Bike Stuff

Gravel bike. What is a 'gravel bike'? It's lots of things. And I already had a pretty great one in the Salsa Cutthroat . The Cutthroat is at the hardcore adventure end of the gravel scene, bordering on a drop bar MTB. In fact, if you look at the bottom of the down tube, you'll see a map of the Tour Divide for which it was designed. Over the couple of years I've had it, I've set it up to do anything short of full MTB riding (including an hour-long bomb run descent down at the Grizzly Gravel ). It wears mountain bike 2.25" race tires some of the time. But for other rides, I've had a set of 38m, gentle knobby tires for more champaign gravel, sporty, or touring use.  But there's the trick:. I've also evolved the setup as a whole for good performance on rugged trails with a Redshift suspension stem and an PNW Coast suspension/dropper post and those MTB tires at the expense of a more nimble configuration. It is a great setup that can be used for so...

A restomod (restoration and modernization) mashup of a 1990 Ti frame, 2007 Campagnolo carbon/Ti group set, 2015 wheelset, and a few modern parts reassembled in 2023. Like many bike nerds, I've long wanted a titanium-framed bike. It has a reputation for a 'magical' ride feel, is light and just looks super cool. Purchased new, they are really, really  expensive. But, they are also known as 'forever frames' for a reason. Ti has a very high fatigue life and doesn't rust. If the frame was made correctly in the first place, it can last a lifetime. So I started looking for an older Ti frameset to rebuild. After searching for a while, I found a Litespeed (one of the early brands famous for Ti) frame in my size for a good price on eBay. Thanks to a cooperative seller and Litespeed still keeping serial number records, I was able to determine that it was a 1991 (actually built in 1990) model called "Classic Road". The frame had survived 32 years structurally s...