Recently I was on the YouTube and the ol’ algo served me a video in which someone asks a bunch people at Sea Otter whether or not we’ve hit “peak gravel:”
Now even without watching it you can probably guess whether or not “industry insiders” think we’ve hit “peak gravel.” (And if you can’t guess, the answer is, “Absolutely not! The supple-tired gravy train will never stop a-rollin’!”) However, I’m not sure this is the right question. Consider this guy’s response:
He’s from Bridge Bike Works, with which I was not immediately familiar, and he makes the good point that people often accuse the bike industry of wanting to sell them more stuff (An industry that wants to sell stuff? What nerve!), but that having lots of options is good for customers. He then talks about their “Surveyor,” which he notes is good for “90% of road to fast gravel:”
Now I’m not saying the Survey is a bad bike, at all. Yes, it’s an expensive bike (the frame alone is $5,500) but if it’s the bike you want and you’ve got the money than that’s all that matters. Whether it’s a boutique carbon gravel bike or an uber-deluxe Rivendell you’ve run through the Ultradynamico/Rene Herse/White Industries/Nitto garden, if you wanna go balls-deep on your next bike purchase then by all means go for it. It’s certainly a lot better than throwing your money away on something that will erode your humanity, like drugs or an Ivy League education.
What I am saying however is that this whole “Gravel bikes open up a whole new world of possibilities for new riders!” is starting to sound like a real load of crap. A Surveyor isn’t going to mint more riders any more than the high-end road bikes of yesteryear. A race bike is a race bike, and it doesn’t automatically become more accessible just because it has more tire clearance. Some people buy their first road bike and never ride it because they thought it was cool but it turns out it was weird and uncomfortable, while for others it’s the start of a lifelong love affair with cycling. I don’t see why gravel bikes are fundamentally any different, and despite the much-touted versatility I’m sure plenty of entry-level fat-tired flared-bar machines will wind up languishing in suburban garages hours from the nearest gravel road, forsaken by riders who found the handlebars uncomfortable and who never bothered to bring them to the shop after the brake piston started sticking and instead just went back to the Peloton.
So I don’t think the question is whether or not we’ve hit “peak gravel.” I think the question is the Passover-adjacent “Why is this bike different from all other bikes?,” and I think the answer is that it isn’t. Bikes for roads and trails and multi-day tours and all the rest of it are nothing even remotely new, nor is the fickle and delusional consumer. Gravel races are no more or less accessible than the criteriums of yesteryear, and for all the talk of “diversity and inclusion in the gravel space” for most people who live in cities and suburbs and have full-time jobs and families these events might as well be on the moon. Ultimately some people are cyclists and some people aren’t, and I don’t think today’s bikes are any more or less likely to unlock your inner cyclist than the bikes of yesteryear just because they have a few more millimeters of tire volume.
Speaking of the road bikes of yesteryear, I’ve been riding this one a lot:
As someone who’s embraced steel and friction almost completely in recent years it’s a rolling testament to my hypocrisy. The integrated shifting…
The crabon cockpit…
The wheels with like six spokes…
And of course the frame made from not one…
…but two expensive materials that are not steel:
Bu what can I say? It’s a great deal of fun to ride, and its nine speeds transport me with a flick of the wrist right back to 2003, when I was at the very peak (or depth, depending on how you look at it) of my own roadiedom:
But I’ve changed a lot since then, and one way in which I’ve matured is that I now stop while riding and pay attention to the natural word around me. In fact, as I took the above photos, I became aware of movement in the Saw Mill River:
It was a brown furry mammal of some kind, plying the waters:
I didn’t know what it was, but I thought maybe it was a beaver, so I climbed over the fence and went after it:
As I did so I realized I was leaving behind a fancy road bike that did not belong to me:
However, sometimes in life a man must choose between bike and beaver, and in this case I opted for the latter.
Boldly, I pressed on, even though I was wearing road shoes:
And while I lost sight of the beaver (assuming it even was a beaver) I did see the sort of place they like to hang out, at least in cartoons:
Beaver dam or random pile of crap? I have no idea.
Anyway, while I may not have gotten that beaver shot, I did at least get a picture of this jawbone:
If you have any idea what kind of animal it might have belonged to please let me know.
