At This Point Just Call Them All "Bikes" And Be Done With It

Firstly, I wrote words, and they're in the Transportation Alternatives magazine, Reclaim--though you can read them on Medium:

And of course there's always the Transportation Alternatives Bike Forecast, which is curated by none other than Your's Truley.

I truly do put the "semi" in "semi-professional bike blogger."

Secondly, as a middle-aged dad living in the cycling backwater known as New York City, I'm pretty out of it.  As such, I only just learned that Shimano has announced the world's first dedicated gravel component group:

I suppose there was a time when I'd made fun of this--you know, back when I was funny.  Now, however, I simply root for the bike companies whatever they're selling.  Gravel groups?  $1,100 hardtail mountain bikes for kids?  Fixed-gear carbon fiber gravel-specific recumbents for your laid-back bikepacking adventures?

Hey, as long as it's not a helmet, I say bring it on.

Moreover, as far as the gravel stuff goes, what's not to like?  I mean yes, it's easy to laugh at gravel-specific shorts, but if the Freds need a special word to make it okay to use clothing with more pockets then who am I to complain?  Plus, when it comes to drop-bar bikes, component makers have traditionally offered lots of nearly identical stuff that differs only in price.  Mechanically speaking, the differences between, say, Dura Ace and Ultegra are virtually meaningless.  So the fact that you can now have the option of a single-ring setup with a clutch derailleur that doesn't require any kludges or workarounds is pretty cool.

Granted, I'm not particularly crazy about the name--do you pronounce "GRX" as "Gurcks" or "Jerks?"--but that's just a minor detail.

Nevertheless, while I'm no longer particularly angry at the bike industry (there are much better industries to be angry at), I still find the cyclists themselves incredibly annoying.  Specifically, in perusing the comments sections on the various Internet posts about these new components, I've noticed disturbing new phenomenon:

Humblebragging about how low your gearing is.

See, it used to be that everyone was using gearing that was way too big, and that was annoying enough.  Now, however, it seems that everybody's running gears that are too small in order to prove what rugged terrain they ride and how much crap they carry.  As far as I can tell, with GRX you can run something like a 31 in the front and a 34 in the back, and yet I keep seeing commentary along the lines of, "This GRX gearing is not low enough!  I have three WolfTooth adapters on my long-cage derailleur so I can run a modified 53-tooth front chainring as my lowest gear in the rear, and I've got a 13-tooth rear cog bolted onto the spider of my front crank, which is what you really for the climbs around here--especially when you're carrying a pour-over coffee maker in the pocket of your Rapha gravel shorts."

At this rate the low-gearing backlash is all but assured, and when that happens I've got two words for you: "fixie bikepacking."

Finally, speaking of fixies:

(Via the Twitter)

The Luna Fixed is a fixed gear styled electric bike. For the uninitiated, fixed gear bikes are generally minimalist frames lacking cable clutter and have their pedal input rigidly connected to the rear wheel without a freewheel, meaning if the bike is moving then the pedals are moving too.

But while old school fixies may be a timeless classic, the Luna Fixed offers a very 21st-century twist. A 400 W mid-drive motor and 250 Wh battery are both hidden in the 6061 aluminum frame of the unassuming bike.

Looks like a pretty cool bike, but I'm reasonably certain neither the designers nor the writer of the article have ever seen a fixed-gear bicycle before.