Darth Lefty 

A gravel bike is a bike like that old "sport touring" bike but I can buy it today brand new in a bike store. It has the benefit of another 40 years of refinement in fit and ease of use and it's absolutely barnacled with braze-ons, which for some reason were out of style even for bottles in the mid 70's

My '76 P-10/9 Paramount really struggled with a 630-32 Paselas. It might do ok with 622-32 but any bigger, nope, definitely not with fenders of any kind. The brakes were at a level that allowed tubulars and 27" clinchers so it will take either without a problem. It has eyelets for fenders and an RD cable stop but nothing for shifters, racks or bottles.

Salamandrine 

Yeah, he rode Avocet 28 slicks. I guess early on, before my time, everyone was on sew ups. He was a very skilled bike handler. It took a lot of effort to just stay on his wheel on single track, fire roads, whatever. For that matter any roads. Jobst was a very strong rider, which most people that haven't been on these crazy epic all day mostly off road rides don't know. I was fortunate enough to go an a handful of them. In retrospect, I wish I had gone on more, but I had other priorities at the time.

These rides were a big but little known influence on the development of mountain bikes, and by extension, gravel bikes. I don't think you can talk gravel bikes without a mention of this. Some nice pics here.

https://us.ritcheylogic.com/us_en/bl...ibute-to-jobst

ThermionicScott 

More like a Sport Utility Tourer!

bikemig 

That's a terrific post by Tom Ritchey on Jobst. It was well worth reading.

rhm

Yesterday I took my latest plaything...



which is a classic Dutch racing bike Gugifacazione with 26" wheels and a Suntour S1 derailleur (and one of these days maybe a thread of its own on this forum) out on some trails near here.

Mostly crushed stone, very smooth, but in places it gets interesting.




And one of the trails is unfinished, still a rough doubletrack farm road with occasional sprinkling of gravel, Anyway, yesterday I rode it on 26" tires around 50 mm, which was great fun, and it was the first time I'd ever ridden back there.

So today I took out a sports tourer (specifically an Armstrong Moth from about 1950).

It has 30 or 32 mm tires, and I wasn't running them at very high pressure. I took the same paths, but I went the other way around so I wouldn't recognize much. Well, both bikes were fun. Neither one let me down. The 50 mm tires were a lot more comfortable than the 30's! There was nowhere I could go on 50's that I couldn't go on 30's. I felt faster on 30's, but probably wasn't. I felt in better control on 50's and probably was. Today I noticed a couple sandy turns where I was a little concerned... which I did not notice yesterday. Not a big deal.

Either bike, I could feel every bump. On the fat tires, you feel the bumps, you know the bumps are down there... but on skinny tires, they actually try to hurt you.

A bike with skinny tires feels more nimble. It feels lighter. You have to ride it lighter, which means a more aggressive ride where most of your weight is on your arms and legs most of the time. That's a good thing when that's what you want. Well, I find that after enough hours in the saddle, that's not what I want.

Piff 

I think you owe us a clearer picture of that suntour drivetrain after the teaser pic. Does it shift no different than a regular derailleur?