OldRailfan

The neighbour across the street wised me up to one route in our corner of the world and told me what a killer it is. OK there I went - I'm a "few" years older than him - on my hardtail 27.5 DeVinci.
Yes, I was quite happy to have those extra gears on the 15% climb on broken up pavement and the extra grip on the tires on the gravelly downhill that wasn't quite as steep as the climb, but very curvy.

shelbyfv

This. With the obvious exception of smoked meat....

unterhausen

I guess I'm missing something with smoked meat. Just never had the occasion to eat any

shelbyfv

I'm thinking BarBQue, smoked turkey at Thanksgiving, brisket.... Maybe it doesn't mean what I think.

rosefarts

Its tasty enough. I’m thinking about the people who spend their whole weekend home smoking something. Seems like an insane use of time if you don’t own a restaurant. That’s not really my problem though.

Metieval

Because you never had a turkey leg at the Renaissance Fair. After riding your unicycle there.

*shrugs*

mschwett 

leave the cooking to the professionals, and the bike riding to the amateurs!

Darth Lefty 

Also, just in case you haven’t noticed, the US bike market has been reeling from fad to fad for about 55 years now, ever since muscle bikes. Before that, only delivery boys and a few weirdo grownups had bikes at all. This fad is not less valid by being newer.

The defining characteristics of a gravel bike make it a good bike generally. They are,

Wide clearance for wide tires, ostensibly for mud clearance but also useful for even wider tires and fenders on the road
Protected full run cable housings (or hoses)
Lower, wider, and more useful gearing, at or below unity at the bottom and no 53-11 baloney macho gear
fairly relaxed body position and steering geometry
Disc brakes, thank god finally

It’s happened in the past that a combination like this has looked pretty good to people who are used to bikes that were worse. 10 speeds looked pretty good to people who had beach cruisers and 3-speeds. They were fast and efficient and had lots of gears. But really the gears were too high and everyone rode around on the tops. First generation mountain bikes looked pretty good to people who had 10 speeds. They were easy to sit on and have even more gears. But when you put slicks on them the gears are too low and they are kind of pigs. So then we got hybrids, freeing up MTB’s to continue evolving suspension for we who wanted it. Gravel bikes are another step in that category. They have broad appeal beyond their base.

sincos

Yeah, well, it's been 110 since the Alcyon.


Garrigou on his Alcyon on the Col d'Aubisque, 1911 Tour de France. Photo from bikeraceinfo.com, probably originally from L'Equipe

There's your next big fad -- gravel fixie races with 300km stages! (Can't see hipsters at it though, they'd keel over dead)

So it has been prophesied -- Ecclesiastes 1:9

Darth Lefty 

Well this was a fun diversion. Speaking of keel over dead. This guy had to ride one stage in disguise having been framed for poisoning his closest rival in the race. Hipsters do tend to prefer hops and joints over cocaine, strychnine, and amphetamines like real old school riders.

wolfchild

I don't race but I've done hundreds and hundreds of recreational gravel rides on my fixed gear bikes. It's not a fad, it's how some of us choose to ride.

sincos

Indeed. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no thing new under the sun.

(What you say doesn't mean it won't be the next big fad. It just means you're ahead of the curve!)

Metieval

My gravel bike identifies as a 10 speed with more gears that is capable of all being ridden on all roads. Please don't call it a fad.

SkinGriz

It seems like you’re saying a gravel bike is basically just a good all around bike.
I want one, but this is coming from someone who’s never ridden a drop bar bike more than 50’ and I probably had a similar thread as the OP last quarter.

But described as you did, it sounds like a great idea.

revcp 

You just nailed absolutely every single biking category and subcategory. Nothing unique about gravel biking here.

Darth Lefty 

@SkinGriz they are a varietal of road bike so they got drop bars. I've never really gotten along with drop bars either and converted mine to flat bar, which throws off the fit a bit. There are a few examples flat bar gravel bikes per se. There are an awful lot of hybrids that are nearly there, though the nicer ones tend a little more to the road side with smaller tires and there's kind of a ceiling on how nice they get

Merrimac

Interesting comments. I did not know that gravel bikes had become a trendy, snob thing.

For me, my gravel bike is just a more versatile road bike.

The 38mm tubeless don’t need changing as often as my skinny tube tires, and are safer on winter-ravaged, New England asphalt, and for a lot of off-road situations—mostly single-track dirt in my area. The disc brakes are safer. There’s clearance for mudguards. And, like others said, the multiple hand positions on drop bars are helpful, especially for us septuagenarians with arthritis. Both my road and gravel bikes have aluminum frames, but the gravel 1x11 weighs 5 pounds more than the 19-lb roadie. That’s the only downside for me. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth it to spend double for carbon. So far, nope.

DonkeyShow

Soo gravel bike = road bike frame that fits bigger wheels to ride off road and hybrid = mtb with road tires?

SkinGriz

Thanks. I’m not anti- drop bar, just have zero experience with them.

It is a little weird to me that I rarely see anyone in the drops, but if I had more experience I might understand why.

Rolla

Don't put too much stock in those who pride themselves on being above it all by calling things a “fad” or a “trend.” It’s their own brand of the snobbery they pretend to decry.

mstateglfr 

It hasnt. One, maybe two posters have claimed that.

mstateglfr 

No.

Merrimac

The boundaries are blurry, which suits me. Now there are “endurance bikes” too!

unterhausen

I think endurance bikes came first, but they were fairly contemporaneous with gravel bikes. And endurance bikes have come to look a lot more like gravel bikes.

I think the people that say gravel bikes are a fad just don't recognize the source of their popularity. People want these bikes, they see all sorts of uses for them other than gravel. What they don't want is a tight clearance racing bike that would fit in just fine at the Tour de France*. It used to be that if you wanted a higher performance bike, that's what you had to get.

*if you want this, it's available so don't fret.

ssmiker

I think they are just hybrids with drop bars.