Crankworx Rotorua. Lukas Skiöld riding? Photo by Chris Sutton via Wikimedia Commons

Some guys watch football. Others will be all in on basketball, or ice hockey. Culturally? I should be an avid rugby fan, or follow an AFL team (Australian Rules Football), but meh, team sports just don’t really interest me as entertainment. And surprisingly enough, road bike racing, a la Tour de France, isn’t my jam either.

All that is to say, I watch slopestyle mountain biking.

It’s the first sport I’ve ever found that I look forward to watching (with the possible exception of surfing), where I know all the names of the riders, the dramas and the subplots and quite a lot of the history. Basically, slopestyle is a very niche sport, a sub-discipline of a sub-discipline of mountain biking. You can read more about it here in an earlier post but in short, I am making preview posts and postscript posts for competitions in 2026.

In 2026 there’s a new format for slopestyle, the Slopestyle Super League. In short, the old system of freeride mountain bike world tour rankings has been overhauled, allowing for a clearer path for progression for younger athletes and opening the field. In the new competition, events are ranked Gold (second tier) and Diamond (top tier).

We’ve seen the initial stops in Christchurch (Gold) and Rotorua (Diamond), in my native New Zealand, and this weekend saw the third stop at Kálnica in Slovakia (Gold). In the future I will do round-up posts much closer in time to the events, so things are fresher, so this is the last time I will include a postscript of the last event (Rotorua in this case) so long after the event took place. I also missed making a preview post for Bikefest Kálnica, although I must admit to having been less excited about it due to the lack of a broadcast to watch. You have to question some of the decisions made at times, especially by the FMB World Tour and other stakeholders. Instituting an entirely new format, obviously looking for new fans to grow the sport and yet neglecting to ensure that every event has an easily accessible online broadcast.

Thus, this report of a Gold stop on the Slopestyle Super League will be somewhat truncated (I actually had to open Instagram to watch some of the runs), as we wait for what will be one of the real highlights of the year, the Diamond level Red Bull District Ride in Groningen, The Netherlands.

Still! Rotorua saw a fantastic event in 2026, one that saw new talent emerge as well as some veterans stepping up their game:

-The women struggled in their initial runs in windy conditions, but there’s also something about the Rotorua slopestyle course that’s quite intimidating. I must admit to rolling my eyes at the comments I see online about the level of the women’s competition and immediately wonder if the person making the comment would be brave enough to drop into the course themself. The women struggled through the early round, before lightning struck in the second.

-Johanna Nausbaumer: Cam McCaul, veteran rider and commentator, said it best. It was a revolutionary run. Nausbaumer, in her first ever appearance at a Crankworx, took woman’s slopestyle to a new level and her run felt like the start of a new era for women in the sport. It wasn’t so much the technicality of her tricks, although that was certainly there, but her awareness of the need to trick every feature of the course to build a winning run. She’s only 17 years old, and yet she is demonstrating a maturity, in terms of strategic competitive thinking, far beyond her years. With that run, woman’s slopestyle as a whole seemingly shrugged of its rookie stage and got down to business.

-The men’s level of riding was consistently high throughout the day, with few wipeouts. One exception was Erik Fedko, who went down hard in his first run and rode his second run of the day with what he suspected was a broken wrist. Ben Thompson was sidelined after a ruptured spleen from practice in Christchurch, watching from the side of the finish corral, and no one—but no one—would have faulted Fedko for seeking immediate medical attention himself. The sport takes a toll on bodies, particularly that of Herr Fedko, but he is incredibly tough when it comes to riding out competitions with injuries causing a level of pain that would sideline a lot of other people.

-Nicholi Rogatkin: Is back in in form. A lot of people could learn a lot of things from him. Instead of feeling threatened by the flood of young talent into the sport, he has embraced the new riders and has allowed them to push him further, to reign his wilder impulses in and to post the type of scores that lead to podium finishes, like the ones he has enjoyed in Christchurch and Rotorua. He has been taking younger riders under his wing and helping them to train in his compound in the US, and he is genuinely happy for other riders to up their game, although that is not isolated. The reaction of the assembled field to Chance Moore’s last ditch trick was a credit to the sport in general and a solid demonstration of good sportsmanship. They were genuinely stoked to see it.

-Chance Moore: A world first trick in competition. Chance was in the wilderness for way too long for his level of ability, nailing down tricks like the one he successfully landed in the post-competition trick shootout. The new format will allow guys like him into the top level of the sport at a much earlier stage, but his years outside of Diamond events mean that has has come into the top level of slopestyle with a level of experience that few others have had at that stage of their career.

-Lucas Huppert: Posted his best result ever with a second place finish. His second run through the course may have been the best run ever seen in Rotorua? Perhaps not the most technical run, but I feel it may be one of the most stylish. It was incredibly inspiring to see hard work paying off like that and I am solidly on Team Huppie for the win. I really want to see him on the top of the podium and I know that he has what it takes to get there.

-Paul Couderc: To me, his Half-Cab off the flat drop of the starting gate was a massive vindication of the validity of the new format. It just felt like fun, and you know he had a huge grin as he completed the course, sans chain, after a perfect landing. That trick was probably the highlight of the day for me, after Johanna Nausbaumer taking the woman’s competition to new heights.

Rotorua was an unqualified success in 2026 and I am happy for the Kiwis. It’s a great way to start the season and the stop in NZ has seemingly solidified itself on the Crankworx calendar in a way that Cairns never managed to.

Still, onward, ever onward. Onward to Kálnica, Slovakia and Birell Bikefest’s slopestyle competition.

-In the female field, the Swedish rider Alma Wiggberg took first place, edging out Johanna Nausbaumer in second, with Natalia Niedźwiedź taking third. Harriet Burbidge-Smith took fourth place with Shealen Reno in fifth.

-The woman’s field is really exciting right now, as the speed of progression ramps up, with the European riders seemingly having a slight technical edge over their North American and Oceanic competitors.

-Robin Goomes, the Rotorua local, is right up there as one of the best female riders in freeride mountain biking, and with two Rampage victories under her belt, her direction into the future, i.e., away from slopestyle, looks fairly clear. Like some of the male competitors in the sport, she seems to be looking past the more technical sport to the bigger bikes and terrain features of freeride, after tasting success early in female slopestyle competition.

-That leaves the door open for the Europeans to battle for top spot. I can see a possible three way tussle emerging between Alma Wiggberg, Johanna Nausbaumer and Patricia Druwen for the top spot in the inaugural Slopestyle Super league. Wiggberg has aerial tricks nailed down, when she is on form, while Johanna Nausbaumer’s strength seemingly lies in putting a cohesive run together, although Wiggberg was looking very threatening in that respect in Slovakia. Patricia Druwen has rotation nailed, like Wiggberg, but more combos will bring her scores up.

-Alma Wiggberg famously trained with the Swedish crew, Emil Johansson and his close friend Lukas Skiöld, which is a heavy pedigree in slopestyle. The Swedish technician school of slopestyle dominated the sport on the early 2020s, and I have, in the past, called it Söderströmism, as Martin Söderström blazed the trail for later generations of Swedish riders and heavily influenced their riding. He was known for having a very technical style, as compared to the North Americans, and that whippy, almost mechanical approach, honed in heated indoor skateparks over the Swedish winter, saw Emil Johansson take Söderströmism close to its logical conclusion. I sort of see that in Alma Wiggberg as well, technical perfection at the expense of letting it all hang out in the bigger, risky moves of some of the North American and Aussie/Kiwi riders. She is one of the only women rotating and adding combos to her backflips currently, but I stand by what I say. Swedish riders will often go for trick accuracy while being conservative with larger moves. I wonder if we will see her come to dominate the woman’s sport like Johansson did in the early part of the 2020s? She has it in her I believe, but Johanna Nausbaumer does have a say in the matter and personally? I would not be betting against the young German rider. Wiggberg vs. Nausbaumer is the story I will be watching as the 2026 season unfolds, with Druwen waiting in the wings to take advantage of any slip-up.

-Shealen Reno seems to have had an off-day but her and Harriet Burbidge-Smith do have a real opportunity to upset things going forward. Reno has been very consistent, and she did pull her first backflip in competition at Rotorua in March, but she needs to step things up if she is to stay on the podium into the future. The standard of female competition is advancing at every stop, and right now it would be all to easy to be left behind by emerging competitors like the Polish rider, Natalia Niedźwiedź. Harriet Burbidge-Smith, friendly with Robin Goomes, is making a go of it in female slopestyle, but I really see her as being more at home on bigger bikes in heavier terrain. To me she seems like a natural freerider, rather than having to be more technically adept on smaller bikes in slopestyle competition.

And now to the men, with an absolutely seismic result in Slovakia.

-Chance Moore in first place, beating David Godziek and Nicholi Rogatkin, second and third respectively. It’s an upset, but it’s not really an upset, if you know what I mean. You could see it coming a mile away, but perhaps some didn’t expect his first winning run would arrive this quickly. Moore had not featured heavily in Diamond level Crankworx events until relatively recently, and for him to come into the sport as a relative newcomer and take first, over riders who have been in the sport for many years at the highest level, midway through his second season, is nothing short of an upheaval in the sport. There is a a changing of the guard underway, and Chance Moore is right there at the vanguard.

-With Chance Moore’s victory, you can see why the new format of the Slopestyle Super League was instituted. For years, the FMB ranking system made it so that those who managed to get into the Crankworx Diamond level events could be extremely difficult to unseat from their position, due to the greater amounts of points they earned in the higher level of competition allowing them to stay there. There are a slew of new riders, who, let’s face it, are demonstrably more technically gifted in slopestyle than some of the older names who were managing to hang on to their Crankworx places, new riders who were almost artificially kept out of the highest level of competition, like Chance Moore, by the old rankings system. You can clearly see that the new competition format has been instituted to allow guys like Moore to enter the higher levels of the sport sooner. He debuted at Cairns in 2025 and by mid 2026 he was standing atop the podium in first. There were riders in the field that took to the course in Slovakia who have been in Crankworx Diamond level events for half a decade or more who have never even thought about taking top spot.

-David Godziek: He’s the man to beat, but the big story at the moment is that the top of the field is wide open. It’s anyone’s to take right now and the final result is very much a mystery.

-Nicholi Rogatkin: He’s really in form right now, and if there is anyone who honestly deserves to be up there, it’s Rogatkin. The guy is the ultimate believer in a rising tide lifting all boats and he is the first to congratulate a competitor or to coach them through a particularly difficult trick. He genuinely believes in the sport itself, as well as his fellow competitors.

-Lucas Huppert: Is eyeing that podium pretty intently from fourth place. It’s only a matter of time before he steps up there again. Is he the most hardworking guy in slopestyle? Probably not actually, but he is definitely no slacker. He really works hard in the off seasons to come back stronger than the previous year and it’s really paying off for him in 2026.

-Dane Folp and Toby Miley in fifth and sixth, respectively. Dane Folp, the Aussie, is showing real promise, and Toby Miley, the young German mountain biker, is a realistic contender for the finals, along with Folp. The new blood is coming on strong.

-Paul Couderc, Ben Thompson and Griffon Paulson in seventh, eighth and ninth. Couderc has that real Gallic passion, but occasionally misses a cue, while the two BC boys are solidly in the middle of the pack. I always expected to see Griffon Paulson do what Chance Moore is doing at the moment, and you sometimes get the feeling that he’s going for tricks that are just outside of his wheelhouse and not landing them. I’ve always thought that he has a podium within him, he just needs to back off a bit and allow it to emerge.

-Tim Bringer is AWOL in 2026, healthy but taking a bit of a break I suspect. I really feel for the big guy after the day he had in Whistler, in 2025, when the Triple Crown was taken from him by a resurgent Emil Johansson, before the tragic events of Red Bull Rampage. We all have off days, and if there’s anyone in the world who he should be speaking to, it’s Brett Rheeder, who lived through the same storyline himself.

Lastly, Lyon Hyldahl, all of 15 years old and pulling tricks that just a few years ago seemed impossible, is riding strong in the Gold events. The future of slopestyle is in good hands.

I’ll see you all in Groningen before the 25th of July for the District Ride.

Riding into the rest of your life. For me it’s becoming a real preoccupation, and I know it weighs on some of my friends. I’m 50, I’m not getting any younger, and I want to keep riding for the next few decades; I would like to still be riding in my 80s. And if there’s one thing that’s becoming increasingly obvious, it’s that for longevity, in terms of cycling? Just riding your bike is not enough.

You need strength training.

Doesn’t matter what it is, either. In the gym, at home, machines, dumbbells, kettlebells, bag of rice, whatever. Lunges, squats, push ups, pull downs, you know the drill. For the bike you need to concentrate on your legs, but your whole body needs attention and your overall health benefits.

I won’t go into too much detail here, but there are a wide range of benefits when you start strength training.

-Your bone density improves. Because cycling doesn’t exert mechanical stress on your bones—your body is supported by the saddle—you need to keep your bones stronger to avoid brittleness and breakages in your latter years.

-You boost your metabolism, and cardio—your bike rides—works with that perfectly. You make your body more active, burning more calories.

-It’s great for your joints, in that it helps to build up surrounding muscle, offering your joints external support.

-It helps to exercise muscles that aren’t being used extensively on the bike, lessening muscle power imbalance, the potential for injury and improving posture.

-It helps with your mental state. I’d argue that there’s a huge contribution from cardio there as well, but once you’ve experienced the mental state you can access after exercise, you understand the attraction.

There are more benefits, probably many more. The main thing to know, though, is that strength training, weight lifting, resistance training, whatever you want to call it, is really good for you. And it’s even better for your cycling, especially as you age.

Resistance exercise, at any time of your life, is you investing in your own future.

There’s a cultural image of gyms, of guys hitting the weights—do you even lift bro?—and getting ripped. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, some weird American gym that buys pizza for people. For most of us, the path probably lies somewhere between the two. We’re busy, we need to be a little healthier, eat a little better and maintain our strength. I really think that for those of us pushing 50, or already here, there needs to be a new understanding surrounding gyms, and strength training in general, as being a way to maintain what we already have, even to lose a little bit (in the right places) rather than primarily to build. Or as a place to eat pizza.

