↑ Do you bike on any gravel trails as part of the 'forest preserves'? If so, a gravel bike is a good option, especially when that fine crushed limestone gets a little soupy at times. If not and you're 90+% paved, you may be better served by an endurance road bike (or "All Road" bike, as they're called in the UK) with wider tires. Examples are Specialized Roubaix or Trek Domane. Endurance Road bike tires aren't generally as skinny as they used to be. For example, the Trek Domane line comes on 32 mm tires, where 23, 25 or 28 mm used to be the standard. It does gravel fine as long as it's not soupy or the stones aren't too big. An advantage of the endurance road bike is that it's a lot easier to go faster than 15 mph because there is less air drag on the tires due to not having knobby lugs. Below 15 mph, I don't notice the difference, but above that, I do. On the open road, I find myself cruising at 16-17 mph on the Domane and more like 15 on the gravel bike. When conditions are right, 20-25 mph is no problem on the Domane, but is a monumental effort on the gravel bike. Typical standard tire width on a gravel bike is around 40 mm now. You can run less pressure for a smoother ride on gravel or bad pavement than you can on the 32 mm road tires. It would be faster than your Bad Boy Lefty, but not as fast/easy as a road bike.

Hmm. Speed and effort can be two different things. For example, at a given level of effort on your Bad Boy Lefty, you might be going 15 mph and with that same effort you might be going 17 on a gravel bike and 19 on a road bike. (with good road conditions) With bad road conditions or rough gravel, that same effort may yield faster speeds on the Bad Boy Lefty.

There is a wide range of options for tires on gravel bikes nowadays too. Some of them are more like mountain bikes with fat tires but less aggressive lugs on the tires, and some are narrower than the fatter road bike tires, but with a bit of knobbiness to them.

By the way, I'm just up in Kenosha, WI. If you're about my size and want to take a trip up here, you're welcome to try my endurance road bike and gravel bike. I'm 5'8", 31" inseam. We do a coffee ride from Kenosha to Zion, IL and back most Saturday mornings you could join us for that and try one of my bikes. The coffee shop in Zion is two doors down from an excellent bike shop, too! (PM me if interested)

I bought my gravel bike with the intent to make it a combination bike for commuting faster than a commuter can go, but can still handle gravel trails and bad roads better than my road bike. But when I'm mostly on pavement, the endurance road bike is the easy choice.