bushtrucker profile

Thanks for the reality check Andrew. As someone who rides GX/XT level at best this tech is a few years away from affecting what I ride, if that. In the meantime it does make me enjoy riding my SS hardtail that little bit more. Hard to beat the original hanger free design.

This post sponsored by SRAM or what?

I'm running patina'd black on the hardtail, and polished on the full rigid. You can have it both ways. I much prefer the way parts look when they're all beaten up, in black or silver, and this preference extends to pedals. So my next pair will be black for sure.

Hunter Smooth Move High Rise for sure. 3" up, 15 back. Rick recently upped the width to 780mm too! Less than half the weight of an equivalent bend Cromo bars. I'm biased as I got 'em on 3 bikes.

I do have Sunrise Bars on my cargo bike because they're cheaper, look sick and I don't care how much that bike weighs. They're noticeable stiffer than the alu Hunters for sure.

Yeah 2.1" is actually my preferred gravel width. Mostly because the roads here in Southern Australia are very corrugated and lower pressures than what you can run with a 40mm ish tyre makes a huge difference. I hadn't considered inserts for gravel riding prior to reading this article thouhg, despite running one on the rear of my hardtail for the last year.

Love this Mike. Really resonates with me. A decade ago I started commuting and quickly got into long distance touring. I grew up playing lots of different sports and although I didn't ride bikes through my teenage years I was taught that having the right kit was important. So  lycra and clipless shoes it was. The funny part is that wasn't even how I wanted to look—I used to carry jeans and casual shoes on the bike with me to change into—it's more just that I didn't think a proper cyclists could dress any other way.

It's took a while to get there but these days I ride almost exclusively in work boots, work shorts and old t-shirts. For longer rides merino (boxers, socks, shirts) make a difference and for the most part I don't feel any less comfortable on the bike. But I damn sure feel more comfortable off it. It's far nicer to walk into the pub after a 100 mile ride and not gain any attention. Without the full kit I feel like less of a "cyclist" and more of a person with a bike.

Great article. We have so far to go with this stuff.

As far as packaging goes I've noticed a trend where smaller companies that run their own factory seem to do a far better job of keeping things simple (and recycle-able). Paul Comp, White Ind and Wheels Mfg spring to mind with their nicely designed cardboard boxes. And RaceFace and Hope for reusable plastic zip-lock bags. I'm sure there plenty others. Oh, and I've emailed companies about packaging in the past and most of the time received a "thanks, we're working on it" reply. Whether or not that's true or not remains to be seen but at least they can acknowledging they're part of the problem.

As someone who thinks they're too old go get into DH riding this makes me think again. Great read!

Canfield do a bunch of affordable cranks in 155 that you could try.

Yeah cheers, all over that one!

I guess I would consider 90% of 'gravel' bikes being sold at the moment (including this Specialized) to be in the "road bikes with slightly wider tyres" category and hence my preference of the word all-road there.

I do like the term ATB — which is slowly gaining traction — because it's leans more towards a MTB style bike which I think is better suited to proper mixed terrain riding/touring anyway. I have a 2014 Karate Monkey MTB that when set up with 29x2.1" tyres is a fantastic 'gravel' bike, among other things. But convincing people to buy up decade-old XC bikes to fill out a new cycling category isn't a great marketing strategy.