So What Is Gravel Anyway?
Whatever you want!
While in Bend, riding a category-busting aero-gravel bike, I briefly took part in the comment thread of a Facebook rant from Tim Jackson, AKA Masi Guy. If you’ve been around the bike industry or bought a bike recently, he’s been within at least 6 degrees of that purchase. Here’s what he posted
I find it endlessly amusing that the original fun novelty of riding “gravel” or dirt on road bikes was due to having fun on “the wrong bike” in unorthodox venues. Learning new ways to have fun with an old friend, hopping out of the boring rut of the ordinary. Now it’s as highly specialized and focused as a track bike, and no longer an “adventure”- it’s as formulaic as traditional road cycling, but with disc brakes and wide tires.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fun, it’s just in no way the same “punk rock” freedom it once was. I remember gravel before it got all corporate and sold out.
If Tim was marketing or PR’ing a company with a gravel bike, he’d probably sing a different tune, but his post does capture the exhausted-by-all-the marketing mood of gravel, adventure, or what enthusiasts decide to call the next emerging niche.
The bike I was riding may have been the target of his post too, or one like it, cause riding a road bike, off-road on dirt isn’t punk rock anymore. Tim is right, the category totally isn’t punk. The most suitable music analogy is Jam Band. Because gravel is like a big-tent music fest, a unique culture, with eclectic performances, and freak flags flying high.
To best understand it, just ignore the copy sports marketers occupying an office cube write, because they only know how to sell fitness aspirations, world cups, and yellow jerseys. Because what’s really happening, is when bike design departs from racing, new possibilities emerge.
The bike Tim ranted about will run 650b/700c wheels and tires, with a width up to 55 or 2.1. Again, sports marketers endlessly confuses the market with wheel and tires sizes. What that means is, the U.P and Exploro will handle road or mountain tires; depending on what you want to do. So far, on the Exploro (pictured above), I’ve ridden single track, dirt, fire roads, paved roads, and even snowmobile trails, deep into the Deschutes National Forest.
I totally had my jam on too.
So what’s really going on with gravel is whatever the hell you want. It’s versatility, and a bike that’s 3 bikes in one; instead of another stretched-t0o-thin niche, like say Enduro…..
When we met at PressCamp, Gerard Vroomen explained it to me as, “Why do you need a second or third road bike?” You can have one that’ll do whatever you’re into that day. It’s like a Phish setlist: psychedelic rock, funk, reggae, hard rock, folk, and bluegrass.
How the Exploro and its sibling the U.P. accomplishes such versatility, is with smart engineering, and advanced carbon layup. The right chainstay is dropped and curved to stuff a mountain bike tire in there or road tire. So a cyclists can roll fast on the road with 700 x 28s, and then drop into some hero dirt, singletrack with 650bs, and 2.1s.
Put more succinctly, the Exploro is a Tarmac (a benchmark for road disc) with a few mm in the wheelbase, a half degree in the head tube; and double the tire clearance while offering an aero benefit, and lower weight. It’s a road bike that’ll go on dirt or pretty much anywhere else.
So gravel didn’t get all corporate and sold out, it just ignores traditional definitions and is for cyclists that aren’t into racing, but instead all the possibilities a bike presents. It’s not about the wrong bike either, but the right one, for whatever.
I’ll see Tim soon, at the bike industry’s annual convention in Vegas. We’ll talk gravel, what he’s working on, and what not. Also, our music preferences…..
Read more about the Exploro and U.P.:
