cyccommute 

They couldn’t go 12 mph because of the washboard. I, on the other hand was going close to 30 mph with a dual suspension mountain bike. It only took me 8 minutes to cover 4 miles

tomato coupe

If you were going 30 mph, then the other bikes would only be going about 8 mph or less. Were the other riders beginners?

Maelochs

Right vs. wrong tool for the job. Severe ruts or washboard? Sure, an F/S MTB rider could blast over them as if they weren't there, letting the suspension suck up all the impact, where a rigid-framed rider might find that the increased impact outweighed the increased speed.

Wrong vs. right tool for that particular job.

No different than saying, "I rode though the foot-deep sugar sand on my fat bike like is wasn't there, while all the guys on skinny-tired bikes bogged down instantly." Or, "The people in dress shoes couldn't keep up with me once we hit the frozen river because I was wearing ice skates." Or for the automotive sorts, "My Group B rally car roared through the course at very high speed while the guys in their rail dragsters broke to pieces at the first big rocks."

@cyccommute needn't be saying he is some cycling phenomenon, nor that the other riders were novices. They simply had the wrong tools and he had the perfect tool.

Having ridden all sorts of bikes in a lot of different situations .... I am sure you have tried to pick your way through a root bed on a rigid bake, where each root, all at different heights and angles in three dimensions, tries to throw your bike in a different direction, and going quickly is simply impossible---the repeated and unpredictable impacts from every direction make speed impossible, whereas a F/S rider can just power over the section, hitting the biggest roots for traction and letting the suspension handle everything else.

Doesn't sound implausible to me ... but that's just me and I could be wrong, or the whole thing could be a fantasy. Don't take my word for anything. Ask AI ... AI knows Everything.

base2 

A gravel bike is a subset of bikes whose design optimizations & trade-offs are tailored to a specific use case. For which there have been many, many examples shown in this thread.

For your claim that it's all hype & marketing, I challenge you to show a TT bike in service at a mountain bike park, or a BMX bike at a road race...All bikes are tailored to a use case.

How many mountain recumbents are there?

Yes, marketing happens. Savvy companies see a niche and fill it. But, be careful not to put the cart before the horse. The line between flat-bar 1985 Stumpjumper and drop-bar 1987 Rock Combo or the venerable MB-1 and XO-1 has been very blurry for a very long time.

Jeff Neese

Exactly. Rivendell does not make bikes for racing of any kind. His focus is on bikes "for the rest of us" - the unracers. High quality, practical, lugged steel frames, etc. I haven't looked lately, but I don't think any of their bikes have disk brakes, hydraulics, or any tech that isn't relevant to anyone except racers. I don't think they even sell bikes with any kind of suspension.

Definitely for people that do not consider "performance" in any way but do want a bicycle that is fun, practical, and will last forever. I would guess that a very high percentage, possibly approaching 100% of all Rivendell bicycles ever sold, are still on the road.

The Atlantis is probably king of all touring bikes, being made today. One could make the case for other models being "best in class" as well. Just not in the world of bicycle racing, that's all.

livedarklions

Did you know that mountain bikes can be ridden on not-mountains? These are different forms of all-terrain bikes. The label I find confusing is flat-bar gravel bikes.

livedarklions

When you think about, every bike is a bike of compromises. Making it better for one function will make it worse for something else,

cyccommute 

I don’t know what their skill level was. I also didn’t time them so it wasn’t exactly 20 minutes. They were stopped at a turn-off for a campground in the area (way down off the main road) that is about 4 miles from the top and I don’t know how long they have been stopped to, perhaps, get some feeling back in their hands. My point, which you and other seem to be missing, is that I could travel at a significant multiple of their speed down the same hill. I’ve done this ride many multiple times since the 80s in cars and on bicycles from rigid to full suspension. Full suspension is faster and far less painful.

Google maps says that the distance can be covered by bicycle in 13 minutes which is 18 mph which I consider optimistic on a rigid and slow on a suspended bike. Oddly, they list the same time for a vehicle which I would consider about right given that the road is almost always heavily washboarded in that area.

