Properly, excellent news! They lastly heard you! Right here’s that downhill-specific gravel bike you’ve been asking for:
Wait, what? You’re saying you didn’t need a blocky gravity-gravel bike? Properly, you’re getting one anyway:
What a chic head tube block.
The Blue Rondo à la Gravel brings “a lot of the spirit of mountain biking to drop bars:”
Which it does by being actually dangerous at climbing apparently:
It appears to me the entire level of placing drop bars on a hybrid or a mountain bike or no matter this factor is could be that you would benefit from all these totally different hand positions by doing stuff like standing up on climbs, however I assume I don’t perceive gravel bikes:
And in case you suppose that chunky-looking body is simply advertising, you’re fallacious. It’s really “daring design” that “stands out in a crowded market:”
So, advertising.
The body additionally makes a “assertion,” and that assertion is “I simply acquired rear-ended:”
In 2024 it’s gonna be all concerning the “crumple zone” look.
Fuck it, I’m getting a Jones.
[Jörs Trüli doing the cyclocross on a Jones SWB]
Shifting on, Stëël Wëëk continues, and after placing the brand new wheels on the Pink Faggin I took them for just a little spin:
I’d been utilizing a chunky, commuter-ish 28mm tire on this bike–the so known as Panaracer RiBMo, extremely the exact same pair that got here on the Milwaukee when it first arrived again in 2015:
However for the brand new wheels I broke out some 23mm Vittorias. As a completely indoctrinated member of each the cults of Jones and Rivendell I really like a large, comfortable tire as a lot as the subsequent growing older beardo. However I additionally nonetheless take pleasure in a agency, skinny tire after I’m doing the entire roadie factor, and and now impulsively the Faggin with its lengthy and low place and tall gearing is the raciest, fastest-feeling bike I personal, go determine. Certainly, so far as my drop-bar-bikes-with-foot-retention go, with the Cervino as my basic Eroica-worthy showpiece, the Milwaukee as my “gravel bike,” the Faggin reborn as a complete sizzling rod, and me whacking bikes like Jimmy Conway in the direction of the tip of “Goodfellas,” someone’s most likely beginning to get nervous:
It’s the odd man out, what with its space-aged supplies and clicky mixture brake lever-shifter thingies, and whereas that would imply the bike is true to be nervous, it may additionally imply that’s precisely why the bike has nothing to concern. I imply you’ve gotta have one correct Fred Sled, proper?
In any case, in addition to the brand new wheels from Ben’s Cycle, I additionally acquired some new stuff from Pearl Izumi. Through the years they’ve despatched me sure gadgets which have really received me over, corresponding to this vest that I put on on a regular basis however that I don’t suppose they make anymore:
One other standout has been their cheapo Quest street shoe, which I’ve written about earlier than, and which remains to be holding up fantastically:
As for this newest bundle, it included some badly-needed gloves, which arrived within the type of the AmFIB Lite:
Sadly almost all of my winter biking gloves have both disintegrated or disappeared, and previous to the arrival of those gloves I used to be down to 2 pairs. One in every of these was my Pearl Izumi lobster gloves:
I typically put on these when it’s beneath 30 American Freedom Levels. They’ve acquired to be like 25 years previous at this level, and I nonetheless use them usually, although they’re…sort of displaying their age:
Moreover these, a once-mighty glove assortment for all temperatures has been decimated by put on and kids who borrow them and lose them–or within the case of my wool gloves from Rivendell, me dropping them and dropping them (or at the very least dropping one, which is successfully the identical factor)–with the one different remaining pair being these deerskin gloves Barry Wicks despatched me again in 2017, and that are in fact not even cycling-specific gloves:
After I first acquired them I believed, “Yeah, proper, positive, how ironic.” However after awhile I got here to understand them, and as my different gloves met their fates I discovered myself sporting them an increasing number of, regardless of the exuberant gildings:
Because it seems, they’re best in a number of methods. They’re heat, they’re grippy, they’re fairly snug as soon as they break in, and you are able to do stuff like wipe your tire with them with out slicing your finger open on a bit of glass. The downsides are that they’re not so nice after they get moist, they don’t provide you with a number of handbook dexterity for stuff like fishing round in your pockets or futzing along with your zipper, and when you can wipe your tire with them, you possibly can’t actually use them to wipe snot off your face. However there’s at all times a trade-off, isn’t there?
There’s additionally an uncomfortable seam in certainly one of them, and since I now like deerskin gloves a lot I hold that means to go to the ironmongery shop or one thing and select a greater pair.
As for the AmFIB Lite, this was my first trip with them:
There’s not rather a lot to say a few pair of gloves after one brief trip, however to date so good. It was within the excessive 30s (AFD), and I’d say that’s concerning the decrease restrict of what they’re good for, however in fact everybody’s totally different. Some individuals are going fingerless in freezing temperatures, and a few individuals are already busting out the Bar Mitts in autumn. I’d say they’re most likely good for about the identical temperature vary because the deerskin gloves are (although I suppose some individuals would possibly put on deerskin gloves even when it’s heat, only for the safety and the grip), although in fact they’re thinner and lighter, and so they don’t require breaking in in case you’re in a rush. They don’t have that complete clichéd “second pores and skin” factor that broken-in leather-based has, however they’re good and grippy, and naturally they’re snug instantly:
This clearly means they work with a contact display (which I’d mock as pointless and counter to the ethos of biking with out distraction if I didn’t completely ship texts and browse emails whereas using):
Although I do not know what the crimson cloth band is for:
Possibly I simply figured it out.
