Gravel bikes

I rekindled my love for cycling last year after I bought a new-to-me Suly Midnight Special and started doing some gravel riding in our local foothills and mountains. I bought the Surly mostly because I love Surlys and have always wanted a more nimble steel bike. I’ve had a Surly Long Haul Trucker, which is steel, since 2011 and it’s probably been the best bike I’ve ever owned. It took me to-and-from work every day for years. It has taken me camping (and still does). It takes me to the grocery store and anywhere else I want to go that requires carrying stuff or keeping my feet dry. It’s old and a bit out-dated, but I love it.

As for the Midnight Special, it has that bullet-proof feel only a solid steel bike can provide. The huge tires eat up bumps and bad pavement, yet it’s still agile enough to make it fun to ride. I absolutely love riding it both on the road and on moderate gravel. As I got more into gravel riding, though, especially in the local foothills/mountains, I began thinking about getting something a bit lighter. Anyone who rides bikes (or motorcycles) knows there’s no perfect do-all bike. You have to make trade-offs. The Midnight Special is solid, yet fun to ride. But it’s a little heavy and doesn’t have the most relaxed geometry. So it can get a little sketchy on “the gnar,” as they say.

I spent a fair amount of time researching bikes and came across some pretty cool ones that were direct-to-consumer only. Lauf, which is an Iceland outfit, has a really unique gravel bike that features their famous (or infamous, depending on your view), front fork. Their Seigla is billed as more of a racing bike and it doesn’t have any mount points for bikepacking so I kind of ruled that one out.

I also really like the looks of the Trek Checkpoint although it’s a bit more expensive than some of the other options (I think you pay a premium for the Trek brand). However, having access to a local dealer that can provide support appeals to me so I haven’t ruled out a Trek.

The other interesting bike I found was from a company in Utah named Fezzari. Well, they were named “Fezzari,” but recently changed their name to “Ari”. They’ve been saying that they wanted to “Better articulate our identity” with the name change, but I think it’s because so many people hated the name Fezzari. The comments in nearly every review or Reddit post about their bikes would spin off into a conversation about how horrible their name is and how folks would never buy one of their bikes because the name is so embarrassing. I wasn’t nuts about “Fezzari” but it didn’t bother me enough to not consider buying one. They have a carbon gravel bike named Shafer, which might be a sign since that’s the name of one of our cats (who is named after the local mountain where I do most of my bikepacking and gravel riding). It looks like a really solid bike that checks all of the boxes for what I’m looking for, except the direct-to-customer bit, I guess.

I told myself and, more importantly, my wife, that I was not going to succumb to the urge to buy another new bike this year and just stick with the Midnight Special since I think I can make that work for the rides I’m doing. As I mentioned, it can be a little sketchy on some of the really rough stuff, but I tend to be pretty cautious so I’m not too worried about it. I still have my old Look 585 for road rides, which I do occasionally. It’s on its last legs, though, so at some point I’ll need to get a gravel bike that works well enough for road riding, too. Maybe 2025!