Yep, still no winner to announce in the BIKE SNOB GRAVEL SPIRIT GRAVEL DUMONDE LUBE GRAVEL GRAVEL GRAVEL SEO CONTEST because I’m still too far too engrossed in the entries, which include a play in one act, featuring a delightful cast of characters such as this one:
I may have to produce this, because it could be the best piece of bicycle-themed theater since the Belle of the Ball Bearings:
Then there’s a haiku and a limerick from Andrew in Helena, Montana, a place which sounds like it would be very gravelly–and dusty:
Dust in every crack,
Grit settles in the scranus,
Ride now, regret soon.
…
There once was a spirit called Scranus,
Who lurks in the dust just behind us.
Don’t ride gravel too far,
Just to the next bar,
Or he’ll sandblast your shorts and your anus.
I will take this opportunity to announce that Dustin Everycrack is my new Gravel Porn Name.
Oh, and here’s another submission, which appears to depict Dustin Everycrack with his girlfriend, Sandy Beaver:
Sure, it’s clearly AI, but I never banned AI from the contest now, did I?
Sadly around these parts Old Man Winter continues to sit on the Spirit of Gravel’s face and smother it with his Snowy Taint of Despair:
However, it looks like temperatures will soon increase, which means all this snow is going to finally start melting–which in turn means the roads will be truly wet and disgusting, and I’ll spare you going any further with the taintal metaphor, apart from suggesting that the streets are going to be like Assos Guy’s chamois that morning he did intervals with a hangover:
For this reason, a single Dedicated Fender Bike is going to be insufficient, and so I’ve taken the additional step of re-fendering the Milwaukee:
Note that I’ve retained the WFL (Wonky Fender Line) it wore proudly before its makeover:
If you look closer you can see the buboes that necessitated said makeover, caused no doubt by my toxic sweat:
I thought briefly of correcting the fender line, but of the many bicycle maintenance tasks that seem like they’ll take a few minutes but wind up taking a few hours, fender installation is the pinnacle. In this case I was installing the very same fenders that had been on the very same bike, and yet even that took much longer than I expected, and the more time it took the less inclined I was to futz with the length of the stays on top of everything else, eventually reaching the inevitable conclusion, that being to say, “Fuck it, good enough.”
At this point I should learn my lesson and keep the fenders on there until 2035 when I paint the bike again. Hey, maybe they can paint around them…
Speaking of the Milwaukee, in addition to refinishing it in red (I believe the actual name of the color is Flaming Sex Copper or something like that), last year I also treated it to a brand new R7000 drivetrain, which was the last time Shimano offered rim brakes at the 105 level or above. It was clear to anybody paying attention that the end of rim brakes at the 105 level was a bad sign…except for the Wankerati, of course, who are only now whining about the state of the modern road bike drivetrain:
He doesn’t want Cues (sorry, CUES), and he doesn’t want the latest 105. He wants…older 105, like the stuff on the Milwaukee, only the silver version:
What I would really love to see, however, is a return to simple, polished metal for all the components, something like the beautiful silver option on the R7000 Shimano 105 from 2018 – or even the limited-edition polished GRX from a few years ago.
Oh, Warren. Warren, Warren, Warren. You know why it’s this way? Because of PEOPLE LIKE YOU:
It’s YOUR FAULT, Warren. You and all your Wankerati cohorts in the cycling media. YOU PEOPLE wouldn’t accept rim brakes anymore, and you told us we shouldn’t either. It’s because of YOU PEOPLE all the high end stuff went disc, and electronic. See, rim brakes were the only thing keeping bicycle parts honest. But they weren’t good enough for the likes of YOU, were they, Warren and friends? So now they’re gone, and so is the classy, affordable rim brake drivetrain. It’s gone because YOU KILLED IT, Warren, and it’s never coming back. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.
And still these people don’t learn. Even Shimano isn’t completely ruthless, so they came up with this whole CUES thing–cheap, mechanical, good for inexpensive road bikes…but not good enough for Warren. Because it’s too “chunky,” even though Shimano hasn’t made a non-chunky bike part since like 2012:
Don’t get me wrong, I like CUES. I’ve tried it on flat-bar bikes and been impressed. It’s also the drivetrain I’ve chosen for my mountain bike to gravel bike conversion.
However, it’s not quite right for mid-range performance road bikes. Its design is derived from Shimano’s GRX gravel groupset and mountain bikes. CUES has a more robust look, which is good for gravel and urban bikes, but too chunky and clunky for a lithe-looking road bike.
Right. I’m looking forward to the “It’s Time We Dropped Mechanical Shifting Altogether” piece later this year, followed by “Brain Implanted Shifting Is Coming, But Where Have All The Chunky Affordable Mechanical Road Bike Groupsets Gone?” in 2030.