Wednesday, February 17, 2021

B.O.G. Series: What This Series Will Cover

 Who This Is For: The Basics of Gravel series (B.O.G.) will cover certain elemental aspects of riding gravel roads for the beginner, new-to-gravel cyclist. You maybe have ridden for years, or you may be just starting out. This is for you. 

What This Post Is And What The Series Scheduling Will Be: This post is to be seen as a "table of contents" of sorts. For now, you can look at this and see what you need to be looking forward to, and if some of the topics are of no interest, you will be able to skip those. This will run Wednesdays until the series concludes so dates are attached here for your convenience. 

Where You Can Access The Series In The Future: After the series is over, I will add the links to each post on a new page here on the site. Pages can be accessed from underneath the header image on this blog above this text. I won't populate the page or post it publicly until the series is completed. That looks to be sometime this May, (barring any more suggested topics for discussion), so don't look for that until late spring or so. 

A Note On The Topics; I chose most of the topics, so if I am missing anything, please make a suggestion in the comment section. That said, these topics will be covered in the simplest of terms and are aimed at encouraging people to ride. My main goal is to break down any barriers keeping people from riding. NOT teaching them about the finer points of tubeless tires, drive train maintenance, or why they shouldn't wear this-or-that. This is not THAT series, nor should it be.

Schedule And Topics

The Basics

February 24th: Why Ride Gravel?

March 3rd: What Bike To Use

March 10th: What To Wear

March 17th: How To Ride On Gravel

How To Be Self-Supported And Why

March 24th:  How To Be self-Supported And Why

March 31:  What To Eat And Drink

April 7th: What Accessories You Should Consider

April 14th: How To Repair A Flat Tire

April 21st:How To Lubricate Your Chain

April 28th: How To Clean Your Bike

Where To Ride And How To Navigate

May 5th: Routes and Navigation Basics

May 12th: Riding "Right" (Basic Gravel Road Riding Rules and How to Deal With Dogs)

Sending You Off

May 19th: Have Some Fun Already!

That's the schedule! I hope that it serves some folks well. Of course, many of you will already have a great idea of how to do gravel. That's expected, and this series may not be for you. However; you may know someone just getting started, or someone you have in mind that might like riding gravel. If that's the case, would you point this series out to them? It hopefully will be a help and encouragement.

Okay, with that, I will end today's post and next Wednesday I'll start off on the B.O.G. Series!

5 comments:

Okie Outdoorsman said...

A big issue I had when starting out was how to deal with dogs on the ride. Had to figure it out on my own through trial and error. Just a suggestion for a topic. Going to be a good series!

Guitar Ted said...

@Okie Outdoorsman - Oooo! That's good! I'll add that, thank you!

Nooge said...

I would suggest very basic bike fit info. Just enough to help someone pick an appropriate frame size, get seat height close and have the hoods/tops right. Yes, a bike shop can help here, but people may have bought a bike second hand or just be getting around to really using a bike they already had. Plus some shops are still operating in a mostly “take out” capacity.

Owen said...

Looking forward to the series, second the comment above re. bike info as I know lots of folks with fit questions.

About that headset: the Trek "Micro-Adjust" headsets were designed to be adjusted with ordinary pliers and will usually hold their adjustments just fine. You dial in the bearing adjustment with the knurled cup, then use a Channellock-type wide-jaw pliers to hold it in place as you tighten the upper locknut with an adjustable wrench. Back then thinking was most home mechanics might not have specialty headset tools. I usually put a rag in the plier jaws so I don't mar the knurled cup when adjusting, honestly I would have been totally happy with it on my Trek had the cups not been pitted.

Mac said...

I'm really interested. I grew up on hilly south central Iowa gravel, and had a decent wipeout with massive road rash as a teenager.

Now I'm in Chicago, with minimal gravel or hills, and am fifty years old and anxious around downhills (and dogs). Which means that I have avoided a lot of potentially fun rides.