You’ve seen the studies and you can find them within a minute on your phone. Men and women lose a certain amount of muscle mass every decade, you lose bone density, all that age-related decline. I’m really facing it myself, along with my entire Gen-X generational cohort, at the moment. For us now, in many ways, resistance training isn’t a way to get hot beach bod, it’s a way to maintain the muscle that we do have to be able to pick our grandchildren up in a decade or two, carry bags of shopping home, and not break our leg in a minor fall. So we can walk into our latter years and push back the need for walking frames, while avoiding those electric mobility devices for as long as possible. And hell, don’t get me wrong. A hot beach bod is still entirely possible for many of us, and will be for decades to come. You just need to work harder—much harder—than you would have had to work in your 20s.

And therein lies the rub, with resistance training. It can be hard. Hard to start. But oh, man, when you do, when you do. I mentally think of it as The Warrior and The Poet. They’re parts of you, and when you finally take that decision to get in shape and to start resistance training? The Warrior is ready. He’s a real useful guy, when you need him. Say if you’re chilling in your cave by the fire, the kids are playing before bed, you’ve eaten for the day, things are peaceful and nice, when suddenly a sabre-tooth tiger appears, intent on turning your children into its own dinner. The Warrior is the part of you that doesn’t think, just grabs a spear and gets between your family and the threat. When you gotta roll on that cat’s ass and take care of business, The Warrior is the guy you need.

Problem is, he’s as dumb as a box of hammers. Starting out with strength training? He’ll go out there on Day 1 and rip right on into endless push-ups, lat pull-downs, squats and lunges. Within days, due to Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), The Warrior’s enthusiasm—his stupidity and need for immediate action without considered thought—will leave you almost unable to move.

Here, we need The Poet. His (or her! You get that I’m male, so I personify these aspects of myself as masculine) energy needs to temper that of The Warrior. The Poet builds narratives, he looks to the future and thinks, where The Warrior acts in the moment. The goal here is for balance, for having The Poet write a sensible story about the future, about starting to exercise so gradually that it seems nothing has been done, while maintaining The Warrior’s interest, so that he might drive the narrative along in the lean times ahead, in the months and years to come.

There, in building narratives, I really think that like the enemy of weight loss, the enemy of fitness and health is almost entirely mental. We have a tendency to see a diet— a time of caloric restriction—as a period of temporary hardship, just as we might view a gym membership or weights program in the same light. We cut calories and work hard, losing weight, only to gain it all back as soon as we stop our diet and go back to eating like we did before. It’s the same in the gym, right? We make gains, with progressively heavier weights and increased reps and sets, until we pack it in and go back to a more sedentary pattern of living. The real secret, if indeed it is a secret, is that for change to be successful, for us to lose weight and keep it off, or to gain fitness and maintain muscle mass, is to rewrite the story that we tell ourselves. Consistency, maintaining our new habits, beats all else.

Another point here is thinking we need a gym or some special equipment. I have to admit that while I am enjoying the gym a lot, it’s far from essential. A huge range of bodyweight exercises are just a Google away and with minimal equipment you can get an amazing amount done. Everything really, you can do a full body resistance workout with nothing but certain movements and your own body weight. I marvel at the complexity of various machines in the gym, with multiple straps and pulleys. It kinda makes me laugh, though, you know? It’s a quintessentially developed world type thing, these rows of heavily engineered machines. Nice to have, but far from essential.

And that’s really all there is to it. To an extent, of course, I mean heck, you can go down as many philosophical and technical rabbit holes as you like, there being no lack of burrow entrances around the place. At the end of the day, though, strength training is good for you and if you want to ride bikes well when you’re older? It’s what you need to be doing in the present.

The war’s still simmering away, and the world has not had a clear resolution of the Strait of Hormuz situation. No, it’s not blocked physically, but the Iranians are playing hardball and the US Navy have not been having a great time of things. The short-lived plan to escort shipping was abandoned in the face of IRGC Shaheeds and small boats, while Iran is sticking to its guns. Or the estimated 70% of pre-war ballistic missile stocks they have remaining. The Strait remains closed for now, with the attendant lack of global energy flows and shortages of petroleum-derived products.

Things are about to get interesting all over, as strategic oil reserves start to run low and the planet is faced with the full ramifications of the crisis it’s been sleepwalking towards since late February. One of those will be the high cost of gasoline and diesel, especially for those who drive to their workplace every morning. My answer to that problem? Commute by bike. This is Cycling Counterculture, after all, and these are the Utility Files.

I started bike commuting seriously during the pandemic, when I wanted to stay away from subway carriages that were being cleaned at the terminating station by guys in full biohazard gear. That wasn’t an excessive precaution either, as there were plenty of infections traced back to the subway in Korea, when the authorities were still vigilantly tracking such things, before the omicron variant meant that everyone got sick.

I no longer bike commute as, after the pandemic showed it to be a workable solution, and in the interests of minimizing my company’s physical presence, my team went to 100% working remotely. I do have years of experience in bike commuting, but now I telecommute daily, after a gym session or a “home commute” bike ride in the morning. Thus, if I speak in the past tense about my own bike commuting, that’s why.

I would wholeheartedly recommend bike commuting for everyone, though, especially now, mostly post-pandemic, with a global energy crisis about to come crashing into all of our lives. While bike commuting covers a wide range of topics, such as fitness, disease prevention, and even spirituality, I’m going to focus on the more mundane, practical aspects here. Basically I’ll try to cover the more workaday aspects of getting to work on a bike, instead of diving down philosophical rabbit holes.

The Bike

The Bike You Have

Obviously you will need a bike, and the best bike is the one you have. But Mr. Mark, I hear you saying, I don’t know how to carry things on the bike I have. And that’s a good point, but really, a bike rack or bags become a minor detail, because there are ways to carry things that I’m going to get into below. The other thing I recommend is fenders. I’ve said it before, but when commuting, like touring, you do not always get to choose the weather. Some mornings and evenings you will need to ride through showers, over snow melt, through muddy patches, and the fenders will keep you and your bike clean.

If the bike you have has mounting points for racks and fenders:

-It’s just a matter of finding a decent rack and some panniers or a rack-top bag. Earlier in the Utility Files series I recommended the Topeak Super Tourist and Topeak rack-top bags and I still do. They’re commonly available in a lot of places where other brands may not be, and many of the larger Topeak rack-top bags have side pockets that themselves contain soft bags that drop down to form panniers.

-Ortlieb are a German company that now have a rear rack and all of the panniers. They can be somewhat expensive, but in general they are excellent quality and will last you for years. They also commonly have small parts available at their dealers so you can have repairs made, extending bag lifespans by decades in some cases. They’re smartly designed and very well-made, in a very Germanic way.

-Lots of other companies make racks, like Axiom, Nitto, Old Man Mountain, Salsa, Tailfin, Tubus, Racktime, Blackburn, Surly, Giant, Specialized and many more. The best rack is the one that’s available to you and affordable. I often favor budget European options, because they’re like Aliexpress, but with quality control. To sell stuff in the EU, it has to meet certain standards, so gear from budget European retailers like Mvtek or XLC can take the guesswork out of buying cheap stuff, because you know it’s already been pretty well tested.

-Find full fenders (or mudguards in British English speaking locations). Topeak make them, but there are others, like Portland Design Works, SOMA, Cube, and SKS. SKS fenders are almost as ubiquitous as Topeak racks are. Their Bluemels fenders are excellent, cost-effective and available. They are often plastic fenders, and that can turn some off, so in that case, look to Velo Orange or Soma, or some of the more granola cycling brands, for metal fenders.

If the bike you have does not have mounting points for racks and fenders OR you do not wish to add a rack as above:

-Look for “bikepacking bags” on Aliexpress. Roswheel, Rhino Walk and others make some very acceptable bags, and Roswheel is actually in transition from a cheap Chinese brand, to a fairly well-respected mid-tier Chinese brand. I use Aliexpress bikepacking bags and so can you. They can have an awful reputation, but that’s not always warranted in the modern age, as they ’re cheap and cheerful but they often work well enough. I bought a Roswheel saddlebag to try bikepacking bags out, expecting it to expire quickly, whereupon I would buy a more expensive alternative. I still have it today, old, raggedy and beaten up, yet still entirely functional. Here, though, the sky is the limit and there are a lot of very good companies that make excellent products, such as Ortlieb, Revelate, Swift, Apidura, etc. Those brands can be quite pricey, but their quality is what you are paying for.

-You can attach a rack to your bike using P-clamps and/or adaptors. Brands like Tubus often carry a wide range of adaptors to allow you to mount a rack on a bike without the proper mounting points. If you can’t find those, go and have a look for P-clamps at a local hardware store, like ACE Hardware or Bunnings in Australia.

-You can use a front rack that clips onto your handlebars, like the playfully named “Jack the Bike Rack.” That’s the branded version, but copies abound on Aliexpress. The Aliexpress ones can be quite heavy, but they’re strong and they work just fine. Get a large dry bag at the same time and for around $30 you can have a waterproof commuting set up that’s easily removable from your bike.

-Look for clip on fenders. Topeak and SKS both do excellent MTB clip on fenders, that look like motocross motorcycle fenders from the 1990s. SKS do some very good clip on and semi-clip on fenders designed for trekking bikes as well, in addition to truly excellent full coverage clip on fenders for road and gravel type bikes with thinner tires and drop handlebars.

-Failing everything else? The humble backpack works just fine. You get a sweaty back and it’s not ideal, but they’re cheap and most of us have at least one waiting and ready to go. The best gear is the gear you have.

A New or Used Bike

-A touring bike makes an excellent commuter and you can go back through older posts of mine dealing with utility bikes to see brands that I recommend. Quickly, though, Surly, Velo Orange, Soma, Fuji, Salsa, Kona and many other brands make excellent touring bikes, often with steel frames and a huge number of attachment points. Personally? For those looking for a touring bike-bikepacking bike-commuter etc., I’d recommend basically any Surly. It’s going to be incredibly versatile in terms of how you can build it, no matter what model it is, but the Preamble would be a great place to start if looking for a commuter.

-The type of bike that I really recommend for those starting out and wanting to start bike commuting, though, is a basic hybrid. I commonly recommend the Giant Escape (or Cross-City in Oceania markets), as they’re very common bikes, due to being good sellers. A Giant Escape 2 with a Topeak Super Tourist rack and a Topeak MTX Trunkbag (there are a lot of different Topeak MTX, and it’s hard to go wrong with any of them) is what I would recommend. That’s about $1,000, it’ll last your for years and you might have enough money left over for a helmet and some lights as well. You can read more about hybrids here, in Part #1 of the Utility Files.

-A classic city bike, like the Pelago Bristol or one of the Pelago Hanko series can have some serious style while being entirely practical. Any European style city bike, like a Dutch Gazelle, will work. This style of bike is also known as a “Roadster” or “Standard” and you can still commonly find them in Asia, South America and Africa, as well as in Western Europe. The world’s most produced vehicle, the Chinese Flying Pigeon, is this type of bike. They are increasing in popularity in the western world, but that’s the type with classic city style, think Swedish designer’s bike rather than one of the heavy old workhorses you can see in places like Korea and China. Still, gotta get those pigs to market somehow.

-A folding bike. This is an excellent choice, especially if you have good public transport infrastructure, A Brompton, Tern, Dahon or one of the newer Chinese brands like a Camp fits the bill. Giant even sell a folding bike, the Expressway, in certain markets. Because the bike folds, you can use it in conjunction with a train or even a bus in some places. Multi-modal commuting is an excellent choice, because you can decide how far you want to ride or not ride at all, depending on the weather.

-An eBike is obviously also an idea. I think they’re great for urban mobility and in some cases, perfect for commuting. I do have limited experience with eBikes, but if you are in the market for one, there are certain considerations you can think about. I get that they’re expensive, but there’s a reason to spend as much as possible on one. The cheaper bikes from unrecognized brands can be a nightmare to fix, with proprietary parts—bits of bike unique to that single bicycle brand—and complex wiring. Many mechanics lack the equipment and electrical skills necessary to properly fix such bikes and will turn repairs away in some cases. Thus, it can be better to buy from an established brand, like Giant, Merida, Specialized, etc., because they have service centers, technicians and spare parts to fix them properly, expensive as they may be.

Preparing

Before you go live, so to speak, do a trial run. I did it, others have done so as well. On a Saturday or a Sunday, ride your bike from home to work on the route that you have chosen. Time yourself, it’s important information. Then, add 20-30 minutes. If you have a flat tire or a mechanical issue, you need a buffer of time to solve the problem. If, for example, you have a hard start of 9:00 am, you really want to be arriving at 8:20-8:30 am, to give you time to wash and change clothing, or to sit in a fan for a while and wipe the sweat off. Your trial run tells you when you need to be leaving home to arrive on time.

A trial run can also be really good for logistics. If you need things like shampoo, soap, a comb, a spare set of shoes for the office (so you can wear cleat/clipless shoes for the commute and walk around the office in proper footwear), emergency underwear & socks, etc., then take it all in to work during your trial run. You can also do recon runs if you need to. In Korea, 2020s summers have seen terrible flooding, and I would have to take to the subway for a week or so during the worst of it at times. I then went out on a weekend and rode my commute just to see if everything was clear, every summer. Once things were not yet clear, and my path was blocked by standing water and thick mud, necessitating a detour through city streets for a week or so, while that low-lying section of my route was cleaned up. I would also do the same after heavy snow, in the winter. Ride in on the weekend to ensure the way was clear for the following week, and to work out which path should be used, etc. Once there was about 30 cm/1 foot of snow on one side of the river, and clear paths on the other. I say that only to illustrate just how important it can be to get the lie of the land before you are actually commuting on a work day, so you know beforehand which route to take to save time.

The Weather

Which brings me to the weather. Obviously, on a bike you’re exposed to the elements. It’s unavoidable. The Germans will tell you that they’re not made of sugar, and that they won’t melt in the rain, which yeah, great, but it’s a pain in the butt. If you have a metro system that allows bikes, or has staff who turn a blind eye to bikes before 7:30 am, then you can always bail on your ride like I once did, taking a subway and riding a final 5 km to work between heavy bands of rain, sheltering in a parking lot for while, letting the fenders do their job. Or use a poncho to stop rain from above while your fenders stop spray from below. I’d also say just drive or take the bus, as riding all the way to work or home in heavy rain can be a soul-sapping exercise.

