Friday, June 1, 2018

All Grovel Before The Gravel

It's Friday, which means this weekend you'll probably be cycling.  And if you're like most cyclists, you'll probably use some sort of bicycle to do it.  But what kind?  There are so many!  In fact, according to a popular glossy cycling periodical's buyer's guide, there are currently over 4,500 different recognized styles of bicycle.*  One of these bicycle types is the "graveling bicycle," and Velonews has an interesting interview with Gerard "Vroom-Vroom" Vroomen about where he thinks this whole thing is going:


Being old, I still associate Vroomen with bikes like this:


If you're less as old as I am, the Soloist had a reversible seatpost and allowed you to go from regular Fred to TT Fred and/or Tridork with a few twists of a hex key.  I can assure you it was no less dorky in those days than it is now, but people were all over it just the same.

Now, however, Vroomen is all about the gravel bikes, and he has this to say on what the future holds:

What we call gravel bikes now — but hopefully we’ll come up with a better name for them — I’m 100 percent convinced that will become a bigger category than road bikes and than mountain bikes 10 years from now. That really is a bike that addresses today’s needs for people. It gets people off the paved roads, it’s still fast, and it works really well on a mixture of different surfaces. For sure that will be a big trend.

I completely agree with this for like half the year.  The other half of the year it's so slushy and rainy that all I want to do is ride a road bike on the road.  I think this is probably true in a lot of places, and even as someone who's declared road riding dead myself I think its survival is pretty much assured for this reason alone.

Of course you can always just put road tires on your gravel bike.  But you won't.  That's not how bikes work.  All of cycling tends towards specialization, and it's part of the disease we all have that we have to be riding the "right" bike all the time.  That's why even a no-BS company like Surly offers roughly 1,500 different models now.

Another reason I think the road bike will never go away is that the kinds of people who are attracted to stretchy-clothes riding cannot resist fairings and other stuff that seems aero.  And while Vroomen himself may have invented the world's first aero gravel bike, there will always be people like this:



You'd think he'd have deleted that video by now.

As for displacing the mountain bike, it seems to me that for amateur riders the gravel bike is sort of replacing the cross-country mountain bike, and a mountain bike will only be considered a mountain bike now if it has hydraulic and dropper everything, a 1mm stem, at least fourteen levers on the handlebars, and is totally incapable of actually being pedaled to the trailhead.

Vroomen also predicts the death of the front derailleur:

There’ll be no front derailleurs anymore. That’s for sure. I think when you ask people, “Hey, if there’s 1-by-14, would you ride that or would you still ride 2-by-14?” People would say, “Well, of course I’ll ride 1-14.” And now we’ve established that, and it’s just a matter of when you switch. Is it 1-by-11? 1-by-12? 1-by-13? You wait a couple years, an extra cog shows up in the rear, that’s how we’ve been going since the first rear derailleur. So those are trends that I think are pretty clear.

This is really one to ponder.  On one hand, the more cogs you add in back the more overlapping gears you have with a double.  (At least I think that's the case, I can't be bothered to check.)  On the other hand, the more cogs you add in the back the more annoying it is to shift all the way across the cassette when you crest a hill with a single.  Certainly for gravel bikes the single ring is preferable for a whole bunch of reasons, but a road bike is another story.  Then again I guess we're moving towards a road bike-free future.  Still, it seems like electronic shifting would have to get really fast for the front derailleur to disappear completely.

Anyway, it's all compelling stuff to ponder, assuming you're a terminal Fred, which if you're reading a bike blog on a Friday afternoon you probably are.  But don't ponder it too much, lest you break your brain and decide, "Fuck it, I'm leasing a Hyundai"--or in my case decide, "Fuck it, I'm riding an aero bike made of wood," which in these gravel-obsessed days is just as transgressive.

Of course the big question isn't whether we'll all be riding gravel bikes in the future; the question is "Will that gravel bike be 3D-printed?"


Leave it to Silicon Valley to disrupt ruin the bicycle.





*This is a lie I made up.

45 comments:

Podium Fred said...

You know the drill...

cdinvb said...

