying the plastic cyclocross bike, as well as the irony of being a portly middle-aged cyclist astride the bicycle of an under-23 national champion that weighs less than my FUPA alone. Furthermore, in riding such a bicycle, it’s impossible not to ponder all the many forms of fattish-tired drop-bar bikes available to consumers today, what differences there are between them all (if any), and whether or not we ever needed any this crap in the first place.
There are of course all sorts of versatile bicycles out there that defy easy categorization, but when it comes to more mainstream offerings the bicycle industry tends to group non-road racing drop-bar bicycles into three general categories. You’ve got your gravel bike:
You’ve got your cyclocross bike:
And of course you’ve got your endurance road bike:
At the extreme edges of each category there are some differences that actually matter. For example, besides the subtle differences in geometry people pretend they can notice, a true cyclocross racing bike is built with features that make it easier to carry, such as shaped top tubes and out-of-the-way cable routing…at least that was the case when bikes still had cables. A true cyclocross race bike also won’t have provisions for fenders, or racks, or extremely wide tires (the UCI limits tire width in cyclocross to keep it distinct from mountain biking), or even water bottle cages–though of course it wasn’t uncommon for bikes marketed as “cyclocross” bikes to have some or all of those features anyway, since before the gravel bike was invented lots of people used to use cyclocross bikes for other stuff besides cyclocross.
As for gravel bikes, that’s a bit more ambiguous, for while the UCI has already inserted the lump of coal that is gravel up its ass by establishing a Gravel World Series, they’ve only done so recently, and as such they have not yet tightened their sphincters around it with sufficient force or duration to harden it into a diamond:
So technically a gravel bike is any bike that’s not a tandem, recumbent, or time trial bike, but as far as the mainstream bike industry is concerned it’s generally a road-ish bike with rack mounts and lots of tire clearance and the obligatory flared bars that let everyone on the bike path know you could totally ride offroad if you felt like it. Also, it may or may not have suspension, depending on whether or not the owner intends to ride it in flannel:
And increasingly it has a contorted drive-side chainstay to make room for its goofy single-ring drivetrain:
As for endurance road bikes, that remains a catch-all for any road bike marketed to people who haven’t yet come to realize they’d be much happier on a Rivendell:
[Why indeed.]
But what about a regular old road bike? Apart from actual cyclocross racing, I used to use my Milwaukee for all the scenarios described above:
So after back-to-back rides on the plastic cyclocross bike I figured it was time to put some fatter tires and mountain bike pedals on the Milwaukee and see how they compare:
I got these tires back in 2017 for the Milwaukee, but I found them kind of sluggish compared to the Paselas, so since then they’ve been sitting in the basement:
Setting out on them once again for the first time in several years I still found them kind of sluggish, but they were also quieter on pavement than the Tufos on the plastic bike, and they also seemed to handle a little bit better too, no doubt due to the smoother tread. Furthermore, once I hit the trail, the sluggish sensation more or less disappeared, and while I took a little more care due to the fact that they’re clinchers with inner tubes they offered plenty of traction. They also cleared the medium-reach brakes with plenty of room to spare:
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating that the bicycle industry’s refusal to acknowledge the medium-reach brake is utterly reprehensible. Sure, they could have equipped most road bikes with these things, but instead they just redesigned everything for discs, which is the equivalent of giving a patient and organ transplant when all they had was gas pains. You could probably even get a fender in there too if you were so inclined:
Sure, they lack the mud clearance of the mini-vs on the plastic cyclocross bike, but they more than make up for it in feel. Plus, I’m not exactly on the World Cup circuit, so it’s not like I’m going to be riding in conditions that would pack up a brake anyway.
Gearing may be steep by gravel bike standards, but it’s got a wider range than the plastic cyclocross bike, and it would be easy to go lower if I were so inclined:
Obviously you’d want the plastic cyclocross bike for the racecourse, and the Milwaukee won’t take the mountain-sized tires some people like to use on their gravel bikes, but otherwise there’s little stopping you from using a bike like this across the entire spectrum of spirited “sport”-oriented drop-bar cycling:
They can keep slicing and dicing up categories, but all you really need is a road bike.