thehammerdog

The new Road Bike action has multiple write ups on the plethora of new and very cool and some actually affordable comfort/gravel bikes.
They did a nice comparison of the Trek Domane Vs. The Calfee Mantra....Both look great The new GT's and most evreyother brand are offering up very cool stuff.
I own a Bianchi C2C 928 full carbon comfort bike and love it.
But Disc brakes are calling my name.....

Terry66

When I built up my gravel/touring/commuting bike a few years back, I just had to have disc brakes so I went with Salsa. There really weren't that many disc brake options back then. I have no complaints with the brakes and they do stop better in my opinion, but if I were buying today it wouldn't be a deal breaker. They do have a nice "coolness" factor though!

NormanF

Today most people buy bikes that are comfortable and fun to ride.

My Schwinn Super Sport DBX country road bike is plenty fast enough but its not designed to win the Tour De France.

That fact is influencing the road bike market and then too there are performance hybrids that offer all the advantages of fast road bikes with none of the drawbacks associated with classic road performance bikes.

Northwestrider

It just makes me feel good that bikes of any kind are becoming that rage.

PaulRivers

Interesting, do you know if they've talked about the Volagi's at all?


I've been test riding a lot of bikes, and this has been the first one I've jumped on and ridden and went "wow, this really seems nice".

Trek Domane - bit of a boring ride. Handling a little slow for my taste (I like handling not being twitchy but being responsive). The 4-series had a dead feel to the frame, the 5 series I felt like was to stiff for what I'm looking for in comfort.

Specialized Roubaix - their older frame felt stiff like riding concrete. Their newer frame is nice but had twitchy handling (other people have disagreed with me, but that's how most Specialized bikes have felt to me and their newer models were just as bad as my own older tarmac - twitchy).

Giant Defy - I **loved** the handling on this bike. Unfortunately, it was also the only full carbon bike I road that still gave me road buzz through the handlebars, and a sharp kick in the seat if I went over bumps in the road. Didn't have a chance to take it for a long ride, but it seemed like they had a really nice frame design but cheap easy carbon.

Cannondale Synapse - definitely had a "ride all day" feel to it, but it was the only bike that didn't seem fond of putting power into it and going fast. It's possible I had one that's slightly to big for me or something, but most other bikes encouraged me to bike faster, while the synapse gave me more of a "well we can go faster if you really want, I guess" feeling. (I imagine actual speed was the same.)

I was going to try out the Bianchi Infinito, but it appears that the lowest price is $4600 for Ultegra (no 105 listed on their site). Couldn't find the c2c 928 listed on their site?

I'm actually not a huge fan of the disc brakes - between my mountain bike and my winter bike discs are always finding ways to rub while riding or squeal like a banshee when stopping - but otherwise the Volagi has seemed like the best blend of comfort without a boring ride so far.

SirHustlerEsq

Which bicycles are "uncomfortable"?

Slackerprince

I subscribe to Road Bike Action, and I guess I'm the grumpy old man, but they have been featuring too much gravel, cyclocross and other dirt-oriented bikes for my taste.
My concept of road bikes is defined by paved roads, I guess.
Looks like the lines between paved and not-paved road bikes is becoming blurred.

S

I <3 Robots

"Gravel grinders" are the rage now...just how fat bikes are in mountain bikes.

knobster

Who is "they"?

LesterOfPuppets

Surely they didn't call 'em comfort bikes, though. Cuz that name's already been taken by another subgenre.

Campag4life

So called comfort or endurance frames are all the rage for good reason. When Specialized invented the genre ten years ago, they saw the demand and created a product to meet it. Reality is, most regular folks who enjoy the speed of a road bike don't have the flexibility, strength or power to weight of a racer that can endure a racing fit for a two hour bike ride. They were right. Supply meet demand the rest is history.
I fit this demographic in fact after riding slammed racing frames for decades. My drop position on my Roubaix is in fact very close to the hood position of a good club racer. Guess what? Many club racers never use their drops because they aren't comfortable. By contrast my drop position is comfortable. So endurance geometry makes a lot of sense for the average rider in particular. Make no mistake, there are candidates out there for Tarmacs, H1 Madones, Foils and a myriad of short head tube bikes that pander to racers. But these bikes aren't practical for the average rider compared to a Roubaix, or Domane or Synapse or Defy or variety of other taller head tube bikes. Years ago, riders chose to ride larger frames with barely enough standover because they wanted a tall head tube and many hiked up their quill stem to get the bars even with the saddle because they weren't racing. With taller head tube endurance frames, now you can do it with more standover because of sloping top tubes.