Further, I’ve ridden rigid mountain bikes on thousands of miles of trails and marginal roads. I won’t say that I’m one of the OG guys of mountain biking but I’m certainly on old guy who has ridden mountain bikes since he was a young guy and since mountain bikes became something that manufacturers made in large enough numbers so that the rest of us could buy them. My first one dates to 1983 and it got pounded into the ground…literally. I still have a number of mountain bikes in my quiver and I still ride them. I can ride gravel on my touring bike if I like but, for the most part, I don’t really like to. I’ve done my time and, if the changes that are happening to gravel bikes are any indication, so have most people. When you start adding suspension and flat bars to a “gravel” bike, at what point does it just become another mountain bike?

cyccommute 

Exactly! Picking your way through a couple of hundred yards of rock garden while feeling every…single…bump…over…and…over…and…over…and…over…again or trying to ride washboard where your teeth clatter together so much that you end up on a soft food diet is something that I just don’t find particularly appealing any more. Been there, done that, got the cracked teeth to prove it.

cyccommute 

Nope. That’s a standard hard-tail mountain bike with drop bars. Something that Jacque “Alice B. Toeclips” Phelan and John Tomac tried…and failed…to pioneer in the 80s.

unterhausen

We have some of the best gravel anywhere here in Happy Valley, which makes up for the pathetic football team. Promoters from all over hold events here. We also have good mountain biking. If you lived somewhere else, a gravel bike might not make much sense, but it does here. The gravel here would normally be under snow right now. I haven't been up in the mountains, I assume it's clear.
You can even ride a 'bent on our gravel. This picture was taken on some double track.

Koyote

So, you want us to believe that you were able to travel at nearly 30 mph for four miles on a heavily washboarded road, and the gravel riders maxed out at under 8.5 mph. Umm, sure.

Ahh, here's our Paul Harvey moment - the rest of the story. So maybe they did travel faster than you thought. Or maybe they stopped to take photos, or fix a flat tire, or take a piss. And maybe you weren't going quite 30 mph.

Again, I understand your point. But you undercut yourself by using a completely unbelievable example.

rydabent

Oh Im quite familiar with gravel riding. From the 3rd grade to the 9th grade I rode on gravel to school. It was a mile and 3/4. I got my fill of gravel riding during those 7 years. Since I was small, for the first few years, I rode a bike with 24" wheels, and then to a Monarck with 26" wheels that probably weighed 45 pounds.

Maelochs

I Really do not want to start a further argument here, but i do want to reply to this post. I apologize if I ruffle feather, but .... there are different views.

(Besides, you totally missed or dodged my point ... )

Rivendell does not make bikes "for the rest of us." At least as far as I know, Rivendell makes a specific sort of bike (with a few minor varieties) for a very limited audience. That is fine ... but Definitely not for everyone.

Really well crafted pieces of period design is how I will describe them. Not necessarily the best for any job, but refined examples of old-school bikes.

I don't race and except for a very, very few occasions decades ago, never did. I still like light bikes ... I don't need them but I enjoy the,

I also like sturdy bikes .... and while my light bikes are light, they cannot carry racks, and fifty pounds or groceries or camera gear or camping gear. So I also like bikes which can ... with them, I still like them light, but it is a different scale. Racks and metal frames are going to weigh more ... but more than what? More than bikes in different categories. Irrelevant.

I do Not like heavy bikes. There is no need to a bike to weigh a lot unless it is under-designed or ridiculously overbuilt ... or like a downhill bike, where weight is almost wholly not an issue. As for my bike activities, I have a limited amount of power and lugging excess weight is already something I do all day long ... I don't want my bike doing it too.

Also, having countless miles on flat-bar bikes, I know that for Most uses I prefer drop bars. Yes, one can do very long rides on flat-bar bikes, I have proven that. I prefer drops. Just preference, but then Grant Petersen's bikes are all about preference too, just a different set of preferences.

For me, an "anyman" bike would probably have an Al frame with a steel or CF fork, depending on the application ... and there are CF touring forks, which would be what I opt for ... save a quarter pound here and there, and the bike is a little easier to carry up stairs .... or ride up hills.

I like lots of gears--I want the bike to be as fast as I want to ride and still be able to climb the last hill on the way home when fully loaded. I like having the right ration for the situation .... so 22, 24 or 30 ratios is welcome to me.

Grant Peterson's bikes are more paeans to his personal vision of practical artwork, and That he does very well (to the best of my knowledge.) (He is also quite good at telling others how to think about riding, how to ride, why to ride, and why everyone who does it other ways is wrong, but that is alright .... it's his life and they are his bikes.) I don't buy into his philosophy. And since people can have more than one bike ... why Not have bikes which do different things better than a generic bike.

What Rivendells do best is look really cool and ride okay in low-stress environments. I sure wouldn't take one grocery-shopping.
Steel frames are a valid option. Not always the best for the job, but a valid option. I will never sell my '84 Raleigh. (Ahhh ... but it has drop bars ... rejected by Rivendell ... ) But just being made of steel doesn't make a bike better or worse.

