It’s been one week since I officially embarked upon my quest to find the Spirit of Gravel, and I’m pleased to announce I’ve already figured it out:
Riding bikes on stuff that’s not roads and not full-on mountain bike trails is fun.
Huh, it was even simpler than I thought.
Of course, what I now understand is that I was on the wrong quest. See, it turns out I already understood gravel just fine; I was even doing it already, except I was generally using bikes with rim brakes, which technically doesn’t count. However, what I didn’t fully understand is why all this gravel crap annoys me so much, even though I enjoy it. This is what I really need to figure out, before my bitterness destroys me completely as a human being.
But I think I’m getting closer.
For example, consider this mountain bike:
Now consider this gravel bike:
But wait! That mountain bike is a gravel bike:
And that gravel bike? It’s a mountain bike:
But you can upgrade it with an “aftermarket rigid fork:”
The Pivot LES SL is 1x specific, fits a 38T chainring, and is designed for 100-120mm of fork travel. Pivot says customers can use an aftermarket rigid fork, and that they recommend axle to crown greater than 480mm. The bike uses an integrated headset, has a maximum brake rotor allowance of 180mm, and has a 44mm fork offset. While the official build weight is unclear, Pivot says the complete Team XTR comes in at 19.8 pounds.
To fully understand what these bike companies are trying to do, please watch this video:
See a mountain bike with drop bars is a gravel bike, but a gravel bike with flat bars is still a gravel bike, but a mountain bike with flat bars can be a gravel bike, but not if it’s a mountain bike. Right, wrong…right, RIGHT…wrong… It’s the old marketing flim-flam.
Also obviously you need to make sure you use mountain bike tires on your gravel bike:
And that you use gravel tires on your mountain bike:
That’s because they’re faster.
Except when they’re not faster.
Right, right…WRONG…right, right…wrong… So basically you now can start out with a gravel bike and a mountain bike, systematically upgrade each one, and thousands of dollars later wind up exactly where you started…only the gravel bike is now a mountain bike and the mountain bike is now a gravel bike.
It’s all completely infuriating, and it’s why you should Just Buy A Jonesendell Already:
Yes, the above photo is from when I briefly Riv-ified my Jones. I’ve long since restored it to Full Jones status, but it was an enjoyable little detour that turned out better than I expected.
So yes, I’m at least a little closer to understanding why gravel makes me so goddamn angry–and on a related note, I’m also beginning to understand why I find the term “build” so annoying. At first I thought it was because it was pretentious, but now I’m beginning to understand that it has more to do with that phenomenon whereby a perfectly ordinary word starts to sound really weird to you if you hear it enough. According to a popular online user-edited encyclopedia, this is called “semantic satiation:”
Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener,[1] who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. Extended inspection or analysis (staring at the word or phrase for a long time) in place of repetition also produces the same effect.
And if you read about bikes–especially gravel bikes–you will see them referred to as “builds” a lot–and I mean a lot. Consider that in a recent review of the Canyon Grizl on the Desert Hipster Website the term is used no fewer than thirty-three times:
And when you see the same word over and over and over again it starts to look and sound weird. For example, I can’t even read it as it’s supposed to be pronounced anymore [“bild“]. Instead, because of that “u,” I read it as “BOO-ild,” which in turn makes me think of this:
Now every time you read about someone’s new bike you too will process it as “check out my new gravel bike BOO-ild,” and you can thank me later.
Oh, speaking of irritating terminology, “ecosystem” in the context of parts that work with other parts appeared in the review only once, but that’s one time too many:
The phrase was “componentry exclusive to the Canyon ecosystem,” which made me want to quit cycling, or at least sue Canyon Bicycles GmbH.
Honorable mention also goes to the phrase “adventure-rig space,” since I don’t like the term “rig” or the term “space,” unless you’re talking about oil drilling and all that useless crap beyond the Earth’s atmosphere respectively.
Still, I think this only begins to scratch the surface–the thin crushed gravel layer, if you will–of why I find the GRAVEL SPACE so irritating. There’s also the abject nerdery superimposed upon the rugged western landscape. Consider that a couple of centuries ago, settlers with nothing headed west to scratch desperately at dry patches of land:
In so doing they faced disease and starvation and scalping and tornadoes and buffalo stampedes and bandits and rattle snakes and quicksand (sure, why not?) and some of the spottiest cellular service in recorded human history. Now this same land is traversed by special people on special bikes rolling on special tires filled with special latex juice, and they use lots and lots and lots of special bags carrying solutions for their cameras and photo equipment and coffee brewing apparatus, and of course power sources to charge their derailleurs and their smartphones, which allows them to take advantage of the dramatically improved phone reception, so they can post endless nit-picky reviews about how the bag they’re using for their film camera isn’t quite as good as another one they were using before, and how their $1,200 titanium cranks reduce ankle fatigue, and why the Canyon component ecosystem is not the optimal ecosystem in the gravel bike space.
And yes, I realize this is unfair of me since I’d only sleep outdoors if a natural disaster had razed my city and I had no other choice, plus I too am a giant bike nerd who writes endlessly about nothing. But still, the sheer amount of stuff involved in this SPACE is astonishing…though when it comes to nerdery nothing beats the nerdissimos at Best Made, who are back with a vengeance. Looking for a $400 pocket knife?
How about a $375 quilted hanten jacket?
What even is a quilted hanten jacket?
It’s this:
And you can be sure there’s a whimsical story behind it:
“I met my first hanten in a drafty old ryokan on the island of Yakushima. I wore it on the short walks to and from the onsen, out to collect firewood, and late at night around the irori. We were inseparable. I learned then that—for good reason—the hanten is an essential piece of the Japanese cold climate puzzle. Back stateside, my hantens are hardly out of reach—at my office, workshop, or home. A good hanten gets me through the winter.”—PB-S
That’s funny, because I met my first hanten when I was doing a drug deal in my underpants with an out-of-work porn star:
Fine, that’s not a hanten, but whatever, I’m not a Far East garment Fred.
And finally, here’s a glimpse into the cutthroat world that is the derailleur fairing SPACE:
This is the inspiration behind the so-called original:
“It does make me feel a little bit bitter because really they haven’t seen the kind of blood sweat and tears that have gone into the products,” EZ Gains’ owner continued, explaining they had spent thousands on the aero testing and exploring a potential patent that ultimately was not completed.
“We actually came up with it when we were out cycling like four or five years ago, we thought, ‘Why doesn’t someone cover the front derailleur up? It’s really hitting the wind’.”
I can’t imagine thinking that while riding a bike. Then again, I also can’t imagine typing the words “SRAM already fixed that problem:”
And yet here we are.