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Gravel - Please help me "get it"
Gravel - Please help me "get it"
Quote:
Originally Posted by
alfajores
Gravel biking is mountain biking from the 80's. But with much more expensive equipment than anyone would have considered smart in that era. Plus the tires can be a lot bigger now.
I recall riding a full hard mountain bike in the early 90s on the exact same trails we now gravel ride. That was called trail riding. We hike-a-biked our rides up and down the rock gardens we encountered and even had frame bags and stuff sacks on our racks. I had friends who did the same in Marin and Santa Cruz on 700c bikes in the 80s with the biggest tires they could fit, dropper posts without remote triggers (release below the seat), and eventually, the first front shocks on these bikes. Suddenly, gravel bikes emerge from burly road frames in the 2010s and now we are getting ruby front fork suspension or headset suspension, dropper posts, and even mountain or hybrid groupsets.
History repeats itself.
As the klunkers of the 70s would say about us mountain bikers in the 90s. [emoji849]
I spent $550 on my first mountain bike in 1990. It was a basic steel stiffy with low/mid grade components. That’s almost $1500 in todays dollars. You can find plenty of entry level gravel bikes for around $1500.