Oh man. I'm reading this under the impression that today is Monday, or something. And I'm seeing last week's post. Retirement is like that. And I'm still stuck in the nineties, when I wasn't young. But I wasn't quite so old. Those heavy Trek 800 series with 26" wheels. They get ya around, and a few tools in a pocket is about what you need to get you there. And back.

1904 Cadardi said...

Hmm, could be somewhere between third and 7000th depending on how closely Wildcat is approving posts. I'll wait before laying claim to the last podium spot and the great prizes that go with it.

Aero anything for anyone not racing is silly. And since when can't regular road bikes be ridden on gravel roads simply by riding them there? Asking for a friend, I'd never do anything that dangerous.

tobeistobex said...

so do I have to sell my LHT?

Anonymous said...

Aero gravel bike? I need that, because I collect tangible oxymorons. Examples currently in the collection: featherweight sledgehammer, stand-up bed, and opaque reading glasses.

pbateman is so aero said...

i've never had an aero bike, but for this new build i'm working on, i'm using a dura ace AX stem and sitting post because they are incredibly handsome, and aero.

i'm looking forward to being one slippery devil just slip slip slippies through the wind.

ludacris speed...here i come.

have a wonderful weekend full of delicious gravel.

Anonymous said...

Grovel bike

Anonymous said...

I still don't know about a single chainring on the road. It works, sure. But what about the chainline? Fugly...
ROAD DUBL

Comment deleted said...

That's funny, I was just contemplating going to a single front sprocket this very morning's commute. My broken front derailleur has been completely removed for a couple of months, and I haven't missed it at all. I live in a fairly flat area, so I just leave the chain on the large front sprocket. Seems like an optimized single front sprocket might be just the ticket for me

leroy said...

Ride safe all!

Anonymous said...

A gravel bike you can ride on the road is sort of what Rivendell would call an all-rounder, or what Bicycle Quarterly would call a randonneur — a bike you can ride anywhere, on any kind of terrain, in any weather, at any time of day, for sport riding, touring, or commuting. While making that kind of bike keeps custom builders busy, it no doubt terrifies the big manufacturers. If you only needed one bike that did everything, how would they stay in business?

Anonymous said...

The local "grovel" tracks though the forrest are smoother and with infinitely fewer potholes to kill you than any of our local roads. How the heck did the 21st century turn out like this?

Grump said...

I'm waiting for some forward looking genius to start selling a gravel track bikes. 74x74 angles and space for 35-40mm tires, for use on a gravel velodrome.


McFly said...

My favorite bike is usually the one I'm riding.

Unless I'm like, climbing a big ass hill.

BikeSnobNYC said...

Anonymous 8:18pm,

I think all the big companies are selling bikes like that now.

--Wildcat Etc.

Beck the Biker said...

Screw this 1 x crap. Give me quad front rings. The gravel is so steep and loose where i'm currently riding any 1x just isn't going to cut it. I was tooling uphill today, in 24x34, and couldn't keep the rear wheel from spinning out. I'd totally ride a 4x14 setup if Shimano made a rear derailleur that could shift that large of a range.

sparadrap said...

Just saying, hippodromes can totally double as gravel velodromes.
You totally read it here first.

Merlin said...

I ride my triple 9speed on gravel all the time. It's a touring bike. Remember those?

SpeakingOfOxymorons said...

"Infinitely fewer"

NothingNewInTheBikeBusiness said...

When front retailers first came out, bike companies sold a single front chain ring version of most of their models, at a lower prize. Now they are trying to sell the same thing, but for the same price, so the company gets the ssving, not you.

Wesley Bellairs said...

I want a fixed gear mountain tandem.

WaitingForTheRainToLetUpSoICanRide said...

Interested in seeing how the banks work on the new gravel velodrome. Although some may say Iowa is a long, straight gravel velodrome.

Anonymous said...

Glad to see Wildcat is not spending his Sunday reading these comments.

InstantPam said...

Snobby, while admirable that your hands-on attention to detail would have you making up your own *lies, most public figures of your stature now hire a team of professionals to provide this service.

HDEB said...