Disc brakes are relevant to a Lot of people. You don't like them, but a lot of people do ... and Not just people who are in the grips of Big Bike.

I used to know a guy (he moved far away, so ... ) who was a long-time rider and racer ... he took up cycling after a divorce as a channel fro stress and ended up making it a huge part of his life. He was fit, he worked hard, he raced (though once he hit about 70 he stopped doing bunch sprints) and he also rode around just to be on a bike, riding.

I just happened to ride by him on the way to the store (he was walking his dog---had he been riding all I would have seen was his rear tire dwindling away into the distance) and we talked a while.

He told me he wouldn't even look at a bike without hydro discs any more. For him, even as a pure road rider, the immense ease of application and modulation---one-finger braking and such---far outweighed any weight penalty. If his non-UCI-compliant 14-lb road bike weighed 15 pounds now, or his personal ride-around ride weighed 18 or whatever ... worth it to him.

On another hand, I spent all day yesterday photographing road-racing and a Lot of riders had rim brakes. The ideas that "All racers use discs" or that "Only racers use discs" are nonsense. Discs are not manna from heaven; nor are they evil. They are a valid alternative to other brake systems.

And on my MTB .... discs are Awesome. I have done cantilevers and v-brakes, and discs, and discs are Way better in situations where brake control is really important.

As for suspension ... what is wrong with suspension? Anyone who rode MTBs back when they were steel bikes with slack forks and wide tires remembers what Cycccommute mentions above---the teeth-rattling, vertebrae-smashing hammer-blows from trying to cross really bad terrain. For some applications suspension is Awesome.

For those prices ... yeah ... but the fact that people who want that Very Limited riding and ownership experience value it a lot doesn't mean it is "for the rest of us." The market for Rivendells is significantly smaller than the market for say, MTBs with suspension or bikes with discs. People want MTBs with suspension, and people want road and off-road discs. Not a lot of people want what is basically a really well refined 1957 Chevy with slightly modern running gear.
https://www.rivbike.com/products/frame-new-atlantis yeah, um .... no. gain, while I have done long rides on flat-bar bikes I vastly prefer drop bars ... and for serious touring I want clip-on aero bars so I can rest and ride.

Not even close to "the best" for my practical touring needs.

Is it a really nice bike of its type? Absolutely. Very pretty bike. Practical tire clearance and an XT drive train. V-brakes, which are good IMO, because for a long ride I want cable-operated brakes .... I can rig cable brakes is a cable breaks crossing the Mojave or something, but I cannot rig hydro brakes.

A "case can be made" for anything ... sometimes a valid case. In this case, Rivendells suit your sensibilities and aesthetics. Great.
***************************************
So ... you realize, I hope, that the point I made about how we all did everything on our old Schwinns ... was that we can do everything Better on slightly more specialized bikes.

Rivendells are tarted-up early-60s Schwinns, sort of. Really nice to look at if you like that sort of thing, and they offer that riding experience, so if if you like it, great. Really nice bikes, IMO. I have not the slightest desire to own one ... on the other hand, I go to hot rod shows and bike races and see a Lot of vehicles I would not want to own but think are amazing.

Maelochs

Dude ... you are the SOURCE of this whole gravel phenomenon ..... which you yourself have to admit, is nothing but a marketing ploy.

All those rides to school were really just commercials to later on sell people bikes they didn't really want or need.

It is all Your fault.



This is either one of the most twisted, cynical, ironically humorous posts I have ever read---reaching almost beyond my ability to comprehend in its sheer comic perversity----or you are the least self-aware person on this planet.

Either way ... keep riding and keep liking it. Have a great whatever you choose.

wolfchild

Exactly...Drop bar MTBs is nothing new. I've done it myself on two of my MTBs before bike industry invented "an official drop bar gravel bike" but after riding it for a while realized that riser bars with bars ends provide better handling and control and are no less comfortable than drop bars so I went back to risers and never looked back.

Polaris OBark

Irony is dead.

(It's an Advocate Seldom Seen drop-bar steel mountain/bike-packing rig that has both a rigid steel and a front suspension fork as options).

I have a real gravel bike FWIW, but this is better in the California slush.

Jeff Neese

[quote=Maelochs;22812876]The phrase "for the rest of us" is mine. He uses the term "unracer". I assume you haven't read his book. His position is that the sport of bicycle racing has done more to hurt the rest of the cycling industry by promoting things that most people don't need. Don't count on me to accurately represent his positions - just read it. You won't agree with everything and maybe not very much. I think if Grant reads these forums, he'd say that's fine with him and you're not a good candidate for a Rivendell bike. Nobody's going to try to tell you differently.

