Wild Lobsters spotted in the Sonoran Desert

Sweetwater Preserve, Tucson Arizona

 

Tortolita Preserve West

 The Tortolita Preserve, in Marana Arizona, trail system wanders up and down arroyos making an interesting and fun ride.

Winter riding in the Sun

When the temperatures in the upper midwest drop below freezing the sun is warm and the sky is blue in the Southwest. There is riding to satisfy every skill level of rider in Tucson, Arizona. 

The Sonoran Desert Saguaro forest is a lush habitat of survivors. Plants and animals evolved in many different ways to high temperatures and low water.

One of our favorite trails is at the Tortolita Preserve in Marana, AZ.

 

What do you get when you cross a Fat Bike and a MTB bike = B-Fat the Devin Lenz Fatillac

 

For traveling I have found that I just have too many bikes. Each with a specific purpose, they do a great job for me but it is just not possible to bring them all along.

I also have found I am needing a little more suspension to cushion my spine when mountain biking. So in doing some research I found the Mid-Fat or B-fat category of bike. These bikes sit smack between a Fat snow bike and a mountain bike.

They can generally support a 26x4.6 or 27.5x3.8 snow tire and for summer a 27.5x3.8 or 29x3 tire for trail riding. It makes for a very versatile  general purpose do everything off-road bike. This new bike and my Carver Gravel bike together let me do any kind if riding I want and it fits on top of the car.

The frame I found is made by Devin Lenz in Colorado. He is a builder that specializes in 29'er and snow-ski bikes. He has been building for years and knows his business.

I was concerned about buying a bike unseen and unridden but luckily this bike fits me perfect and I really love riding it. I have been a big fan of plus sized tires since I got my Carver Gnarvester 29+ and this bike continues that tradition.

It is time for me to simplify and this bike helps allow me to continue to ride the trails I like without the baggage of too much stuff.

Take a look at Lenzsport:

https://lenzsport.com/

Converting a Cyclocross BIke to Gravel using the Kona Jake CX

 

Converting a older cyclocross bike into a gravel bike can be a great way to get into gravel riding without the harsh price tag. Cyclocross racing bikes are essentially gravel bikes with one big exception. Cyclocross has always been happy with around 32mm tires when the new world of high performance wide tires allows gravel riders to use much bigger tires. So determining if your cyclocross to gravel conversion candidate is a good choice is finding out what the widest tires that can be used. That is not always an easy task. Previous owners may have never used anything over 32mm tires so they may not know what will work. 

Do some google searches for your choice and see if you can find any posts from people who have used your candidate for a gravel conversion.

In this case my choice was the 2012 Kona Jake CX offered on ebay for $689. I found references that it might support at least a 700x40mm tire. It turns out it supports a 700x43 with room to spare. It makes a great cross to gravel conversion.

 

 

Carver ALLROAD custom titanium gravel bike

I found I loved gravel biking through Germany and Italy on my Cinelli Zydeco gravel bike but I hated the disc brakes. They just plain don't work as well as rim brakes despite lazy journalists repeating the marketing hype over and over until people believe it.

Since the disc brakes are so bad I had to find an alternative but it is not easy. The marketing world has converted everyone to road bike discs whether they want it or not. It is hard to find rim brake rims, rim brake hubs and rim brake forks.

I finally went to Davis Carver to see if he could build me a gravel frame with cantilever studs. He said sure. So I snagged the last new old stock Enve cantilever fork on the planet and waited for my frame. I like working with Davis because he does a great job of communication and he checks my requests for foolish mistakes. He also delivers incredibly fast by custom bike standards at just 90 days and his prices are very competitive.

The frame arrived as promised and I set it up with Hope RS4 rim brake hubs with a campy cassette in 135mm spacing. I laced them to HED Belgium plus rims and mounted Gravelking 700x50 tires. The frame had plenty of clearance for the tires but I had to get a number of examples of V Brakes to find a pair that had adequate clearance.

It rides beautifully. It feels road bike responsive on the road and is cushy comfy when I dive off the pavement. It fits me perfectly and it is fun to ride on the road but also on anything including mountain bike single track, to the point that you really need a suspension fork due to drop-offs.

So if you have not discovered gravel biking you owe yourself to find out what it is all about.

Davis Carver can be found at bikeman.com and he offers two different gravel bikes. The Asian made ALLROAD I purchased and an American made Gravel frame. I choose the Asian made offering because of the wide variety of options you can select, like my cantilever studs, the travel couplers and custom geometry.

Gravel Biking in Germany Austria and Italy

We did our first major cycling trip with our new gravel bikes. I LOVE it!

In previous years we have enjoyed the fantastic dedicated bike paths in the Veneto region of Italy. These are paths that are separated from the road, paved and wander through vineyards and apple orchards for hundreds of miles.

I found an online tool called Komoot at www.komoot.com. Komoot does for hikers and cyclists what google maps does for cars. It's a router that allows you to set a starting point and a destination and then it will find a route for you based on whether you are a hiker, a road cyclist, a mtn biker or, in our case, gravel cyclists.

The fantastic thing about this is that Komoot sewed together the separated bike paths with small roads, gravel trails and vineyard paths to create a route that was 600 miles long and was 70% separated from the road. We got very spoiled not having to ride with traffic. The route took us from Munich, Germany through the Austrian Alps and over the Italian Dolomites of the Alto Adige.

The walled city of Mariostica, Italy

This was a very different trip than we've done in the past because we embraced the ultralight backpacking techniques that bikepacking has borrowed from backpacking. In previous trips we used our folding road bikes and pulled trailers which weighed about 60lbs. This trip we used bikepacking bags and all our gear and bags weighed 25lbs. That light-weight setup makes a huge difference when you're climbing.

I'm totally sold on gravel biking. The siren song of these new gravel bikes is a tune that speaks of lightweight road bikes with quick, fun responsive riding but with wide tires that can go anywhere. The paths we traveled went from smooth pavement to almost mountain bike gnarly and the bikes did a great job in every trail condition. On the pavement they still felt like performance bikes rather than heavy touring tanks. Yet, when you head off the pavement, they are still fun to ride and give you a secure connection to the surface.

I could easily give up all my bikes for my one gravel bike. Except for the brakes. I believe that disc brakes for road bikes are a con job created by marketers to get people to spend more money on brakes that are inferior to what we have been using for decades successfully. I hear the same lies being passed all over the internet about how superior disc brakes are on road bikes. It is my experience that it is just not true.  After spending months adjusting and trying to get the disc brakes on my gravel bike to even function at all, and taking the bike to multiple bikes shops to see if they could make them work, I have given up. In the Alps the rotors on the disc brakes got so hot going down long descents that my gloves would smoke on contact when checking the rotors for overheating while stopping every 100 yards to let them cool down. The brake pads lasted only one long ride before they would have to be replaced. This is on rides we've done before with caliper or v-brakes and with heavier loads without incident.

So I am getting a new gravel frame built with V-Brakes.

I highly recommend gravel bikes and gravel biking. It is a way to get off the road onto paths that are peaceful and safe without having to deal with car traffic.