Yes please to quad front chainrings! With a 16 tooth in the front and a 36 in the back one could climb up a wall -- and to have a 54 tooth front and 11 tooth rear on the same bike would be sublime -- that or a single speed -- or a three speed is perfection ; )

Anonymous said...

Is gravel riding just going out and riding the rail trials up in in Kingston or where ever, that haven't been paved so the horses riders can use them too, because us Freds are scared iphone addicts are going to mow us down.

McFly said...

#WHATTACTICSYOURUNNING

ITALO SLEAZE said...

How can you type so much about nothing?>

Brian said...

It's almost like Rivendell never existed making these bikes since 1994.

JLRB said...

One bike that does it all? I need spare bikes

STG said...

All the complaints about new products are dumb. I hear all these guys talking about how long their rivendell or surly frames are going to last. Well, even Jobst Brandt the ultimate retrogrouch used to break forged square taper cranks and need to replace them at regular intervals. IE if you're not getting excited about new equipment coming out, MAYBE YOU DON'T RIDE ENOUGH to wear out components to need new stuff.

I'm not saying people don't get the upgrade-itis, but 5 racing seasons is usually enough to relegate any bike to beater status. IE my 10 speed campy group on my 2nd roadie is still "going strong" after a decade but only after replacing many small springs in the calipers and levers, complete lever bodies, pullies, in addition to sprockets bearings and chains, over and over again. All that and I don't really, 100%, trust that old carbon fork anymore. And I wouldn't trust a steel one either. Sometimes you gotta hit reset and get all new parts so you can stop playing maintenance whack-a-mole.

Costs go up because of inflation and because parts are more complex, but you can buy Shimano Deore or SLX that works 300% better than 1990's dura-ace. 1X systems aren't just half of a 2x system, you're deleting the front mech but adding a clutch to the rear mech and now front rings need more machining operations to form narrow/wide teeth.

Anonymous said...

vroomman might actually be right about the future of the "bike market"- giving the people what they want, not what they need. The grovel bike is the SUV of the bike world- in that people like the idea of a do everything bike. Most people I know have 2 or less bikes, most people I know who drive and don't need to worry about street parking on a regular basis will drive a SUV even if they go on "dirt" less than ever.

Old Fred's will eventually cave even if they already have 14 bikes in their stable. The only thing it can't do is an outside lock up bike in urban centers because of its current high value. I'm on the fence about it because I already own and ride 5 bikes.

Chazu said...

What illumination you running at 4AM?

wle said...

"Anyway, it's all compelling stuff to ponder, assuming you're a terminal Fred, which if you're reading a bike blog on a Friday afternoon you probably are. "


HA HA - this is MONDAY!! so i wasn;t reading a bikely blogly on fri afternoon, proving i am no Fred.. but wait, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

"I can;t be bothered to check!" --yeah baby

wle said...

I rode a 23mm tired road bike on the Katy Trail in Missouri for at least 150 miles.. But that was 2012, I didn't know what I know now (but now I do and I still don't have a Grovel Biek)

tubasti said...

I like the gravel bike concept, although my idea of a gravel bike is a little more roadie than what's trending. Say, a Lemond Washoe with 28-30mm tires.

STG said...

I have a girlfriend who rides and the N+1 is now an N+2.

Quad Chainrings said...

It's been done:

https://velo-orange.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-quad-crank.html

http://abundantadventures.com/mtfaq/FAQ.html

https://bikefag.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/new-fixed-gear-the-quad-ring/

JLRB said...

But anyway - eating amlaye lunch at the counter with the view of the passing foot traffic it appears flats outnumber heels of any kind by about 50:1 - but the heels are usually spectatorific

Judge Judy said...

Gravel? You best grovel before my gavel, I can tell you that.

pbateman said...

are those heels terrain specific?

wonder if they run smooth tread hills in the city? smooties?

but nubbies in the country? cuntnubbins?

bad boy of the south said...

bsla?

bad boy of the south said...

Yacht fred.

Skidmark said...

My horse got old and died, but I was ready to upgrade anyway, of course. What would be the cool upgrade? AI/hydro-electric robotic horse, Unicorn horse, or maybe a converted off-road camel horse.

JLRB said...

Is it safe to drink electrolytes while riding an eBike?