Ditto snow, but that’s more for the slipping and sliding when it accumulates. Snow’s largely okay to ride in if it’s showers or relatively light. I once rode through a snow shower at dawn, an absolutely sublime way to start the day. I also once rode home and realized the drizzle that was falling was formed of snowflakes the size of colored plastic pinheads. Standing in a streetlight as tiny snowflakes silently drifted around me was just magical, and I clearly remember the wonder of it to this day. The real danger from snow is hardpack, though, compressed snow forming ice, ice that hangs around in shaded spots. Most of the time the city will salt or grit ice, but it can be challenging to ride on, especially on inclines. The really dangerous one is an ice storm, rarely seen in Korea, when it rains, or the precipitation that falls is close to a liquid state, and then it all freezes overnight. The nordic guys will use studded tires in winter, but it’s really up to you and where you live. In Korea there’s never enough snowpack sticking around for long enough to warrant studded tires and you may only really need them a few times every year, like after an ice storm. Heavy snow would often see me in the subway, as it’s like riding through sand, but your miles may vary. You learn to live with snow and ice.

Summer? I would sometimes go through 2.4 liters of water on the way to work (close to 3/4 of a gallon) and descend upon the chilled water filter at work. The Korean summer’s humid after June, and commutes could often be spent imagining the fan and air conditioning awaiting in the office. There, electrolytes are a good idea, especially on longer commutes. Your body needs sodium, magnesium and potassium for various things, but especially for the nervous system’s internal communications. It can be shocking how sharp your thoughts suddenly become after you ingest sufficient electrolytes and you realize just how much you’ve been losing through sweat.

The weather’s just something you have to deal with and you can find reserves of hidden strength at times. I remember being fully dressed for the evening commute, in the depths of winter, with a wind far below freezing knifing into Seoul from the Eurasian continent, and having one of my coworkers look at me with a mix of horror and respect, saying “It’s very cold out there.” And agreeing, but being entirely unconcerned about the prospect of riding into that wind for the next hour or so. I’d learned to embrace the suck, as the military guys would say. And that’s what you have to do, embrace the suck. It’s good for your soul, and it gets you home.

Your Clothing

The question of clothing is actually huge when it comes to utility cycling and daily commuting, and there can be real ideological fervor surrounding bike commuting clothing at times.

Broadly speaking, it goes like this:

- On one side are proponents of riding bicycles to go shopping or to travel to work in everyday clothing without helmets. They argue that cycling-specific clothing and helmets are barriers to entry and turn potential utility cyclists off due to having to use different clothing for cycling. They point to the issue of helmets being an added expense and messing up hairstyles while looking towards bike commuting cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam for inspiration. This side of the debate often favors upright European style city bikes ridden slowly over relatively short distances without helmets.

-On the other side, riders stress the need for health and safety, using bicycle-specific clothing and helmets. They argue that things like chafing, from sweat-soaked cotton underwear is problematic, and that falls from bicycles without helmets can result in serious injury. They look towards cities like London and New York where commuters will often wear cycling-specific clothing for inspiration. This side of the debate often favors faster road and/or gravel bikes that can be ridden relatively quickly to traverse longer distances with helmets.

I don’t have strong opinions either way. The first camp, of suits and ties on bikes, have a point if the bike is just being used over a few kilometers or a mile or two. Critics will mention sweating in clean work clothing, while proponents will mention cycling slowly so as not to sweat. In that regard, eBikes help a lot with sweat management, as they reduce the required amount of work. Many buildings lack shower facilities (we will get into that soon), so wearing work clothes on the bike commute can be entirely practical.

I always wore cycling-specific clothing to work and changed at the office. I rode my Specialized AWOL touring bike to start with, but as that cracked and was warrantied, I went to using a Merida Speeder hybrid. I probably could have gotten away with street clothing on the AWOL, but the Speeder was much faster and really demanded cycling-specific clothing.

Here, the overriding factor is distance. I once had a huge debate on the Internet with a proponent of wearing work clothing while riding to work. I made the point that I had a 30-35 km (18-22 mile) commute, one way. That person, who was adamant that people should wear normal clothing on the bike ride to work for the sake of convenience, sort of agreed that a 22 mile commute required bike-specific clothing. I had to ride too far to be comfortable in street clothing and I would wear a set of bicycle clothes in the morning, carrying my work clothes for the day in my bags, as well as spare bicycle clothes (a spare set of padded shorts or pants) for the return journey in the evening. It was a lot, and, to be fair, you can see how, in terms of sheer logistics or lack thereof, the person who was arguing with me had a very valid point. Work clothing worn on the bike can be very convenient.

Ultimately it’s up to you and your own situation. I live 35 kms/22 miles away from my office and to me it was most definitely worth the longer bike commute, in bicycle specific clothing. But you may live 3 miles/5 km from the office and wear street clothing on the bike. There’s no hard and fast rule, it’s something you need to experiment with yourself.

Washing

Obviously, wearing cycling clothing to the office means you need to clean up, have a wash and change into your workwear. If your office has a shower facility, with lockers and changing rooms, fans and towels, then you really don’t need to read much further, because wow, you have it made as a cycle commuter.

For a while I was a member of a gym in my building where I would shower and change in the mornings. That was a run down old place and charged $50 a month, which was very affordable. Soon, however, things changed. My work’s offices are located in one of the most expensive parts of Seoul—remember the Gangnam style music video?—and so the gym was remodelled and the price went all the way up.

I then went to washing in the office, and the first office we were in had a wonderful setup for it. Korean officetels are combined commercial and residential buildings, and that office of ours was on a mixed floor, with residential fittings inside, so I could go in there, have a proper top to toe wash with shampoo and soap, using a flexible shower attachment. It was perfect.

Until my company moved to a commercial only floor, and I was faced with a regular old office bathroom. Two hand basins, and three toilet stalls. I would shave in the hand basins, and sometimes in the summer do a quick hair wash, if my hair was saturated with sweat. I would then take a large water scoop (a Korean bathing item, like an elongated plastic cooking pot that held about 1 liter/quart of water). I would take washcloths and the scoop into a bathroom stall where I would change from bike clothes, wash off with water and dress in office clothes.

I would occasionally forget a towel and have to use paper hand towels, and heck, I memorably once forgot a pair of office trousers. Thankfully I had worn baggy basketball length shorts on the bike that morning, but I didn’t walk around the office much that day. I did look professional enough, from the waist up, and no one could see below my desk, but you need to plan for things like that. I kept a full set of underwear and socks in my desk, as well as a spare shirt, in addition to toiletries, and obviously, I should have had some spare pants. Everything I stored there at work was used in an emergency, at least once.

You just have to improvise, adapt and overcome when it comes to washing and/or freshening up in the office.

Executing

We had a guy at our office who asked me a thousand questions about bike commuting. He was waiting to buy the perfect bike for it, though, and the season wasn’t right. I don’t think he ever actually managed to ride a bicycle to the office. At a certain point, you just need to stop thinking about it and actually do it.

That’s all you need to do. Just start. And then keep showing up. It’ll do great things for your fitness, your mental state and your job performance. There’s something about physical exertion before work that sets you up for the day, and you know that you get to ride your bike home.

One of those evening commutes in the early summer, when the evening is warm, stretches out forever, and you ride home through the twilight, stop for a cold drink, pat a dog, and just exist in the moment? It can be hard to beat.

Sometimes a ride comes together perfectly, when you least expect it. I’d reserved the day off work months before, thinking I would go and ride the tallest mountain in Gyeonggido, the province surrounding Seoul, to see the vibrant fall colors. That didn’t end up happening, but it was all for the best in the end, because the fall foliage was late in 2025. Nevertheless, the day turned out to be one of those magical days, when you are entirely grateful to be alive.

I can’t remember what the issue was, but there was some small thing about my son’s kindergarten bus, meaning I had to leave later than anticipated. I took the news with grace, though, in that I was playing hooky, when everyone else was off to kindergarten, school and work. I finally got out the door around 10:00 am, having brought order to a living room that looked like the aftermath of a tornado in a toy store.

I can’t remember the ride down the Jungnangcheon, the tributary stream on which I live, to the Han, the river that bisects the city of Seoul; all my memory contains is clear blue skies and joy. It had been a wild summer, and in the 2020s, the heat and humidity of summer have often hung around, deep into what was once the drier, warm autumn. The air was finally clear, though, late in October. A more gentle sun, with a mild breeze and weather not to be missed. Like an old Korean fall day.

I rode through Seoul, without a specific destination in mind, on the familiar Han River cycle path, charmed by the day and of the vista slowly unfolding in front of me. It looked for all the world like the cover of an old science fiction book, one of the ones I would casually devour as an adolescent, when I had all the time in the world for casual reading. A large balloon of all things, aloft over southern Seoul, perhaps an advertising billboard in the sky?

I pressed on westwards, the weather perfect, buoying my spirits after the long wet summer. It’s remarkable the effect that a real autumn day can have on you, after the devastation of summer heat, rain and flooding. I finally realized what my ride would be, a large loop, and I turned to the northeast, up another, smaller tributary of the Han. I would ride to the northeast and visit an historical site along the way, as well as traversing some truly lovely countryside.

I rode through the last of the city, beyond Seoul now, and in satellite suburban sprawl. I was getting hungry for a late lunch and was thinking about a certain Korean dish, spicy stir-fried pork, with an extra bowl of rice for riding energy, vaguely thinking that I would stop soon if I saw the right restaurant. Less than five minutes later, there it was, the exact little diner I had been daydreaming about. A funny moment of synchronicity, as the universe seemingly smiled upon me. A perfect menu, a nice lady serving and and some electrolyte tablets with water as I waited for my meal.

And then it was time for history. On January 3rd, 1951, the Royal Ulster Rifles, the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers and the 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars were positioned on Seoul’s left flank, in present day Goyang and Yangju. The Chinese, having crossed the Imjin River to the north, made contact with the UK forces, part of the larger British 29th Infantry Brigade and Commonwealth Division early in the day.

The Irish and the Fusiliers gave a good account of themselves in the morning of the 3rd, advancing and defeating the Chinese with superior firepower. By the night of the 3rd, though, the UK forces were in full tactical withdrawal and not going down without a fight. The valiant Irish soldiers silently withdrew from the pursuing Chinese throughout the night down the ironically named Happy Valley, before a friendly aircraft dropped a string of flares above them. They paid a high price for the error, as the Chinese sleeted fire down from the surrounding hills, before slipping around their column and setting up an ambush on their path southwards that had to be fought past. A lot of young men paid the ultimate price that night.

The night was costly for the British army, but their sacrifice bought time for countless civilians in Seoul to escape across the Han River to the south, along with other UN units, during the dark events of the new day, January 4th, 1951. The UN line was crumbling and the survivors of the Battle of Happy Valley would be the last UN unit across the Han river, as the Chinese captured Seoul.

I spent time there at the memorial for the battle, as I am wont to do when in the area, but the story of those men and the valley only gets worse, the longer you go into its specifics. Sometimes we have to allow the past to remain in the past; to leave it lying quietly on the landscape, instead of picking it up and carrying its darkness away with us.

A beautiful autumn day is not to be wasted looking backwards, after all. The river crossing in the valley that afternoon was particularly lovely. The usually dry concrete ford in the creek was covered in water, the stream swollen with late summer rain. I sat there and drank some water from my bottle, imagining a Korean Huck Finn on a raft, looking at faint ripples on the still water. The day was a warm one, with the heat of summer not yet entirely spent, so shoes removed, I perched on the edge of the concrete, my legs dangling in the cool stream. There was a whole world down there, as tiny minnows darted around in the current, the last of the year’s dragonflies came to drink and ducks quietly paddled, dipping their heads to feed.

There are a confusion of small country roads to navigate past that point, and they’re a joy to ride, criss-crossing the river until you reach the steep ramp to the main road with its homeward-pointed bike path.

I rode to Uijeongbu at a steady pace, to see my youngest son after kindergarten and to take him walking to run around in neighborhood playgrounds. I had dropped him at the bus and now needed to be there with him in the late afternoon, supplier of ice cream, band-aids and cheerleader for bad ideas on the twisty steep slide.

Sometimes a bike ride is just a bike ride. It’s interesting, though, thinking of the ones we really remember with fondness. It wasn’t the fastest, the longest or the best, by whatever metric we might apply, but it sticks in the memory due to that perfect combination of factors, when it all comes together in a wonderful fusion. It’s often not the big ones, or the hard ones that really soothe the soul, but the casual ones, the slower ones, that build metaphysical, more than mere physical, fitness.

There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.…

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

To my mind, Hunter S Thompson’s greatest metaphor, the best writing he ever did, was conjuring up the great and powerful wave that the forces of youthful revolution were to ride eastwards from San Francisco in the late 1960s, washing away the sins of the fathers in a great flood of optimism and energy, with flowers in their hair. In his great metaphysical comedown from the boundless sense of possibility of that period, he had the wave breaking somewhere near Barstow, where those looking westwards from a height in Las Vegas, with the same jaded eyes as his, could see the high-water mark, the place where the hope of a generation washed up in the desert. The thing is, Thompson, writing frantically in his journal, wildly dispatching pages to his editor, drugged to the eyeballs and sinking ever deeper into paranoia, eyes shrouded in distrust, missed some crucial details while looking at the traces left by his metaphorical surge of water.

I am the product of one of those details. You see, the wave washed back alright, but it didn’t stop rolling at Venice Beach. It rebounded and kept moving all the way across the Pacific until it hit Australia, picking up my father and carrying him to New Zealand, where he would meet my mother, the two of them would conceive the young Mr. Mark and go on to build a home deep in the lush green hills of the Coromandel Peninsula. My parents were part of a wider return to the land movement, as young hippies, full of the idealism and energy of the time, moved from urban centers to more rural settings. A movement much like that which was happening across the Pacific, as the hippies decamped Haight-Ashbury for the surrounding countryside, places like Marin county, just over the Golden Gate bridge to the north of San Francisco.