There are many people that ride only around their neighborhood or on the local paved MUP, maybe some organized group rides or something at most, and they're never going to get anywhere near an unpaved trail or gravel road. But they're riding bikes with suspension forks, big heavy MTB tires, disk brakes, and way too many gears. I see them every time we go to the MUP. So why did they buy those bikes? Is it marketing? Is it the salesman who literally don't have anything else to sell them? Or because they just automatically assume that a bike with a suspension is better than one without, and that more gears are automatically better than less? Probably a combination. Bike manufacturers have to move product, and the only way to do that is to add new features. Many of those features are of no use to the average rider and the money could have been used for better materials, construction, etc.

You mentioned price but I would contend that Rivendell bikes aren't really that expensive when you consider what you're getting. They may not not be for you, and you're saying they're not, but there is a waiting list for a reason. Hint: it's not because people just want retro styling and are willing to pay for it. Maybe ask some Rivendell owners what they think.

Here's a video. Observe how he built his bike - he calls it a "poor man's Rivendell" and it has nothing to do with styling. I'm much closer to this guy than I am any racer, and have also built bikes with the "Rivendell philisophy" in mind. It looks like a perfect gravel bike, to me.

cyccommute 

Don’t believe it if you want. I have the GPS data for how fast I was going. I also know that they had stopped 4 miles from the top of the pass for some reason and they weren’t off the bikes. It only took me 26 minutes…without stops…to ride from the top of the pass to the bottom, a distance of 8 miles. Yes, I know that is only 18 mph average but the steepest, fastest part of the road is the first 4 to 5 miles. It flattens out and has some climbs after that.

My point is that I didn’t have to stop half way down the pass and that suspension significantly increased my speed.

tomato coupe

Maybe they had been stopped for 20 minutes …

tomato coupe

“Best in niche” would be more appropriate.

Maelochs

No, nor shall I . I have read enough excerpts to understand his point, and I do disagree. He thinks that he is the only guy who "gets it." I don't do cults. He does make really nice bikes, though. yeah ... I think this is BS. However ... every idea, whoever reasonable, can be overextended until it becomes ridiculous.

For instance ... by numbers, By Far, the greatest number of bikes bought int he US are bought at Big-Box stores, for children or aging adults and most of these people either buy what the kids want---the crappy fake MTBs with worthless suspensions because they look cool to children---or cheap hybrids or beach cruisers for adults who want a bike to lash to the back of the motorhome to tool around the campground, or around the neighborhood after dinner. These folks are all "unracers." And simply don't care about the marketing hype or Grant Peterson.

In other words almost None of the people who actually buy bikes in the US have ever seen any sort of advertisement or commercial for bicycles, nor have they seen any bicycle races.

Do a lot of people (whatever "a lot" means) buy bikes to try to look like the Tour de France racers they see in whatever medium? possibly ... and does the bike industry make a lot of bikes based on those bikes? Yes, perhaps ... but They Sell Them. People Buy Them. If you have ever run a business ... yeah, you sell what people buy or you go broke.

Might I point out that a lot of bikes sold are also hybrids and cruisers? Because we are not interested in those bikes---made by the same major manufactures we accuse of only making pseudo-race bikes---we don't pay attention to those bikes. and all those folks are "unracers."

In fact, a lot of bikes are MTBs, another market segment which doesn't interest us much here ... and since we don't discuss them here we act like they don't exist. Grant Peterson is himself talking exclusively about road bikes .... so his position gets more tenuous the further back we step and the wider view of the bike market reality we explore.

Even if we look at road bikes ... i am sure you recall the "Bike Boom" of the early '70s, when everyone wanted a "ten-speed." Was it because they looked cool? In part. It also happened that they worked really well. Again almost nobody was watching bike racing, which barely happened in the US and was Not televised, ever. Even the Grands Tours were hardly mentioned in any mass media. People weren't buying drop-bar ten speeds because of racing, but because they liked the bikes ... just as a lot of those same kids wanted Sting rays back when those were the cool bike ... and I hope no one is saying the Sting Rays were based on race bikes.

before the Sting ray craze, the coveted bike was the "English Racer," and Rivendell-style steel bike (all bikes were steel bikes back then) with usually a Sturmey-Archer three-speed IGH. At that time racers had been riding drop bars for several decades, but it wasn't until the '70s that drop bars hit the mass market. Whatever.

Yeah., grant Peterson is a very well-spoken and highly opinionated Luddite/Retrogrouch who thinks the bike industry peaked in the late fifties, apparently ... good for him.

