Vitara wrote:Gravel Bike - What an awful idea?
I'm glad I don't take much credence of the advice and the opinions handed out on this forum.
I chose a Gravel Bike...
It was chosen because the specification exactly matched what I was looking for in a bike.....
Hang on, you are hook, line and sinker swallowing the gross misrepresentation of some people's views that is being ladled out by some folk posting in this thread.
The idea of a do-it-all bike with low gears is not a bad one (even if it isn't always executed perfectly, 1x gearing being a case in point which certainly won't suit everyone).
What some people find laughable is the marketing BS that accompanies all this;
of course you should choose a bike on its merits but when you see so many folk trudging sheeplike into bike shops and bleating 'I want a gravel bike' without necessarily knowing why, or whether other types of bike might suit them as well or better, or even if the thing they walk out of the shop with even
is a gravel bike, then you know something is wrong....
Very many riders start out thinking 'gravel bike' -for no readily apparent reason- and then once their riding styles, needs and budget are examined in more detail end up buying what they call a gravel bike or perhaps something else, something that better suits their actual requirements.
I note with interest that some bike retailers don't always even use the term 'gravel bike' in their bike descriptions, presumably because it is not that helpful for the bulk of their customers. For example Wiggle have a category that they call 'adventure bikes' which includes things that most folk might call gravel bikes but it also includes other bikes that look more like touring bikes with a twist, road bikes that will take fat tyres, and bikes that look like those bikes if you squint but are actually aimed pretty squarely at commuters. You can call none or all 'gravel bikes' for all anyone cares....
So...
Q. what's in a name? That is how this thread started.
A. Absolutely nothing whatsoever.... It is just an artefact of language, more than a cohesive concept per se. Nothing to see here....
So when you walk into a bike shop, if you are going to bleat anything, you would be better to bleat 'I want a bike that will do XYZ', not 'I want a gravel bike', especially if both you and the salesperson don't even know what the term means....
I now await various idiotic, twisting responses to this post (which BTW is likely to be my last in this thread which is increasingly lacking in anything to commend it).
cheers