The wave may have broken and washed back, but its water soaked into the soil and left an indelible mark on Californian culture, as it watered a subtle vine, the intellectual, social and technological tendrils of which would grow outwards across the US and, indeed, the world, in the decades to come. To say that the modern world grew out of California in the 1970s is far from an exaggeration. Think of the device that you are reading these words on, from a PC to a tablet or smartphone, it’s a product that can trace its lineage back to the Bay Area in the early part of that decade. Or of modern container ships, hauling goods from the emerging Asian Tiger economies in standardized sea cans to ports on the US West Coast, to Long Beach and LA, a trade that would enable the incredible growth of the modern Taiwanese bicycle industrial complex in the decades to come.

But it wasn’t just microprocessors and ethernet cable connectivity that was being invented in the Bay Area. To the north, over the Marin headlands, things were happening on the side of Mount Tamalpais. A ragtag bunch of ex-hippies, local high schoolers and various others, with joints, dogs and friends in tow, were taking old Schwinn Paperboy bikes from the previous decades and modifying them to blast down fire roads at breakneck speed. Think of the 1950s, the Eisenhower era, a time of unparalleled prosperity in the US, a continental nation untouched by the devastation of the Second World War, now with the world’s greatest industrial capacity. There would be a Buick in every driveway, a refrigerator in every kitchen and a Schwinn in every garage. A Beaver Cleaver world, of wholesome kids delivering the morning news for pocket money, on tough little steel bikes with 26” balloon tires and frames built strong enough to hold a heavy load of newspapers. Just don’t think of Hubert Selby Jr.’s Brooklyn, and the image will hold steady for you, I’m sure.

Still, by the early 1970s, some of those kids who rode their Schwinn bikes through suburbia had turned on, tuned on and dropped out and were stripping those same bikes back to basics to race down a section of fire road in Marin. The modified bikes were known as Klunkers, and they had coaster brakes, the same type of brake you probably remember from childhood, where pushing back on the pedals engages the brake and stops the bike. For the guys ripping down the fire roads of Northern California, coming down the hill and needing to slow down, the grease in their rear hub would get so hot from mechanical friction from braking that it would smoke and drip out, requiring a refresh of the thick lubricant at the bottom of the hill if the rider wanted to ride down again. A repack of hub grease. Thus, the stretch of fire road the ex-hippies were riding their klunkers down became known as Repack Hill.

Later, guys from the scene like Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly would start to market purpose-built frames built by Tom Ritchie, while others from the scene like Joe Breeze and Charlie Cunningham would also start companies to make new bike frames and parts. Their friend Wende Cragg would ride with them down Repack, but crucially, she would also document the emerging scene, standing at what became known as camera corner, as denim-clad guys came racing past, inside leg on the ground to stabilize the bike in a powerslide around the corner, whiskers and ponytails blowing in the breeze, capturing images and documenting an entirely new sport.

They had invented mountain biking.1

Crucially, though, the Marin guys had invented downhill mountain biking. The Repack Race, first held on October 21st, 1976 was a timed race down a fire road. It’s an interesting story, enterprising ex-hippies finding timers that would work, setting the course and recording the results. Crucially, though, their bikes were pushed to the start line at the top of Repack, or were carried up with their riders in the bed of a truck. Mountain biking, in Marin, had emerged as a gravity sport, with a focus on racing. While it would be transformed in the post-klunker era, as the new scene adopted technologies like motorcycle-style brake levers and derailleurs, leading to the adoption of gears suitable for cross-country mountain biking, there were others, in California, coming of age in the same decade, who would come see bicycles from a very different perspective.

Grant Petersen is about five years younger than the Marin klunker riders, give or take. Over the years he would meet them and come to know them, but he was never part of their foundational scene. He was never a young adult in San Francisco in the late 1960s, as he grew up around Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco and Marin, slightly too young to engage with the full-blown hippie scene. While Grant wasn’t part of the klunker and early mountain biking scene, in his own way, he was to become just as influential as the bigger names from Marin County.

Names like Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly. Fisher had been a young man in Haight-Ashbury at the height of the madness, putting on innovative light shows for bands like the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead, actually living with the latter band at one point. Later, in the early 1990s, Gary Fisher, working with Trek, after the sale of his eponymous brand to the larger Wisconsin company, would make a signature Grateful Dead mountain bike for Bob Weir, guitarist for the group. Fellow Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia also had an interest in mountain biking, and later, many of the band’s roadies would be keen off-road riders. Charlie Kelly, Marin local, was the roadie for another rock band and many of the other klunker riders had been hippies, migrating over the Golden Gate bridge and surviving to tell the tale. The Marin scene, to my mind, was an indelible outgrowth of the San Francisco counterculture of the late 1960s.

Grant’s aesthetic, I view more as being informed by California in the 1970s, shaped less by a hangover of the hedonism of Haight-Ashbury, and letting it all hang out on a klunker ripping down Mt. Tamalpais, than by the post-hippie American zeitgeist that Hunter S. Thompson was inadvertently documenting at the time of his Las Vegas wave metaphor.

For Thompson, it was a time of dark pessimism, as the social awakening he seemingly foresaw sputtered and died, the forces of darkness, of authority and of straight America emerging triumphant from a challenge by their own offspring. In some ways the 1970s was a time of darkness, stagnation and dullness in the US, with Nixon’s White House dissolving in the face of Watergate, serious economic challenges, and things like the Iran Hostage Crisis still to come. However, the news wasn’t all bad. The 1960s counterculture had left an indelible mark on wider western culture, and for many, the 1970s was to be a time marked by a positive new consciousness.

We’re going to get into it later—in excruciating detail, I’m sure—but many over the years have derided Petersen’s approach to bicycles as granola cycling, basically as a form of shorthand for hippie cycling. I often speak of granola cycling myself, but don’t get me wrong. I use the term granola affectionately, rather than dismissively or mockingly, hippie food’s my birthright, after all. It’s one of those foods that came to the fore in the late 1960s and 1970s, adopted from Europeans by the western counterculture. Crucial, though, was the idea that it was a health food, eaten to promote wellness, as the countercultural idea of healthy living through eating persisted into the 1970s where it was further built upon, as new scientific research started to support the claims of its proponents.

Personal care in the 1970s wasn’t just about food. Health clubs—gyms—also came of age in the decade, as people developed new relationships with indoor exercise and outdoor activities, including, of course, cycling. In 1976, during the Bicentennial year in the US, the Bikecentennial ‘76 event took place over 76 days during the summer of that year, as around 4,000 cyclists set out to ride across the US, about half of them finishing the ride across the continent. The Adventure Cycling Association was founded that summer, supporting the cross country event and continuing to publish bike route maps to this day. Cycling, as a recreational activity undertaken by serious adults, came of age in the decade.

The other huge social awakening of the time was environmentalism, a growing awareness of pollution and of the smog that plagued Californian cities like LA. Topically for us in the year of 2026, there would also be a 1970s energy crisis, as the years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War saw Arab states embargoing oil in response to US support for Israel. The energy crisis lead to a bike boom later in the decade, and we still sometimes see old bike boom bikes, bicycles from the era, for sale or still being ridden. Cycling’s growth in popularity during the 1970s can be attributed to many different factors, and it’s Grant Petersen’s milieu in the California of that decade, that, to my mind, led to all that was to come from the man.

Grant is on the record as stating that, while his father owned a car, he wasn’t a diehard car fan. While a lot of young Americans drove to school, Petersen hitchhiked a little and got rides with friends as an adolescent. He never went through one of those big American rites of passage, that of owning and driving his first car. Instead, on the first Earth Day, in April 1970, as the modern environmentalist movement was taking shape in the US, and American high school kids were being urged to reconsider burning fossil fuels on their commute to school, his father asked him if he wanted a bicycle. He accepted the offer, and never looked back.

New ideas were everywhere in the 1970s, and if there’s anything Grant’s about, it’s ideas. He has a detailed personal philosophy relating to the bicycle; it’s what makes Grant, Grant. He has called it his Velosophy, a portmanteau so apt that you wonder why no one else ever claimed it, and over the years, Grant’s philosophy on bicycles and riding has been incredibly influential. At the same time, it has been mildly controversial and has had as many detractors as supporters.

So what exactly does Grant Petersen believe?

Grant once had a tiny LP record store in his Rivendell Bicycle Works shop in Walnut Creek. Probably still does. All that it sold was Bob Dylan records. Think of that for a moment, because it tells you almost everything you need to know about Grant’s approach to cycling. Bob Dylan’s music is perennial. I still listen to it myself on occasion, it’s music that was never meant to be disposable. It may sound old and dated to certain ears these days, but it remains good. Really good. Especially when you compare the raw honesty of Bob Dylan’s singing voice, his rough strummed guitar and the raggedness of his harmonica playing with polished modern music, bland pop written by professionals and recorded by manufactured groups. You can’t fake that, not with all the music industry consultants in the world. Bob Dylan’s music still means something.

As do Grant’s bikes. The term “retrogrouch” was invented specifically to describe Grant’s approach, and it explains his approach, albiet in a mildly pejorative manner. Grant’s right into old technology and is seen by some as being slightly grumpy—or grouchy—about the existence of more modern alternatives. Still, like Bob Dylan’s music, he’s into old technology that’s still good, that remains completely viable for use in the modern age. Tech that maybe didn’t need to be thrown away for the next big thing. His modus operandi, in his business over the years, has been to preserve certain aging bicycle technologies, to keep them alive, in active use, and relevant, at a point at which their use has long since been discontinued by the wider mainstream bike industry. Things like lugged steel frames, friction shifting, fewer gears on cassettes, leather saddles, rim brakes, threaded headsets, square taper bottom brackets, and all of the older standards that go along with them. And don’t worry if you don’t know what any of that is, we’ll get to that. Eventually. Just know that like 1960s folk music, it’s all really good old bike stuff that’s supposedly outdated, but that’s still good looking, appreciated and sought after by aficionados.

Take seatposts for example. I was doing a little research, for this piece of writing or another very closely related project, and I was assuming that the bikes from Grant’s company had 27.2 mm seatposts. I suddenly had a flash of something like insight, and made myself double check that. Sure enough, some of the frames are built around a 26.8 mm seatpost. It’s 0.4 mm difference, but it’s very Grant. A lot of other brands would have quietly changed the diameter of tubing on the frame, but not Grant. Ask him about his 26.8 mm seatposts, and he’ll laugh and tell you that 26.8 mm seatposts have worked just fine for years and that you don’t need anything more. He’s usually quite right as well, you probably don’t.

But that it’s that self-assured certainty that is partially responsible for the attitude of some of his detractors. He’s not shy about letting his opinion be known or of firmly maintaining his position. Grant will build you a Rivendell bike up from one of his frames, at his shop in California, but over the years he’s famously been known to ignore customer requests, or to outrightly refuse to put certain things onto the bikes he sells to people. I find that attitude refreshing, I must admit. Most people don’t need some of the bells and whistles they ask him for, they’d do better to get out there and ride a few tens of thousands of miles first, and Grant will tell them that. Sometimes you need to earn things, instead of simply buying them, and in the earning of the thing, learn about whether you actually need it or not. It’s not a popular attitude, especially in a country where you can send food back at a restaurant and receive an apology and a new meal, and you may feel entitled to buy anything you like. But Grant doesn’t care. Maybe his bikes aren’t for you. Deal with it.

It was a magazine editor who coined the term retrogrouch a long time ago, as part of cycling’s mainstream, and there’s an issue with technology there. Grant makes some amazing bicycle frames, but the process of making them is old-fashioned, laborious and time-consuming. It also means the frames come with an incredibly high price tag, although Grant will tell you that you will never need to buy another one. He’s correct, in some ways, but so are the critics who point out that other companies produce bicycles with modern components that are lighter, faster and cheaper. It’s a matter of opinion, though. Think of it in terms of wine: you can buy a $2,000 bottle of wine of a known vintage from a renowned vinyard, you can buy a $200 bottle of wine that is very good value for money or you can buy a $20 bottle of wine that is a cheap and cheerful and goes perfectly with a cool summer dinner. Sometimes, due to Grant’s occasional dogged insistance that the $2,000 version is entirely superior, the other versions are laughable rubbish, and people shouldn’t buy the cheaper stuff, his critics sometimes seem to forget that consumers do have a choice in the matter, and that no one is being forced to buy anything.

For many of us with a liking for alt. cycling, I suspect Grant Petersen is a bit like our mildly grumpy bike dad. You know the film Platoon, where Charlie Sheen’s character muses about Sgt. Elias and Sgt. Barnes? “There are times since, I’ve felt like a child, born of those two fathers.” For me, and for a certain section of the cycling community, Grant Petersen and perhaps Jan Heine are a bit like that. And somewhere, above the both of them, exists the saintly Sheldon Brown. I still want to commission a church alter style fold-out triptych of the three of them, entitled The Iconoclast, The Saint and The Prophet. All of them influential, in their own ways.

And their influence? It’s helped to shape cycling as we know it, and as I write it.

In the 1980s, Bridgestone, the Japanese conglomerate more well-known for its tires than its bicycles to many westerners, entered the US cycling market with a subsidiary bicycle company, Bridgestone US. We are getting well ahead of ourselves, but that’s okay, because we’re not going to stay here for long; we’re about to take a trip back to Yosemite National Park to drop acid around the campfire with the dirtbags.

In 1984, Grant Petersen went to work for Bridgestone US, in various roles, and by the end of the decade, he would be designing bikes for the company. Bridgestone’s US bicycle division had a lot more freedom than other Bridgestone subsidiaries, the corporate managers back in Japan perhaps intuiting that when left to their own devices, the Americans could, at times, come up with bicycle designs that would take the whole world by storm. The obvious example there being the mountain bikes made by Joe Breeze and Tom Ritchie, sold by Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher, before the first mass-manufactured Specialized Stumpjumpers appeared in 1981. By the mid-1980s the new mountain bikes were selling like hotcakes, and even entirely straight, conservatively buttoned-down Japanese business executives respected the spark of creativity and the spirit of ingenuity to be found in California, necessary to create such a product. In that, corporate leadership far to the East were entirely correct, but they were perhaps unaware that what they were actually allowing to take shape at their subsidiary in San Leandro, California, under the careful husbandry of a young American, our Iconoclast, Grant Petersen, was the modern alt. cycling movement.