PS: I am going to add a prediction here. I predict that Specialized or another top company is going to come out with supplemental electrical power on a road bike. This isn't the same as their Turbo bike. This isn't an e-bike...but rather a small say 500W motor integrated into the BB that will propel an average rider at the speed of a pro with say a 50 mile range that can be adjusted by a handlebar control based purely on pedal pressure...or turned off. That is my prediction moving forward. This is going to even the playing field for an average guy that wants to feel the power of a CAT 1 or pro.

rpenmanparker 

I can honestly say that I have never been tempted to ride even 1 mm on gravel. Bravo if that's your thing, but I don't get it. My goal on any particular ride is to cover a distance, and I find no shortage of paved roads that provide that opportunity.

rpenmanparker 

That is a very interesting prediction, and I think it raises an equally interesting question. Do you think such an "assisted" bike and its rider would be accepted on an "A" group ride? Supposing you are a "B" rider that can pull a paceline at 22 mph for a mile or two but have friends that hammer at 28-30 on stretches of their weekend ride. Supposing you can do 40 miles pretty easily, but they are doing 80 on a Saturday morning. Same for being just a bit deficient on hills. Do you think an assisted bike would ever be welcomed into their paceline to allow you to ride along with them? It would seem to be very much like golf, no? A handicap that allows all the guys to play together even though their capabilities are very different. I kind of like that idea, but knowing the psychology of the sport, I wonder could it ever work? Cycling is much less of a gentlemen's game.

Campag4life

Hi Robert,
Good question. Don't know. But tell you what happens to me. I do a morning loop near where I live and ocassionally run into an e-bike developer who is out riding his e-bike and we end up riding together and chatting because I am a tech guy and interested in his vision. Of course when we ride, I am pedaling and he isn't. His latest creation is a Police bike which is upright and will cruise at 20mph and has a range of '130' miles. Ungoverned it won't go quite as far but I proposed to him my theory and he said he thought the tech exists right now and possible that battery tech is going to take a quantum leap in the next 5 years...that means more power with less size and weight and will revolutionize electronic vehicles...reduce a car battery to the size of a pack of cigarettes for example. Will see but have to believe in the next 10 years this is going to happen and motor magnet technology aka super magnets will continue to improve as well. He said a bike maker can integrate a motor into the BB right now. His particular bike for example has a 750w motor bolted right to the down tube adjacent to the BB and it is almost inconspicuous. His battery is pretty big of course but this could soon change. Computer tech allows an algorithm to sense pedal force and/or RPM...this is here today....and so supplemental electric power can be added pretty seamlessly. I just see bikes having supplemental power in the future as electronics continue to infiltrate our lives. Don't know whether racers will embrace it or not. If they don't like it, you can always ride out in front of them.

bbattle

When I'm out riding, I often come to an intersection and the road to the left looks interesting so I go left. Sometimes, that is a dirt or gravel road. While I can ride a few miles down that road on my road bike, a gravel bike(road bike with fatter tires) would be a lot more comfortable so I can understand the allure of a gravel bike. My SS/FG Bianchi San Jose is a gravel bike; I put 700c x 28's on it.

In many parts of Alabama, there are more dirt roads than paved ones. The Cumberland Plateau of southern Tennessee has many gravel roads with spectacular scenery and I've found a number of them to be useful shortcuts to paved roads.

People have also found that these gravel bikes are very nice rides on the pavement, too. Which is what people like Rivendell and Velo-Orange have been preaching for many years.

lsberrios1 

To me there are two types of comfort bikes. In the road world, comfort bikes are those like the roubaix, synapse, domane. In the real world, comfort bikes are townies. I would not consider an E bike a comfort bike but rather an assisted bike. A rider riding an E bike should not be on the A group... they should be on the E group. TBH having an E bike in a "racy" A group sounds dangerous. I don't think it'd be fair to the A guys if showed up on my Ducati super bike either...

If the debate is comfort / endurance bikes over their racing counterparts I can say I ride a TCR Advanced SL and a Roubaix Expert. The TCR SL has better ride quality and the ISP makes it smooth as soap. Maybe it is the quality of the carbon though, since the TCR is roughly twice the price of the Roubaix. Even if the head tube is taller on the Roubaix I've gotten them both to within 1/2 inch of drop difference. I like them both but the TCR takes the win even on comfort. I've done some fire roads on the Roubaix to simulate a Paris Roubaix race and it's fun!