Well, good news! They finally heard you! Here’s that downhill-specific gravel bike you’ve been asking for:
Wait, what? You’re saying you didn’t want a blocky gravity-gravel bike? Well, you’re getting one anyway:
What an elegant head tube block.
The Blue Rondo à la Gravel brings “much of the spirit of mountain biking to drop bars:”
Which it does by being really bad at climbing apparently:
It seems to me the whole point of putting drop bars on a hybrid or a mountain bike or whatever this thing is would be that you could take advantage of all those different hand positions by doing stuff like standing up on climbs, but I guess I don’t understand gravel bikes:
And if you think that chunky-looking frame is just marketing, you’re wrong. It’s actually “bold design” that “stands out in a crowded marketplace:”
So, marketing.
The frame also makes a “statement,” and that statement is “I just got rear-ended:”
In 2024 it’s gonna be all about the “crumple zone” look.
Fuck it, I’m getting a Jones.
[Jörs Trüli doing the cyclocross on a Jones SWB]
Moving on, Stëël Wëëk continues, and after putting the new wheels on the Pink Faggin I took them for a little spin:
I’d been using a chunky, commuter-ish 28mm tire on this bike–the so called Panaracer RiBMo, incredibly the very same pair that came on the Milwaukee when it first arrived back in 2015:
But for the new wheels I broke out some 23mm Vittorias. As a fully indoctrinated member of both the cults of Jones and Rivendell I love a wide, cushy tire as much as the next aging beardo. But I also still enjoy a firm, skinny tire when I’m doing the whole roadie thing, and and now all of a sudden the Faggin with its long and low position and tall gearing is the raciest, fastest-feeling bike I own, go figure. Indeed, as far as my drop-bar-bikes-with-foot-retention go, with the Cervino as my classic Eroica-worthy showpiece, the Milwaukee as my “gravel bike,” the Faggin reborn as a total hot rod, and me whacking bikes like Jimmy Conway towards the end of “Goodfellas,” somebody’s probably starting to get nervous:
It is the odd man out, what with its space-aged materials and clicky combination brake lever-shifter thingies, and while that could mean the bike is right to be nervous, it could also mean that’s exactly why the bike has nothing to fear. I mean you’ve gotta have one proper Fred Sled, right?
In any case, besides the new wheels from Ben’s Cycle, I also got some new stuff from Pearl Izumi. Over the years they’ve sent me certain items that have truly won me over, such as this vest that I wear all the time but that I don’t think they make anymore:
Another standout has been their cheapo Quest road shoe, which I’ve written about before, and which is still holding up beautifully:
As for this latest package, it included some badly-needed gloves, which arrived in the form of the AmFIB Lite:
Sadly nearly all of my winter cycling gloves have either disintegrated or disappeared, and prior to the arrival of these gloves I was down to two pairs. One of these was my Pearl Izumi lobster gloves:
I generally wear these when it’s below 30 American Freedom Degrees. They’ve got to be like 25 years old at this point, and I still use them regularly, though they’re…kind of showing their age:
Besides those, a once-mighty glove collection for all temperatures has been decimated by wear and children who borrow them and lose them–or in the case of my wool gloves from Rivendell, me dropping them and losing them (or at least dropping one, which is effectively the same thing)–with the only other remaining pair being these deerskin gloves Barry Wicks sent me back in 2017, and which are of course not even cycling-specific gloves:
When I first received them I thought, “Yeah, right, sure, how ironic.” But after awhile I came to appreciate them, and as my other gloves met their fates I found myself wearing them more and more, despite the exuberant embellishments:
As it turns out, they’re ideal in a lot of ways. They’re warm, they’re grippy, they’re quite comfortable once they break in, and you can do stuff like wipe your tire with them without slicing your finger open on a piece of glass. The downsides are that they’re not so great when they get wet, they don’t give you a lot of manual dexterity for stuff like fishing around in your pockets or futzing with your zipper, and while you can wipe your tire with them, you can’t really use them to wipe snot off your face. But there’s always a trade-off, isn’t there?
There’s also an uncomfortable seam in one of them, and because I now like deerskin gloves so much I keep meaning to go to the hardware store or something and pick out a better pair.
As for the AmFIB Lite, this was my first ride with them:
There’s not a lot to say about a pair of gloves after one short ride, but so far so good. It was in the high 30s (AFD), and I’d say that’s about the lower limit of what they’re good for, but of course everyone’s different. Some people are going fingerless in freezing temperatures, and some people are already busting out the Bar Mitts in autumn. I’d say they’re probably good for about the same temperature range as the deerskin gloves are (though I suppose some people might wear deerskin gloves even when it’s warm, just for the protection and the grip), though of course they’re thinner and lighter, and they don’t require breaking in if you’re in a hurry. They don’t have that whole clichéd “second skin” thing that broken-in leather has, but they’re nice and grippy, and of course they’re comfortable immediately:
This obviously means they work with a touch screen (which I’d mock as unnecessary and counter to the ethos of cycling without distraction if I didn’t totally send texts and read emails while riding):
Though I have no idea what the red fabric band is for:
Maybe I just figured it out.