This week I was going to write about last weekend’s coffee outside meeting, of finding quiet satisfaction in building community, of fitness, having it decay and building it up again, ruminating on male friendship beyond 30 and how bicycles can bring people together. I will still write that in the future, but for now, it’s time for a Mr. Mark update.

I’m 50 years old tomorrow. It’s a milestone I guess, but instead of a wild party, I will have a quiet evening at a family restaurant with my wife and kids. At 50, hanging out with my spouse and the rabid weasels that my offspring are when hungry actually sounds like fun. Maybe go nuts and have some stir-fried pork? It’s a meaningful birthday, certainly, but I’ve never worried too much about birthdays. I am excited on behalf of my younger son—he’s 4 years old—because I know how much he enjoys blowing out candles on cakes, and I’ll do a couple of candle relights so he can get his big bad wolf on and huff and puff on the cake.

In other news, I have a new bike, a Merida Speeder. I’ll do a longer piece on it later in a Bikes We Like profile, but suffice to say, it’s fast. Really fast. It’s a flat bar road bike, built for speed, as its name suggests, with Shimano 105 road gearing. Like I say above, I met the gang, as Don called us the other day, for coffee in Bundang and I rode back up the Tancheon river to Seoul with Simon, a very strong rider, who proceeded to absolutely rip my legs off. Almost. On my new bike I was able to stay in touch with him all the way, until were were separated by heavy bike traffic up near the Han River, and then? I had to dig really—like really—deep to pour on the coal and catch up quickly, before departing northwards for home.

I hadn’t thought of it, but the bike may be a birthday present to myself? I have to say that turning 50, I am fairly content, all things considered. My life could be worse. Seriously, it could be much worse. I’m riding almost daily and regularly going to the gym near home. My mind is in the right place and for me, fitness and positive body change can only come when the psychology of it is solid.

With the new bike, I have a fleet of two bicycles. The new Merida Speeder for riding fast at lunchtime, in the mornings and on some longer Sunday morning rides for fitness. The other is my Merida Crossway, a much lower geared machine, for tackling Korean hills and touring. I have been buying and selling bikes for a good few years now, as well as building up bikes from scratch for sale, with collected parts, so there have been several bikes hanging around at once and a fairly steady stream of machines in and out. That is something I may write about in the future as well, but for now I am tired of the grind and am going to rest. I have landed on having two bikes for the foreseeable future, a bicycle combo I had always wanted, a utility/touring/gravel bike as well as a faster, road-focused fitness bike.

Speaking of touring. Not to spoil anything, but I am in the midst of planning a small excursion for June, around the summer solstice, something I have been wanting to do for a couple of years now. If you look back at some of my Ride into History posts, it’s for the same challenge, the Restrap Solstice Century, possibly with the same riding companion. I’m looking forward to it a lot, but we shall see how things turn out. I’m also really looking forward to making a Ride into History post about it.

But that’s for summer. Right now we are getting into the latter portion of spring here in Uijeongbu, with a series of weeks of steadily warming weather interspersed with cold fronts and rain bands, bringing suddenly chilly weather behind them. We’re in the coolness of a fresh breeze from the Eurasian continent following hot on the heels of a rain front as I type. I guess I should enjoy the cooler weather while it lasts, there is a La Nina brewing in the Pacific and that means hot weather in Korea. With a global energy crisis on our hands and every air conditioner and fan on the peninsula running at the same time, it may get grim. Summer in the 2020s isn’t messing around in Korea, but I’ll take hot weather over apocalyptic flooding any time.

In Cycling Counterculture news, I may return to utility cycling as the fuel crunch & energy crisis extravaganza really gets going and if things fall apart in the Middle East (again). That is not a given, though, and I hold out hope that the saner instincts of various people will prevail. Still, utility cycling has been linked to the Middle East conflict in the newsletter, and no matter what happens, war or not, we will return to it, because utility cycling is cool. I do have a series on a particular Surly bike that will drop later in the year, as well as something of a profile of a prominent figure in the alt. cycling space and his early masterpiece. I also met “the gang” on the weekend for coffee and am now kicking myself that I didn’t take the opportunity to photograph all the bikes that were there. I do have some images from events past, but there’s something about a particular guy’s bikes that delights the inner child in me. Plus we had perfect lighting for it. We live and learn, though, and there will be other opportunities for coffee in the future. That would be for Bikes We Like posts and I am also certain that I have at least one more Ride into History in me. I really enjoy just letting myself go with the Ride into History posts, allowing the words to fly and occasionally asking a little of the reader.

I’m also looking at a future Specialized month, much like my Surly series, chronicling the rise and fall of adventure at the Big S, and bringing my own story to the table. I owned a Specialized AWOL, and it was me who started the Facebook group for the bike that grew into something great for a while there. I will also have a look at Merida, part owner of Specialized and the brand of bike that I ride exclusively at the moment. I also need to get to Vélocio, (partial) inventor of the derailleur at some stage, and talk about him and Henri Desgrange, a professionally grumpy old man and organizer of Le Tour in the early days. Bike racers had to wait until Desgrange died to use the hated derailleur in his beloved Le Tour, such was his dislike of it. I’m in awe of his stubborn grumpiness and dislike of the much more relaxed Vélocio, aka Paul de Vivie, a very influential writer and the father of randonneuring. I won’t be discussing modern bike racing at any time soon, but the Tour de France has had its historical moments. Chuffing cigarettes to open the lungs before the alps, or rushing into cafes along the route to raid them for beer and wine, in scratchy old woolen jerseys. Ah, Le Tour.

So I’m not without ideas. It’s more about finding the time between work, family and exercise obligations in which to write that is the difficult thing and that will only get worse in the current warmer weather. No more 5:00 am starts for quiet writing time when it’s warm outside and the bicycle beckons. I’m riding, man, that’s all there is to it (unless I’m sleeping). You know, cycling, or bike riding, is the first ever sport, or exercise, that I ever actually enjoyed. Like people eating certain types of fish, I once thought that people were only pretending to enjoy sports. I played sports, sure, but it was only when I started to ride bicycles quite seriously as a hobby that things clicked and I realized I was really looking forward to riding, no matter how physically demanding. That a physical activity was a thing to enjoy. And that’s why I’ll be out there on the bike riding, instead of being inside writing, in the warmer weather of spring and early summer.

And that’s a wrap for now. Plenty more planned and coming down the pipe to an email inbox near you. Take care of yourselves and I’ll be back very soon.

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It’s probably the coolest type of utility bike there is. It looks badass and it can ride as smoothly as a greased seal on a skating rink. Call it an All Terrain Bike, an ATB, a rigid mountain bike or an urban assault vehicle, don’t worry, it won’t mind. It’s too cool to care. It’s basically a rigid mountain bike without front suspension, because it’s designed for rolling on the smoother paved surfaces of cities and towns, but is a bike that can easily be ridden on lighter offroad terrain, such as smooth woodland paths and gravel roads. Grab some groceries on a weeknight after work, carry them home and then on the weekend? You can load it up with camping gear for a human powered overnight camping trip or take off into the hills exploring. That’s why, in this post I’ll be calling it an urban ATB. Think of it as the Range Rover or the Jeep Grand Cherokee of bikes. A bike that lives in town but that can handle some light off-roading without too much hassle.

Personally? I think the best urban ATB starts with a steel frame and fork (or at least a steel fork) and 26” or 27.5” wheels. And there, quickly, a 26” wheel has a rim diameter of 559 mm, a 27.5” has a rim diameter of 584 mm and a 29” wheel has a rim diameter of 622 mm. The inches designation is the rough measurement of the diameter of the rim and tire combined. Bike wheel standards get confusing quickly. Basically, 26” wheels are the size that mountain bike wheels used to be, back from the 1980s into the early 2000s. 29” wheels gained popularity in the early 2000s before there was a surge in interest in the 27.5” wheel size for mountain bikes. 29” wheels reemerged as the default size for many mountain bikes in the early 2020s, and that is the situation as of today.

I mentioned above that I feel that 26” or 27.5” wheels are good for urban ATBs, and there’s a reason why I prefer them. Cities are human sized, and there are a lot of confined spaces. If you’re keeping your bike inside your apartment for security reasons, and to protect your bike from the elements, smaller wheels are perfect. Think about elevators, staircases, bicycle parking spaces and designated bicycle spaces on public transport like trains. For all of them, smaller wheels are usually better, because the bike takes up less physical space, and can be manhandled much more easily without hitting the wheels on things, although that can still happen.

So with that in mind, for the brand new bike option, a new bike with a steel frame and fork with 26” or 27.5” wheels, I’m going to concentrate on the Surly Bridge Club. Now, I wrote a little about Surly in an earlier post and you can see some of the company history in that post. In brief, the 1X1 was Surly’s first bike, a single speed mountain bike. That, in turn, influenced a bike named the Troll. The Bridge Club evolved from both in many ways, and has become a popular Surly model, in that it is slightly cheaper than some other bikes in the line up and refreshingly simple. Thus, the new bike option. A Surly Bridge Club, in Lingering Cranberry Crimson (think of Dolores O'Riordan, the 1990s and zombies) or Trevor’s Closet Black (I mention them because they’re the current colors and to give you a feel for the company’s approach to naming things). To go with the bike you’ll need a front rack, and there, a wide, flat rack with a lot of carrying capacity is perfect. Grab a Surly 24 pack rack, and a Surly Porteur House bag for the rack. The bag fits the rack perfectly—it’s designed to work together with it—and you’re set. The perfect urban ATV right there. However, and this is a real big however, in the US you’re pushing $2,000 for that setup. In Australia you’re closer to $4,000. It’ll be a cool bike, but damn, man. It’s a lot of money to spend if you’re starting out.

And there, you can go to town if you want a new bike and you don’t mind shelling out a little (or a whole lot) of money. A Kona Unit, Unit X or Unity, a Bombtrack Beyond, a Jones SWB, or a Breezer Thunder all come to mind. With the exception of the Surly option, they’re all 29” wheeled bikes, but any one of them would make a great urban ATB. Plus, a lot of those bikes will fit fatter 27.5” tires like the Schwalbe Supermoto-X, so you could do a conversion (or just be a little more careful in confined spaces). Some of those bikes may be cheaper than the new Bridge Club? Not by much, though. Buying new remains an expensive proposition, and a new ATB bike at that level is often something you plan out and save for in advance, if you’ve been riding bikes for a while and want to change up to a newer bike.

I think the best option, when considering an urban ATB is to go for a used bike and refurbish it a little, change some things around and make it your own.

Option 1 is to find an older 1980s or 1990s steel mountain bike like a Specialized Stumpjumper or a Specialized Rockhopper. This is a really common option, and the bikes that people make from these old mountain bikes can be incredibly elaborate, sometimes covered in parts worth much more than the purchase price of the used bike. Certain parts of the Internet are (in)famous for it. You can often find an old Trek, Giant or Raleigh with a steel frame, 26” wheels with rim brakes and a rigid front fork. There’s nothing to say that you have to put expensive components like a Chris King headset or a set of matching Paul Components brakes on the bike either. Many older bikes will have worn out parts, but you can find things like ZTTO headsets on Aliexpress. I’ve used them, I think they’re just fine and they’re very cost effective. Of course you can buy a Chris King headset, and never need another headset, swapping it from bike to bike, but like I say above, that’s a bit of an advanced option.

Things may not even need to be changed. Sometimes it’s possible to take the headset or the bottom bracket apart, clean everything thoroughly of its old grease, reassemble everything with fresh grease and keep using the bike just fine. Headset, bottom bracket, wheel hubs and pedals. Just remember that there are inexpensive options available, either on the Internet, as stated above, or as second hand parts from some bike shops or community bike co-ops, like The Bike Shed at CERES in Melbourne, Australia. You can find a front rack from Surly, SOMA, Velo Orange or elsewhere. I have used a Racktime Topit front rack, and there are some newer options on Aliexpress that look really good. Ask around at a bike shop for old racks and modify one to fit. Remember that with racks and fenders, you will often need to bend things, cut them and even fabricate parts. With a little ingenuity, or help from a friend, family member or bike shop mechanic, you’ll be just fine.

Option 2 is to find an early 2000s 26” aluminum hardtail mountain bike. They’re a dime a dozen, they were quite loud and garish at times, and some companies went way off the rails with the brand stickers on the frames. There exists a Specialized frame from the period that includes the word “aluminum” on the frame all of four times. Once would have been just fine, but the first decade of the 2000s was not known for tasteful restraint when it came to the stickers on bicycle frames. I remember counting seven or more Giant stickers on one model. No one—like really, no one at all—was ever going to mistake it for anything else. But! Those bikes are now everywhere, and unlike the steel ATBs I discuss above, that, at times, used some excellent grades of steel and ride beautifully, many of these more recent aluminum alloy bikes haven’t been snapped up by collectors and cycling enthusiasts. Meaning you might have an alloy MTB in your garage right now, dusty with disuse, tires flat and cracked. Someone you know may have one, a family member or friend. If not, they’re in charity shops and bike co-ops, for sale on Facebook and Craigslist. It’s very easy to find a cheap(ish) aluminum frame alloy hardtail (that means a bike with only front suspension) with 26” wheels and an old suspension fork, with either rim brakes or disc brakes.

Let’s take a Giant Yukon Disc from the 2000s as an example. It’s a hardtail with Giant branded forks with 80 mm of travel. What we’re going to do is to take off that old suspension fork, because we want to run the bike with a cool front rack. Now, the measurement we need to know is called axle-to-crown, it’s the distance from the front axle to the point at which the forks meet the head tube, because we don’t want to drop the front of the bike. We can go to the Surly bikes website and look at their cocktail fork, the 445 mm axle-to-crown version, because the old 80 mm travel fork has an axle-to-crown of about 453 mm, and what’s a few mm between friends? Or we can go onto Aliexpress and find a rigid Tsunami/Blackrock/Generic cromolly mountain bike fork. Let’s say we buy the Tsunami one, a cool chrome fork, and we buy the 29” wheel version, because it’s the 440 mm axle-to-crown version. It seems wildly technical and complicated, but just think of it as how long the fork is. Too long and your bike will look like a 1970s chopper, too short and the front will dive down, making you lean forward and the bike feel strange. There is a lot of support on various websites and apps.

