gravel bikes ⁽⁹⁾

With a fleet of six bikes, of which three are surface-agnostic SUBs, commonly better known as gravel, all-road, or adventure bikes, I didn’t need another one this year. But when I first spotted the Marin Gestalt X10 last November, I knew I had to get one. The bike is slacker than my FortyFour mountain bikes, with a 67.5º head angle. Reach is 63mm longer than my Nordest Albarda and 68mm longer than my Volagi Viaje. The Gestalt’s wheelbase is 95mm greater than the Nordest and an enormous 124mm more than the Volagi. It’s a massively different bike. And that’s the reason I bought one. Some time down the road, I’d love to design the perfect SUB frame for myself. It only makes sense to go down that path with years of cycling under one’s belt, which I have, and countless hours spent on a wide range of bikes. And that one can never have enough.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it - If something is reasonably successful or effective, there is no need to change it. German speakers would say “Bewährtes soll man nicht verändern.” When it comes to cycling, most of us often stick to that. We ride something, like it, and we’re therefore rarely willing to change it. I have for a long time ridden the same type of road bike. There were incremental changes such as more gears and lighter and more aero frames, but in the grand scheme of things, these improvements weren’t all that world-shattering. That changed with my first Volagi Viaje. I started exploring things outside what is considered a “road bike.”

The bikes I ride on pavement or gravel are more than road, all-road, or gravel bikes. They are efficient, practical, surface-agnostic bikes that bridge the functionality gap between road and off-road. In this post, I want to look at the geometry of the bikes I have ridden in the last nine years.

I started gravel grinding years before it became a thing in Switzerland. At the time gravel-specific bikes didn’t really exist so my first two gravel bikes were pure cyclo-cross bikes. I did a bunch of gravel riding for seven years and then moved on in…