Friday News And Views

SBT GRVL, amongst other Colorado based events, cancelled for 2020.

2020 Is Cancelled: Part 2- 

This past week saw the cancellation of a few major gravel events, mostly Colorado based, as the uncertainty surrounding the recovery from the pandemic continues.

The SBT GRVL, Leadville, and the FoCo Fondofest all went down on the same day as officials in Colorado detailed their plans for social gatherings through the Summer. Large group gatherings, not only in Colorado, but in other areas, are being frowned upon as fears of overwhelming local medical facilities, who are already under pressure from handling COVID-19 cases, as well as fears of infecting people, have been voiced.

Events through August seem to be affected and many people are looking at their schedules wondering if this will start to affect Fall schedules as well. Obviously, no one knows anything at this point. The best bet is to keep your ears close to the ground, contact promoters/Race Directors, and be prepared to have a fluid schedule. At this point, I would think it might be best just to write it all off and look at 2021.

Some are saying smaller events are going to be the ticket here as they will be better able to handle social distancing and medical facilities won't be put under pressure. However; I wouldn't count on that either at this point. Secondly, there seems to be a lot of virtual challenge type things being set up in the meantime to help riders get their ya-yas out this year. Some are pretty creative.

SRAM AXS makes a splash with low range drop bar gearing options.

SRAM AXS Gearing Goes Lower:

SRAM announced its answer to Shimano's GRX this week with an addition to AXS. The addition included a new crank set, 43/30 ratio, and a similar slightly outboard chain line, ostensibly to deal with shorter chain stays and wider tires preferred by drop bar riders on adventure bikes. While this was introduced in the Force level, many speculate that a Red level system is not far off.

Comments: Welcome to yet another bolt circle diameter and proprietary chain ring set up. Hooray! (sarcasm) And you'd better like 43/30, because that's all you get. Yes- there are other SRAM crank sets, but they all are wide range doubles or 1X's and you cannot mix and match rings. Boo. People are saying this is great because you get lower gearing. (?) What happened to using your cassette to get some help? SRAM gives you a 10-36T 12 speed cassette here. Really? Why not stick with larger chain rings and use big rear cassette gears, like, ya know......Eagle? Sheesh!

This whole move to get people wider gearing ratios with double crank sets would be met with derisive laughter circa 1980. People would point to your folly and tell you that using a triple ring crank set would be far more elegant and solve your problems in a more efficient manner for the cyclist. But......you'd need to understand how to actually use a triple ring crank set. Most people cannot figure them out.

As far as shifting concerns with triples, park those concerns at the door. Modern technologies you take for granted on your double ring set ups, especially Shimano, have not been applied to a triple crank set. High end triples pretty much disappeared ten years ago. SRAM XX in 2010 actually shifted awesomely. If adventurers need wide range- fast gears and wall climbing gears- you cannot do that in any more efficient and elegant manner than with a triple crank. This is where we need to go. Heck, make it electronic, with SyncroShift mated to a close ratio cassette. It'd be so good you'd never go back to wide range doubles.

Oh! And one more thing. Drop the proprietary crap already. 

LOOK 765 gravel bike- This one is the DK200 Limited edition model.

 LOOK (!) It's a Dirty Kanza Limited Edition Bike!

French bicycle manufacturer, LOOK, has been making a gravel bike for a while now. It's their 765 model in carbon. It's a unique, racy rig, with limited (to 40mm) tire clearance and a pretty slack, for gravel, 70.3° head angle. But now......

You can get one in a very limited edition Dirty Kanza 200 version. Yep! This ain't no Salsa Cycles Warbird here folks! This is a high-falutin', honest ta goodness rare bird here! In fact, they are only offering eight of these babies at a cool 8K asking price.

You get the above mentioned SRAM AXS 43/30T crank with the 10-36T cassette, new Corima carbon gravel wheels, which retail for over 2K on their own, and tha cache' of riding one of Europe's storied bike brands.

I dunno about you, but this whole gravel bike, gravel event, premier this and that, it's gotten waaaaay outta hand. I mean......this is a freakin' doctor/lawyer rig. It's a cool bicycle in many ways, but...... Wow. Does this tell you that the whole Pro roadie thing is really in a down cycle or what?

By the way, there are other LOOK 765 models available at nearly half the price of this DK200 Limited edition model, just to be fair.

From the back room of some defunct Cedar Falls bike shop.....

 Got Any Bikes For Sale? 

This pandemic thing has disrupted the market for bicycles in a major way. The shops with inventory will clean up in the short term because stock lists are so low now most items are gone until late Summer. I see a few shops that had the horsepower to pull in pallets full of bikes, and then there are others sitting with empty racks. Consumers are telling me that they cannot locate recreational fitness bikes in our area. Used bikes? Pffft! Rare as hen's teeth in most locales.

One of the longest term bicycle blog sites, "Bike Hugger", Tweeted out the following on Wednesday:

"Hugga's site traffic is up 41%. If I saw this coming, would've prepped a handful of purchase decision validation videos that said, "Yes, you did great buying that $800 bike from your local shop." Even better getting one repaired Keep riding it. "

Truer words have not been Tweeted. To add to that, we're seeing the dustiest, barn-rotted bikes I've seen in a long while. People are pulling down 20+ year old bikes which, for all intents and purposes, look barely ridden, to get them up and running for some use during these socially distanced times. All great stuff, but as the country looks toward "opening up" and what not, can this mini-boom be sustained? 

While there is a lot of 'hope' being expressed that this will stick with a lot of folks, here's some reasons it may not. First of all, the bike shortage, in the near term, will bite a lot of potential for making cyclists in the butt. You cannot get a bike now? Well, you go do something else. Then there are all those mart-bike purchases, which, as we bike nerds know, tend to turn people off more than on, because of the inherent issues these bike-shaped objects have. We've already seen a bit of disappointment over these things crop up. I expect to see a lot more in the coming weeks and months. But all that pales in light of the worst thing against making more of these seekers into cyclists for life.

Bicycle safety and lack of infrastructure. If where you live was not all that bicycle friendly in 2019, then when things start to go back to normal again, you can expect that unsafe/unfriendly monster to come back again. What do you suppose that will do for the newer converts? I'm betting it will be a big ol' "turn off". 

Hope I'm wrong, but I'll be surprised if a lot of these bikes don't find themselves gathering dust once folks get back behind the wheels of automobiles again. 

Have a great weekend! Get out and make some memories.