But why am even talking about changing the fork? There, some 2000s mountain bikes lack attachment points for a rack. The mountain bike had grown up in some ways and was being seen as a purely sports-orientated thing. Instead of welcoming racks and fenders for touring, and including mounts for the same, some designers seem to have left them off, worried that people might not buy the bike for fear of being seen to be riding a lesser bike out on the trails. Putting on a rigid fork simplifies things, so you don’t have to worry about maintaining seals and worrying about heavy springs, but more importantly for a utility bike, it has mounting points for a front rack. Throw on some 26” slicks, like Schwalbe Big Apples, a front rack with a bag and you have a monster truck of an urban assault vehicle.

Option 3 is to find an old Surly frame. Most of them will work, but the 1X1 and Troll have 26” wheels, and can easily be converted to run 27.5”. An Ogre or Karate Monkey frame will also take fat 27.5 tires, and things like Cross-Checks and Stragglers can be turned into an urban ATB fairly easily, even with 700c wheels. One of the main reasons I mention Surly here, is that many Surly frames are easily convertible to single speed. What’s a single speed? Think of a BMX or quickly scroll to the top of the page and look at the picture of the cool pink Surly bike named Faster Panda, Kill, Kill. That’s a single speed drivetrain. Single speed is Surly’s birthright, it’s basically how the whole company came about, and for our purposes, it lasts forever. Not forever forever, but much longer than the chains and cogs on bikes with gears. When you change gear on a bike, the chain is anged from the front to the rear, and that wears out chains. A single speed chain is straight, and as such, will go on working well for a very long time.

Surly frames, and others like them, steel frames for rigid mountain bikes, like some Kona frames (the Unit) or an old Redline Monocog will often have attachment points for racks. Even if they don’t, you can pop in to your local hardware store and buy a few P-clamps, the type of round clamp that holds a steel pipe in place with tabs for a bolt or screw. An urban ATV can look amazingly cool, but it doesn’t have to. Remember that at the end of the day, your utility riding is to get things done in an environment in which fossil fuels are scarce and/or expensive and the bike you use reflects that. Improvise, adapt, overcome. To do that, aesthetics sometimes need to take a back seat to practicality.

Anyway, things in the Middle East are currently somewhat calm, even in the midst of stalled talks. I really hope things remain cool, even if the Strait of Hormuz is closed to shipping. Economic considerations, including a lack of petroluem products, are somewhat important, but they take a back seat to innocent civilians facing bombs. I was unexpectly emotionally impacted by a photo of an Iranian mother with her child in a human chain at a power plant, when I realized the child was about the same age as my son. It struck me quite hard, imaging myself doing the same in a bid to keep hot water running for my children’s baths and lights on for their homework. I write about utility cycling as an alternative and supplement to driving, but at the end of the day there is an ongoing crime against humanity in several locations in the Middle East. The children there are never that far from my thoughts, and I want to acknowledge that while I write here in Cycling Counterculture about the effects of the war on countries like those of my birth and upbringing as well as the one in which I reside, the suffering of those in the countries of the Middle East affected by war far outweighs any inconvenience that we may experience.

There’s a time, in a fully psychedelic bonk, when everything looks like a band poster from the 1960s. Or, more accurately, a screen-print from an 80s punk zine, like an old photo, printed in one shade of color. I am standing on the side of a road, on the highest mountain in Gyeonggido, and my vision is tripping off its trolly. I, however, am not. Something must be done. That something? Raw dogging mouthfuls from a fat bag of carbohydrate power, salty with electrolytes, and washing them down with the last of my water, standing there on the side of the mountain, socks drenched with sweat. Hwaaksan is not for the faint of heart, nor for the scarce of glucose.

I should have eaten, but when you are an intermittent faster, you get into the habit of riding fasted and eating later. On this ride, that’s a bad idea. A real bad idea, but hey, it happens to the best of us. At risk of invoking the presence of a certain Steven Hotdog, when your brain’s starved of glucose—technically known as neuroglycopenia—things in the eyes start popping off randomly, creating sparks in your vision, and your brain’s visual input pathway is full of noise, interpreted by the brain as a psychedelic pattern. And my brain was all outta glucose in that moment. I’d been planning an epic ride for months, selecting and rejecting candidate routes, running through ideas, knowing I wanted to get in 161 kilometers for the day, an imperial century, to satisfy the requirements for Restrap’s Solstice Century. The official challenge is just a framework upon which to hang a ride, you dig? I thought I did, but I was wrong. I did not dig. But we rode, Don and I, from the train station in Gapyeong.

Into history? Sort of. There’s a spot there where the Australian 3RAR, the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, etched their name into history in a pitched battle against a giant Chinese force, supported by their New Zealand ANZAC brothers in arms, on the night of the 24th and 25th of April, 1951. The Aussies were there with rifles and Owen guns, right on the front line, supported by the Kiwis with artillery, as well as the Canadians of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and Americans with a detachment of tanks. It was quite the fight, one of those battles that defines a military unit forever after. There’s a memorial park there in Gapyeong that I go to sometimes, adopting a Korean tradition and pouring one out for the lads who never made it home. Kiwis and Aussies remembered together, but it’s just how we roll. Wouldn’t have it any other way. Markolli man, cloudy rice wine, no VBs in the village there, and hell, I’m sure old soldiers will still put in a good word for me with the man, you know? Can’t be too picky in this life, or in the hereinafter. And I can’t afford imported Australian beer, let alone Korean domestic, to pour out in remembrance, me with hungry kids, a decade or more of alcohol abstinence behind me and a Korean bow of the head to the departed, with the contents of a $1.00 bottle of markolli seeping into the earth in which they rest. Brave guys, and I live with—and love—some of the people whose security they paid for with their young lives. Gotta pay your respects, man, yes you do, and not always to the departed. Sometimes you gotta pay the mountain.

Don led me along the flats at a brisk pace and I could feel I was right at the raggedy edge of zone 2, managing to hold a conversation, but aware of zone 3, right there, taking my words away at times. It was that crossing of the valley floor, the brisk ride before the climb on an empty stomach that did it. Bonking. Means you’ve run out of blood sugar, used up all the glycogen stored in your liver and muscles. Get weak, white faced, confused. LSD vision. I stopped there, on the mountain by the side of the road, ate a gel, an energy kick that had been sitting around in my bike gear for months. Didn’t work, I needed more carbs. Big mouthfuls of dry powder, like tang, washed down with gulps of warm water. That bag of sports fuel saved me, got me up the big old switchback in the road.

It had rained the day before, and even as I waited at the station for Don’s train, the ground had still been wet. With the rising June sun, the humidity came on strong, the start of the summer rainy season. We made it up, and instead of riding the road to the tunnel that the roadies take, we opted for the military road up to the saddle, riding into the low cloud base, the misty cloud cool, smell of rain and rushing creeks in the air. We rested at the saddle as I eyed the road to the eastern army base speculatively. Nothing to see today, in the cloud, but sometime in the future. A grand return. We descended on a rocky goat trail of a road. You could drive a tank down there. Perhaps? Rough, slow and technical. Still, back down to the main road at a point past the tunnel. Photos taken, I was off, downhill like a rocket. Sugar the only thing on my mind, looking for a shop. I was still weak, shaky, covered in sweat. Still feeling the effects of that bonk, still reeling. Don caught me, eventually. I’d forgotten he wanted to stop and look at the entrance to mountain gravel roads. I just wanted a can of coca cola. Like, yesterday. Kinda felt bad for ripping off on him, downhill, but sugar. Sugar. In the end it came in Dr. Pepper, fully leaded, with bags of candy and chocolate bars for later. Sugar’s real bioavailable, you know? Drink a 500 ml bottle of soda and you’re flying within minutes. I felt human for the first time in a couple of hours. Belly full of carbs and more in the bag. Alive, riding again.

We rode past the roadie turn off. It’s a big loop of a route for road cyclists. The first crossing, ride up the valley and then a second crossing of the range, back to the other side. We were explorers on the moon, though, into a gravel road and up, past the last traces of civilization to a gate, a gate traversed. The road there is groomed, lovely. Views forever with clouds just lifting off the tops of the mountains. Forever linked to the flavor of granola chocolate in my mind, as I ate at every stop, mindful of a repeat performance. Wasn’t gonna bonk again, no sir. But that section of road over the shoulder of the mountain. Groomed, neat, white and fine, like the driveway of a country club. Luxury gravel.

Second gate traversed, we rejoined the sealed road. Still more climbing to go and now in the heat of the day, things warming up. I sweat in the summer, especially in humid air like that. I had a supply of dry socks in my bag that I slowly depleted throughout the ride, exchanging wet for dry, drinking endless bottles of water, replenished from the larger bottle in my saddlebag. We didn’t linger at the second summit, 700 meters to the 900 of Mt. Bonk, over in the distance. The valley there goes on forever. You traverse downward, ever downward. We stopped, no frenzied rush for calories this time, just a relaxed look at the entrance to mountain gravel roads. Don is a mountain gravel connoisseur, and hey, I’ve had my moments as well, it’s how we ride gravel in Korea and right there, behind some holiday cottages, there’s a steep little road leading to an abundance of gravel. Recon for the future.

It’s right on the 38th Parallel, the famous 38th. See, back in the day, at the end of WWII, two US Army officers, Dean Rush and Charles Bonesteel, used an old National Geographic map and a ruler, cut Korea in half on the 38th parallel. That’s where the North Koreans, with their miniature Red Army, jumped off from in mid-1950, where the war began. The border was to assume a more realistic form by 1953, pushed back to the north of where we were into a more geographically sensible demarcation. But in the now, there’s a genuinely odd monument to the war there. Across the actual 38th parallel, sculpted statues stand. They’re like outsider art, like your hippie aunt, the one who drinks too much wine and cranks up the volume on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, was tasked with creating a military display on the 38th parallel. The North Korean forces feature a wonderfully serene woman in fatigues, who stands with rifle in hand, at parade rest, not even looking at the green clad South Korean forces arraigned to her south. She looks into the distance, a cryptic Mona Lisa smile on her lips. I can only aspire to her level of peacefulness, to her air of delicately orthodox Marxist-Leninist serenity. The cadre of calm, man, the rifle ajjuma on the hill. Where is she now? Reading the news on North Korean state TV maybe? A friendly looking grandma, in traditional Korean dress, all about that sea of fire! The glorious leader bringing the end to the den of bandits in the south, turning their capital into a smoking heap of rubble. Cleansed. Radiologically purified, in the name of the Kim family! The glorious Baekdu bloodline! But now here’s Kim Min Su with the weather. How’s it looking out there tonight, Ms. Kim? I admire just how businesslike the North Koreans are with threats of nuclear armageddon. They’re pros at the top of their game, and you have to respect that, you really do. Yi Chun-hee? North Korea’s newsreading grandma of doom? No one does it better.

It’s an endless valley you ride through there, a long gently sloping road, full, on the day, with summer Korea, BBQs, rivers, grilled pork and swimming. We rode past, Don and I, until we had completed our loop, meeting our earlier route near the Aussie and Kiwi soldiers’ resting place. An easy run along the river flats later and Don flatted. He urged me on, and with the train station relatively close I knew he’d be just fine. The day was getting on and I had around 100 kilometers ridden. I needed 60 more. And so began the long grind home. I probably should have given up, thrown in the towel to take the train. But I didn’t, I wanted that cloth patch from Restrap, and, determined to earn it, I rode. And rode. A sweaty cross-country journey, powered by ramen and determination. Through the late afternoon and into the dusk, grinding along the Bukhangang path, through Namyangju, past Byeollae and finally home, home to Uijeongbu in the dark, and a family shaking their heads at their errant father and spouse.

Sometimes a bike ride is just a bike ride. Sometimes a bonk is just a bonk. And yet, we learn, yes we do. When we set out to ride one hundred miles on a bicycle? Maybe, just maybe, we could ride them faster, on the flat. If riding uphill—seriously uphill—one needs carbohydrates. All the pancakes and syrup in the world. You have to feed a ride like that. If riding mountains, serious mountains, you need to be fit, to be properly ride fit, although that was a lesser issue. You need gas in the tank, you need to plan better, to be smarter. And yet it was not the first time for me to be slightly too ambitious. Memories of sitting there gassed, eating a gel at the top of another mountain, cold in the cloudy grey afternoon of a late winter’s day. We live and learn. Sometimes, at least. Until the next time we forget, and we pay the price. Again.

I wrote earlier that things haven’t really improved in the Middle East, and even if peace was to break out today, the ripple effect of the war is going to be huge, lasting for years. However! Peace broke out in the Middle East today, and even if the ripple effect of the war is going to be huge, lasting for years, I am hopeful for the future for the first time in weeks. Which is not to say that the remainder of this year is going to be easy. The start of the real oil shock is just about here, as the last of the pre-war oil makes its way through the system. Like I said last time, the old world is dying and a new world struggles to be born. We all have to start to navigate that struggle, to help the new world come into being, and lots of us will be doing that by bike.

This is part 1 of the Utility Files.

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So you need to start using a bike instead of a car, but you don’t really know where to start with bikes and how to get to a usable utility bike? That’s what this series is for, to help you identify the bike and the bike accessories you will need for utility cycling. This first post will focus on turning a hybrid bike into a utility bike. Think about it like making the Toyota Corolla of bikes. Unglamorous, reliable and affordable.

Start with the bike. In this post, we will use the example of a Giant Escape (they are called a Cross City in the Australian & NZ Markets), but hybrids are available everywhere, like a Trek FX, a Cannondale Quick or a Specialized Sirrus. Those are from the larger bike companies, but there are many others available in different markets, such as the Carerra Crossfire, sold only by Halfords stores in the UK and unavailable anywhere else. I mention that only because you may have a bike available locally that will work perfectly for you, that I do not mention here. Basically we are talking about a hybrid with a rigid fork, flat bars, and wider tires, intended to be ridden in the urban environment. There, note that some hybrids, like the Giant Roam, come with short travel suspension forks. They will work just fine, it’s not an issue at all, but they can limit you a little if you want to build a utility bike, as we will see.

