The Bike Snob NYC Blogular Web Presence, a subsidiary of Tan Tenovo Industries, Inc., will be closed today in observance of Veterans Day. However, as we honor those who have served our country, let us also reflect on the military origins of the gravel bike:
At the end of the 19th century, the all-black Twenty-Fifth Infantry had been training on bicycles, and in order to prove the machine’s utility in battle an officer recruited a group of volunteers for an epic ride and commissioned the first bikepacking bike the world had ever seen:
The bicycle was a Spalding (or a “Spaldeen” as your great-uncle from Brooklyn might have called it), and here was that bike:
[From here.]
As you can see, the bicycle is nearly indistinguishable from a modern-day Crust:
[From here.]
Thus equipped, they set out on a ride that prefigured the invention of Instragram by well over a hundred years:
How they accomplished this without artisanal tires from René Herse, whimsical “Party Pace” patches from The Path Less Pedaled for their hand-sewn luggage, battery-powered shifters, hydraulic disc brakes, or boutique components machined in Northern California–to say nothing of incessant social media postings–is positively unthinkable today. Nevertheless, they did it, and on one speed to boot!
Not even thick mud could stop them:
Unlike the Unbound Gravel riders who, over a century later, would pay lots of money to do the exact same thing and then complain incessantly about it:
How far we’ve come.