Ya think? Nobody's going to try to tell you differently.

No it is ignorance. Most of those bikes are Not sold by salesmen,, they are picked off rack at big-box stores.

Further ... and I have seen this here, and so have you---a lot of new riders want suspension not to ride offroad, but to have a plush Cadillac ride. They want to plant their butts on a seat, not sit over a saddle, and they want to spin effortlessly, not use their legs to suspend their weight. They know nothing about bikes and can't be bothered to learn.

I cannot say if they assume the bikes with more bells and whistles are batter, or whatever ... but these are not people being swayed by "marketing." These are people who haven't done enough research to even see "marketing." And you know what? Despite your telling them they don't need all that, or that they have too many gears ... if they are happy, what is Your problem with that?

We have all seen those folks who don't even know how to shift, have 7- or 8-speed triples and just shift the front ring or whatever ... but if they are happy, what do I care?

As you say

But here I disagree:

Bike manufacturers are not trying to move those products with new features, because the people buying those bikes don't have a clue what is new or old and what any of that stuff even is.

Bike manufacturers keep coming up with new products, standards, etc. every year for the Much Smaller percentage of riders who know about bikes, who would know what features are new and which are not. And as far as those people are concerned, they know better. If they don't think they need the latest upgrade, they don't have to buy a new bike or new parts. Some folks can and do ... most don't. but so what? That is business. Nobody s Fooling these people. They know they had Bike Acquisition Syndrome, or whatever.

At the races yesterday, I saw a lot of cutting-edge aero bikes with all the latest ... and a lot of last-year's model, or a few years old bikes ... not everyone can or wants to buy the "latest, greatest." some folks do. And sorry, but it is not some evil crime or conspiracy to give customers what they want, or to tell them the new stuff is better. "lLand of the free, Hone of the Brave," but we are being victimized by the evil bike industry? Nonsense.

Auto manufacturers have played this game for decades. Where is the outrage?

As for price, I have to agree. i did the research, and the bikes are not as overpriced as I had thoght (Horrors ... this one has Drop bars. Clearly Grant Peterson is in the grips of Big Bike,. What a sellout, using that useless racer-inspired technology (https://www.rivbike.com/products/homer) )

So ys, Rivendells are really fairly priced. I was wrong about that.

However ... you and I both know why some people want them so much ... because some folks buy into his pop philosophy, and see themselves as rebels, or "freethinkers" who have escaped from the grip of "Big Bike," ... and because some people appreciate well-crafted classic machinery. A lot of custom builders have more work than they can handle. People on this site have recently shared experiences about buying (very modern) custom bikes form noted builders and having a multi-month waiting list. So are all those bikes also "the best."?

The fact that Rivendell is a small shop and cannot keep up with demand doesn't mean that those bikes are "better" than any other bike. it just means that there is a market for them. Different people like different things, and some people like those things.

During the pandemic, there was a severe shortage of "Big Bike" bicycles ... does that mean that Those were the "best" bikes .... nope,. Sorry, the fact that there is a waiting list doesn;'t mean that those are the best bikes, just that they serve a specific segment of the cycling public.

Nothing agianst Rivendell. The bikes are truly beautiful, and for people who like that sort of thing ... great stuff.

I knew a guy once who built wooden canoes. Wooden canoes are arguably less functional than metal or fiberglass canoes ... he built them as handmade works of art and sold them to people who wanted handmade works of art. The only"better" thing about them was that they were handmade works of art. As canoes, they were nothing special.

As bike Rivendell bikes are nothing special. they do not do "Bike" better than any other bike. People who buy them are not buying utilitarian "functional bicycle which meets my needs." People are buying them because they are Rivendells.

Nothing wrong with the bikes. Nothing 'better" about them--as bikes. But as handcrafted works of art, they are what they are ... throw in how much people like the Marketing ... and like it or not, all that philosophy is also Marketing, just like Big Bike does ... and a lot of people find Mr. Peterson's products hit home.


Many,many more people do not ... but awesome for the folks that love the bikes and can own one.

Eric F 

Accurate. I was going to add that to my post, but decided to keep it short.

squirtdad

same here.... drop bars or something like a north road style bar where plam face in toward the frame, not faceing forward toward the direction the bike is going. for me wrist pain its at about 5 miles

tcs

As are 'gravel bikes', by necessity. "Gravel" is not one thing. The differences can be regional or depend on just turning left or right. I've seen pictures of folks riding gravel that looked smoother than Texas chip seal. Then there's this:



Misters Udden and Wentworth, call your office.