Giant dealers will often have a choice of bikes, i.e. the Giant Escape 1, Giant Escape 2, Giant Escape 3, etc. They have different prices due to their features, like slightly nicer groupsets (the crankset, chain, cassette, shifters and derailleurs). Most of the mid-range models will have aluminum frames with aluminum forks. For a utility cyclist, I think these are the best. Cheaper models commonly have high tensile steel forks, making the bike heavy. Expensive versions may have carbon forks, which may not be the best for mounting racks and fenders on in the long run. On that point, though, please don’t get the wrong idea. Steel forks, often Hi-Ten steel, are actually just fine, because they’re strong, but they’re not springy like higher grades of chromoly (chrome-molybdenum alloy) steel so they ride like aluminum forks, but heavier. Carbon is much lighter and nicely springy, so it’s perfect for mid range road bikes designed for speed. However, if you put racks and fenders into the threaded bolt holes of carbon forks (steel holes bonded into carbon fiber) to make a utility bike, the vibrations of the bolts holding the rack and fenders can eventually crack the resin that bonds the bolt holes to the carbon forks, especially the bolts of racks with a load on them. It’s damage that’s only (expensively) repairable by specialists.

Thus, to my mind, a mid-range model like a Giant Escape 2 with an aluminum frame, and an aluminum fork, a Shimano CUES 9-speed drivetrain and decent Tektro brakes is a perfect base for a utility bike. The aluminum fork is lighter than Hi-Ten steel, but more durable than carbon over the long haul. Now, there is actually a fully equipped Giant Escape 2 (or Cross City) model that comes stock with fenders and a rack, but Giant, in particular, sells different models of their bikes in different markets, and that model may not be available near you. Thus, I’ll talk about how you can use the base model, without the bells and whistles included to make a utility bike. Also, you need to remember that bikes have different sizes. That can be slightly confusing, but most bike manufacturers will have a handy chart on their website that will show you exactly which size of bike you need. You can also ask the people at the bike shop for their advice and physically stand over the bike’s top tube. You need to be able to stand over the top tube of the bike’s frame with both feet flat on the floor for a hybrid like a Giant Escape, as well as a road bike, remembering that with mountain bikes, sizing can be slightly different because the top tube will be slanted and lower. I will also try to do a post in the future about fitting your bike to yourself, but for now, I will note that many bike shop people will help you with this upon your purchase and there are many good resources available on YouTube.

Now, a Giant Escape 2 costs $700-1,000, depending on your market and how far you are from Taiwan, where they are shipped from. I understand that it seems like quite a lot, and yes, there are bikes at the local big box store for $300, it’s just that the Giant will last for much longer without breaking. A Giant Escape 2 is a bike you can use for a couple of decades; it’s a serious bike. Those cheap bikes at big box stores? They’re often designed to be ridden for about 200-300 kms over their entire lifespan. They are not serious bikes, they often have odd proprietary parts, like plastic or nylon spacers, cheap cranksets and poor brakes. Basically, their parts are difficult to replace by mechanics, making them all but disposable. They’re not really designed with ease of repair in mind, like more serious bikes in the $500-$1,000 range.

An eMTB with a Topeak rack and Topeak Rack Top Bag. Photo by Bidgee via Wikimedia Commons.

So, let’s say you have a newly purchased Giant Escape 2. To be a suitable utility bike it’s going to need a few accessories. First a rack. Here I recommend a Topeak rear rack, the Topeak Super Tourist DX or something similar. Why Topeak? It’s a commonly available brand and the only reason I am recommending it here is that there is a very good chance even a smaller local bicycle store will have one in store, or can easily order one. Topeak racks also have a neat attachment system for rack top bags. They are not the only brand that has such an attachment system, but outside of Europe, I think they are the most common. See the photo above? The bottom of the bag has a long rail that slides into a channel on the top of the rack and clicks into place with that yellow bit at the front of the bag that you can see. Mean the bag’s very secure on the rack. For utility biking, those bags are great, because many of them have two large side pockets, that, when unzipped, transform into pannier bags that hang down on the side of the rack. Say you’re shopping, you can put things like bags of flour and rice in those hanging pannier bags, or potatoes. Then, in the the middle of the bag, you can fit cans of beans, jars of jam, etc. If you have a jacket that you wear off the bike to say warm while not riding, in a light breeze while damp with sweat, you can wrap it around glass jars. You can also get cheap sports towels (they’re light) and carry them in the bag for wrapping fragile groceries with. It’s not just oil that will be scarce, it’s plastic bubble wrap and shopping bags, and you may have to pay for them. If you can load your panniers and bag right there at the cash register, you don’t need polyethylene bags. You can also use your jacket and towel system to make sure things are secure and not moving around.

I mention Topeak there because, like I say, they’re commonly available. There are a lot of brands, though. The German brand Tubus make lovely light steel racks, and the Tubus sub-brand Racktime make aluminum racks. They have a whole system of bag attachments, baskets, etc. I actually use Racktime myself, but they can be hard to find in some markets. Axiom, Blackburn, Ortleib and many others all make racks, and, it should be noted, as we are using the Giant Escape 2 as our example, Giant also have racks available. A Giant Rack-It rear rack and a set of Giant City Panniers would work perfectly with a Giant Escape, you could even say that they’re made for each other. As with everything in utility cycling, though, the best rack to use is the one that’s accessible to you.

A rigid fork with a low rider rack. Photo by johnh via Wikimedia Commons.

Now, remember how I spoke a little about short travel suspension forks and said they might limit you? That’s because Giant also have what are called low rider racks. These are racks for the front of the bicycle, and you can’t really use them with suspension forks. They are designed to work perfectly with the rigid forks of Giant bikes like the Escape, and, as a general rule, front racks require rigid forks. There are exceptions, but we won’t get too far into that today. Suffice to say, like the Tubus Tara Low Rider in the image above, the Giant Rack It Metro Front Rack provides an attachment point for a pannier bag on each side of the bike’s fork.

Note the Giant panniers. Two side bags connected by a central portion that forms a carry handle (handle hole just visible) when removed from bike.

Which brings us to pannier bags. I mentioned rack top bags above, and while some come with integral pannier bags in their side pockets, some have storage space in those pockets, and unzip on the top to expand the size of the bag. The Topeak versions can clip to a Topeak rack, but there are versions that attach to a rack with velcro, if you have a rack that’s not Topeak. You can also buy an adaptor, basically a channel that you can attach to your existing rack to put a Topeak bag on it. There are also pannier bags. Now, there are the type that come as two distinct bags, like small backpacks on either side of your rack. Those are just fine, but they’re better for touring I feel. What I recommend for utility cycling is two panniers, connected at the top to form a single whole. The Giant version are perfect for urban utility biking, and you can always strap a bag to the top of them, like a small backpack filled with groceries. There are a wide range of pannier bags available and they will vary by location.

Fenders are great for keeping you dry and your bike clean. I get lazy about cleaning my bike sometimes, because the fenders take away all the mud splatter. The brand I recommend is SKS, SKS Bluemels in particular, because they have a spoiler or mud flap on the bottom of them (see the bike picture above for an example of mudflaps on fenders). Topeak offer fenders, but they’re often for mountain bikes. The presence of fenders ion shops near you will depend on your local market, and preferences among local cyclists. If you can’t find them, ask a local bike shop to order you some, or buy some on a website. Just be mindful that attaching fenders can be time consuming and difficult on a very annoying level. Of all the bike tasks that you can do yourself, attaching fenders is one that you might like to pay for. Your psyche will thank you, trust me on that one.

You will also need lights. Topeak sell them, a red rear light and front white light, but there are a huge range of lights to choose from. You need them for safety, from other cyclists on bike paths and cars on roads, and you can just use two very small and cheap lights for safety. Bright headlights are also quite cheap and available these days, often rechargable by USB cable, or that use button batteries. Seriously, you cannot have too many lights. I have one on my seatpost, another on the top of my helmet, one on my bars and then a proper headlight. I use them all as well. A guy I know, after an accident with a car, wrapped his bike in Christmas lights. A festive look, but utterly practical. Have lights, buy more. Have redundancy, they’re cheap and they can save your life.

Lastly, for now, is the issue of bike shorts. What I would do is find a pair of bike shorts or two, for about $20 each. I but them from Decathlon, the huge French sports retailer, but you can find them in many places for about that much. You can pay a lot more, but when you’re starting out, $20 shorts are great. Then you can put together a bike outfit around the she shorts with existing clothing. Sweat wicking t-shirt, jogging shorts over the top of the padded bike shorts, long quik-dri hiking pants, long sleeve hiking top, cheap mountain biking jersey, old wind jacket, etc. Improvise, adapt, overcome (with acknowledgement to the US Marines for that one). Meaning use what you have on hand, beg, borrow or steal other stuff, use what you have. Get it sorted out. The big thing is the cycling shorts. They save your legs from chafing and painful rashes from damp cotton, so you can ride again, but there is an important thing to remember. Wear them once and once only before washing them. Bacteria can grow in the pad if they remain damp and unwashed before reuse, and they can invade hair folicles on your posterior. A saddle sore is the pimple-like result of that invasion and they are no fun. Trust me on that one. Wash your shorts regularly, and it’s a good idea to turn them inside out, even after a wash, and leave them in direct sunlight. Sunlight’s an excellent disinfectant.

We will look at other bikes as well in the weeks to come. Look, the coming months are going to be difficult in many ways, some that we can’t really grasp yet. But the world dodged a bullet this morning (Korea time) and I am thankful for that. There is extensive damage, but that can be fixed. Iranian civilians are safe and Gulf energy infrastructure is intact, the world can take a few deep breaths and I can stop stressing about the Iranian toddlers and children out in the human shields around those power plants. Adults can take care of themselves, you know? The global economy is hurt, but it’s far from dead and things look like they will recover. Truly, money is the last thing on my mind today, and I mention it only because my family now has a much better chance at remaining warm and adequately fed next winter, like our friends the world over. Yeah, we may have to ride bikes a bit, instead of driving cars, but bikes are awesome. That is no hardship at all, it’s a blessing in disguise. Also, I can now see my way clear to getting back to posting about things like my psychedelic bonk on the way up Mt. Hwaak, and annoying gravel cyclists from here to Tehran (they exist, their mountains are beautiful and I have only ever experienced friendly enthusiasm for bikes from them). Take care all, I will be back soon.

By the dawn’s first gray light. Specialized AWOL utility riding in early winter.

Things don’t seem to be getting all that much better in the Middle East. You can get into the politics of it all elsewhere—I certainly have been—but suffice to say, from any angle, it’s still a clusterf&%k of epic proportions. Every day that things go on like this is another week or month of disruption down the road, as global energy supplies are squeezed and whole economies start to shudder, just a little. I am honestly in awe of the next 6 months, as much as I fear what may happen. I don’t think any of us have seen anything like what’s coming in our lifetimes, and I don’t know that people have yet grasped the sheer magnitude of the disruption that is about to hit the global economy.

Remember: The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.

Never in our lifetimes has this Antonio Gramsci quote from the 1930s been as relevant as it is right now. We just have to try to avoid the monsters of the interregnum and to make it through the rebirth. Not everyone will.

It’s getting bad, very bad in some places, but there’s a tiny ray of hope, to my mind at least. The world has long needed a wake up call from its over-reliance on oil, which is, after all, a finite resource. Maybe this war, and the hard times to come, in direct consequence of the conflict, will help to move humanity towards new ways of looking at energy and transportation. Not everyone will get the memo, and not everyone will want to get the memo, but for many there will be no alternative. There is a new paradigm being forcefully imposed upon the world as I type, with all the subtlety of a violent kick to the testicles, and part of it is going to be the need for alternatives to fossil fuel-powered vehicles. Obviously, in this case, I’m talking about bicycles and eBikes. Utility cycling.

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And here, don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about people undertaking multi-state journeys of thousands of kilometers or miles on bicycles, although people certainly do that. I’m talking about humans moving around within cities and towns, as well as making trips between relatively close towns and villages, to larger settlements nearby or to a neighboring city. I think, for the sake of argument, that I’m speaking about a rides up to and within within radius of 50 kilometers or about 30 miles. That’s a round trip of up to 100 kilometers or 60 miles, about the range of most modern eBike batteries, when ridden in eco mode and not recharged, and a completely realistic distance for a fairly average bicycle rider with a moderate degree of fitness to ride, with the understanding that many trips will be much shorter, with breaks between periods of riding.

Short or long, though, time is a big consideration for the utility cyclist. Cars, and other vehicles, have had a huge impact on humanity’s conception of time and distance. Think of 40 kilometers, or 25 miles. At highway speed in a modern car it’s 24 minutes. If pushed hard, a horse might do it in 4 hours, but realistically and humanely, about 6 is reasonable. With a relatively light load, a walking human will cover it in 8 hours.

A utility cyclist can do it in 2.

Think about that. To make it to an appointment on time, obviously you need to leave home earlier than you would if you were using your car, but not by that much. You do not travel through towns and cities at highway speed in a car, and in my case, in Uijeongbu, it’s a mix of 30 km/h and 50 km/h zones, averaging about 40 kms an hour. Thus, giving yourself roughly twice the normal amount of time to get anywhere locally seems about right, but remember, you need to give yourself a bit of a buffer. In warmer weather you’ll sweat and you may need to freshen up with a sports towel if you’re visiting the doctor or local government offices. In cold weather you need to take your jacket off and brush off the snow, if you’re in that sort of professional setting and need to worry about other people and their furniture. The supermarket can deal with your sweaty or icy ass, trust me, it’s seen worse. Twice as much time as you would take using a car, with 10-15 mins on top of that, sounds realistic in all types of weather with decent gear, though.

Let’s think about that 40 kms/25 miles for a minute, because it’s historically relevant to humans. In late 1950, when seasoned Chinese soldiers walked down through Manchuria and over the border into North Korea, they were expected to cover that same distance in a day (or night, as they marched in darkness). The same distance as a Roman legionary would walk while on the campaign a couple of thousand years earlier. For centuries, infantry and cavalry could be expected to cover ground at a predictable 40 km/25 miles a day, or more realistically, about 35 kms/20 miles. Considerably less if more heavily loaded. Years later, in Vietnam, in the war of independence against the French, a single Viet Minh porter, pushing a reinforced cargo bike carrying two 122 mm artillery shells destined for Điện Biên Phủ, was expected to cover the same distance. 40 kilometers or 25 miles. Yet in the Malayan Campaign in 1941-1942, the Japanese army advanced at a lighting pace, taking the defenders by surprise. It is said that a Japanese soldier could do up to 100 km/60 miles on a very good day. Why? Because they were mounted on bicycles, using better roads than the rough jungle tracks the Vietnamese would traverse in the future.

A human and a bicycle forms a system that is the most efficient means of transport of all, if looked at purely in terms of energy expended per distance. You travel 3-4 times as fast as you would while walking, yet you use roughly the same amount of energy. In terms of calories expended, per gram of mass moved per kilometer travelled, a human on a bicycle is more efficient than walking, running or, for that matter, driving a car. Remember, a calorie is merely a means of measuring potential energy, it’s not limited to food, and a liter of gas is full of them. 8,000 to 9,500 of them to be specific. The same holds true in imperial units, I’m sure. Riding a bicycle in urban settings is not that much slower than driving, and the fuel? You eat it for breakfast. Hell, I have a bunch of it stored around my midriff. In terms of bicycle fuel, I am a very rich man.

I’m joking, obviously, but not entirely. Active transport encompasses the ideas of health and fitness and it’s great for you physically. Many of us could stand to lose a little weight, and regular cycling is great for your health. Obviously you need resistance training for your muscles, but the cardio? That’s taken care of. If you don’t eat more, you will also start to lose weight. A really smart doctor once told me that the way to restart weight loss, when you hit a plateau, is to change a variable. Up your activity, decrease your calorie intake, change something. By starting to cycle regularly, you’ve just changed a variable, and if you’re not pushing it really hard, and have a normal diet, you can lose weight. That said, you need to be in tune with your body. When we exhaust the supplies of glycogen stored in our liver and muscles, if we have an empty stomach, it’s known as a bonk, or bonking. Being bonked. You may have hit that same wall on a hike before? You get cold and sweaty, pale and white faced. You’re entirely out of energy and feel like you can’t go on. Lightheaded. The only cure is sugar. Well, it’s food, carbohydrates in particular. Sugar’s just a very bioavailable carbohydrate and perks you up instantly. A can of soda after a bonk and you feel like a new person within minutes. Seriously, it’s comical just how fast energy returns after eating enough refined sugar. Dark rye bread will also get you going again of course, it will just take a while longer to work, and, being complex carbohydrates, will keep you topped up for longer. You need to be attuned to your body if you start riding your bike more and understand what is realistic to expect of it, what you can and can’t do and when you really need to sit down in the shade, have a break and drink a bottle of Dr. Pepper. Or two, don’t be shy, you probably need it.

There is also an aspect of spiritual health to utility cycling, just as there is a physical. Perhaps not in just ducking down to the local pharmacy for some chapstick, sunscreen and aspirin, but don’t sell yourself short. Ennoblement can be found in the most mundane places at times, and I sometimes find myself thinking about monks, no matter what their faith, and the wisdom they have regarding suffering, in matters spiritual. It’s not that suffering is fun, it’s that a certain amount of suffering, physical and mental, is a very healthy thing for an otherwise well-adjusted individual. A decently long ride into a strong, cold headwind may not feel like meditation, but it can be. The trick, for me at least, lies in quieting the annoying voice of your inner child, the one complaining about the cold, the effort, the distance, etc. It lies in quieting imaginings of sex, food and warmth, of being present in the moment, aware of your surroundings, but not being plagued by an endless loop of inane thoughts. Success to me, when I was riding daily, was the surprising realization that I had reached the point of my journey at which the car road diverged from the bicycle path and that my time of meditation was over, without it being foremost in my mind. It was nice to then put on a podcast—now able to be heard properly over the noise of traffic on the diverged path—and to ride the final 10 kilometers to home with company. Reaching that deep meditative state is not impossible by any means, but, by the same token, it is not always easy to do. Like physical exercise, though, we can gain metaphysical fitness. On one level, yes, it is just riding to the next town over for a few things from the supermarket for tonight’s dinner, but that return leg, into a stiff breeze off the ocean with just a thin windbreaker over a cycling jersey does not have to be a time of mindless suffering. It can be a time of mindful suffering, of allowing a lack of comfort during a tough bike ride to make you stronger, on more than one level. Plus, the shower after a effort like that feels freaking amazing.

Perhaps the biggest factor in utility cycling is the weather. There’s always the inescapable fact that in the rain, a car is dry, while a bicycle is not. In the depths of winter, a car is warm, while a bicycle is not. It the burning sun, a car is cool, while a bicycle is not. You know what I mean. It’s a huge consideration in starting to use your bicycle for more than recreation, and one that you need to think about seriously. What I would advocate for new utility cyclists is a hybrid system. Where I am in Uijeongbu, just to the north of Seoul, we have excellent public transport, and while I have a car, parking is prohibitively expensive at my office building, and traffic a nightmare to negotiate at rush hour. Before the pandemic, and before I went to working from home full time, I would always alternate days of cycling and days of public transport, often cycling three days a week and taking the subway for two. That was to change to continual bicycle usage during the Covid years, when I was focused on protecting my family from exposure, but that is not the case here. We are in the early stages of a fuel crisis, and for many, it is vehicle usage that is currently at issue. What I think here, is that utility cycling can complement your car usage. Petrol, or gasoline, is becoming scarce, and expensive in many places. This will be much worse in the months to come. My thinking would be to conserve what gas you have for the larger trips to the supermarket you need to make. You cannot carry huge loads on a bicycle, but you can certainly complement a single large grocery trip undertaken once a fortnight—that’s twice a month or so—with trips by bike to collect smaller things that need to be replenished, or your everyday use items, like bread and milk in western countries. Also for emergencies, a child with a very high fever, a broken arm, a gash from a broken pickle jar, whatever. Riding a bike to complete your errands most of the time allows you to conserve your fuel resources for when they’re essential.

For many of us in the northern hemisphere, we are just coming out of winter as the war in Iran heats up and global fuel supplies start to be seriously affected. I say that because if you are just starting out on a utility cycling journey, you have a good 7-8 months before things get cold again, giving you time to acclimatize to utility cycling, to find out what works for you and to make plans for the colder months. My advice would be to get out there and ride now and through the summer as gas prices and shortages really start to hit home and affect the world. Gaining that experience and confidence in utility cycling will put you in the right place to contemplate continuing on through the colder months and to build a workable plan. If, however, you are in the southern hemisphere, then winter is just around the corner. Do not despair. If you play any sort of sport at all, you likely have some sports clothing that is just perfect for bike riding. A rain poncho is cheap, a rain coat and pants are better (the lighter type of poncho can balloon out and rub on your wheels) and the good news? You usually only get down to freezing at ground level for a few hours at dawn on the coldest nights. Unless you’re high in the mountains you’re not really dealing with snow, and you can always look at the forecast and make plans. Ride one day, take the bus the next and use your car for shopping later in the week when it’s raining. You get the idea.

Lastly, the time to prepare for utility cycling is now. Today. This afternoon. Immediately. For most of us, fuel supplies have not yet been physically affected. The last ships full of crude oil that left the gulf before the war started will be arriving here in East Asia this week. In the US they’ll arrive in two weeks’ time. None of us have really experienced a true shortage of fuel yet, except maybe the Australians and those in SE Asia, and for them it has often been an artificial shortage due to hoarding and panic buying. The time to get up to speed with alternative forms of transport is today. The price of gasoline is about to go through the roof. But it’s not just that. Oil byproducts are used for everything. Fertilizer, medicines and helium, essential for medical imaging equipment, among them. But plumbing supplies, sports clothing, carpet. Tents. Everything. It’s all going to increase in price, along with food prices. Stagflation—inflation with a stagnant economy—is not just a theory right now, it may soon be an uncomfortable reality. The world is set to drastically change and few are fully aware of the extent of what may be coming down the pipeline. Oh how I hope I am being alarmist and none of the calamity I am predicting comes to pass. I fear I am not.

Hang in there. In the coming weeks I am going to go through some concrete scenarios, walking you through exactly how you can buy the right type of bike and outfit it with accessories, or how you can refurbish a bike you already own for utility cycling. I’ll name products and make some concrete recommendations. Also, if you’re still popping in the the website to read my newsletters there, I would really appreciate it if you could see your way fit to subscribe with your email address. You can still read at the website, or via the Substack app, but it helps me with the Substack algorithm.

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Spring is here in Uijeongbu, at last.

Hey all:

It’s not goodbye to me. I’m here, I’m writing, I’m enjoying being on Sunstack and I am genuinely thankful to all of you who have subscribed to my newsletter. I am not going anywhere. I’m just going to discontinue these Letter From Korea newsletters. I started this type of newsletter when Substack was an entirely different beast and I feel its time is past. It’s just as easy to provide updates via my normal newsletter posts and using Substack features like notes and the chat function, as we continue to grow. So thank you for reading these letters, but this will be the last one.

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Now, the news. Things are crazy in the world and they’re just getting crazier as the days go by. In response I have abandoned my planned look at Specialized and one of its designers and am all in on utility cycling at this point. For that I make no apology, because anything I can share with you vis-a-vis utility cycling is helpful in the current circumstances. And hell, into the future. I don’t know how many people have received the memo yet, but the world changed forever in the last few weeks. The era of cheap energy is probably over for good, and even if the war were to stop today, we wouldn’t be back to where we were pre-war for years. Decades, perhaps. We’re officially through the looking-glass.

It feels wild to say, because right now I am still living in the before times, here in Korea. Vehicles are still moving around freely and gas has only gone up by 25 cents or so per liter. That is soon to change, as the crude oil shipments slow; the ships arriving in Korean ports this week are the last to have left the gulf before the war. The US has a couple more weeks, but many places are starting to feel the crunch.

The rest of this year is going to be difficult in many places, for many different people. All I can say is good luck, for I fear we will all need it. All is probably not lost, even though it sort of feels like it at times. Be strong and I’ll see you on Wednesday with the next newsletter dealing with utility cycling.

Mark

A Specialized AWOL Elite adventure touring bike, with front and rear racks, pannier bags and mudguards/fenders. Note front low rider rack for steering stability.

The Strait of Hormuz remains (sort of, vaguely) closed (if you’re a friend of the US?), LNG facilities have been being bombed and the price of oil futures is at record high levels. Gasoline prices are increasing, and, in some countries, dependent on imports, there may be mere weeks of fuel remaining, if that. Filling your car can be incredibly expensive, and that’s only if there’s gas or diesel to do so, as some rural locations in places like Australia have had tanks of various types of fuel run dry.

The world hasn’t seen an energy crisis this bad since the 1970s, and even if the conflict in Iran was to end tomorrow, enough damage has already been done that the consequences of the events that have unfolded will be felt for years to come. Decades, even. Back in the 1970s there was a bike boom, partially in response to the oil embargos of the decade, but also, in the post-hippie zeitgeist of the times, with a growing consciousness of the importance of environmental concerns and of personal fitness. I think the latter half of the 2020s could stand to take a page from the same book.

It may be time to ride bikes more. Utility style.

What do you mean, utility style?

Utility cycling is biking to get stuff done. While it organically incorporates aspects of exercise and recreation, the primary purpose of utility biking is doing the practical things you need to do on a daily basis, such as grocery shopping, post office errands, heading to the library, calling in to local government offices, getting a haircut, heading down to soccer practice, all of the mundane but important stuff we need to do on a weekly basis. What follows is a collection of ideas and some tips to help you adjust to the idea of using a bicycle to do the things you probably have only ever used your car to do in the past.

Alright. So what sort of bike do I need for utility biking?

The bike you have is better than nothing. But certain bikes are better than others than others for utility cycling. Think of cars. A minivan or a pickup truck is always going to be better than a formula 1 race car for carrying groceries, and the same goes for bikes. A strong, steel bike with racks for carrying pannier bags is always going to be a better choice than a full carbon race bike for urban errands. Still, improvise, adapt, overcome. Use what you have and don’t let me or anyone else tell you that the bike you currently own won’t work. Get out there and try it out, even it it seems stupid. Remember: If it’s stupid, but it works, then it’s not stupid.

That said, here are some ideas for the best types of bike for utility biking.

Also, please note that if you’re from the UK, Europe or the Commonwealth countries, I am using the US word fenders here to mean mudguards.

-eBikes: The Pedal assist variety. Some of the best bikes for tasks like light shopping and running errands around town are hybrid eBikes. Some of them come with fenders and racks already installed, and there are a wide range of eBike brands, so I won’t go into too much detail here, suffice to say you are looking for a hybrid eBike, or an urban eBike. The Giant urban brand Momentum (Giant is the main brand, Liv is the female-specific brand and Momentum is the urban brand, available in select markets) has an amazing eBike called the Pakyak E+ . It’s the type of eBike than can replace a car, that you could carry a week’s worth of groceries on and take two younger kids to school with, with a small dog in a basket in front. It’s the type of eBike that you take on voyages, rather than rides. The cool thing about eBikes like that is that they often have a whole ecosystem of accessories available. Giant also have eBikes in the form of SUV type eMountain bikes, with racks and carriers. Depending on where you are in the world, there are countless options. Still! Cargo eBikes can cost as much as a used car. Remember that there are cheaper options available and that you can always get a relatively inexpensive eBike conversion kit for most of the bikes listed below, if riding a bike with a heavy load seems daunting. Plus, a conversion kit with front wheel drive is usually reversible, so you can go back to ridng your bike as a regular non-electrically powered bike whenever you want to.

-Steel touring bikes: Basically any bike made by Surly, although a Disc Trucker, a Straggler, a Bridge Club or Ogre is a good starting point. A Kona Sutra, a Kona Unit or Unit-X, a Fuji Touring, a Bombtrack Arise, a Bombtrack Beyond, a Breezer Thunder, or any other steel frame bike will work just as well. Many of them have attachment points for racks and fenders. Racks are great, because you can put bags on them to carry your shopping or equipment, leaving your back unencumbered. Likewise fenders, as they allow you to ride in damp conditions, in snowmelt or on muddy trails and wet gravel roads without getting too dirty, and keeping your drivetrain nice (grit from the road can work as an abrasive in your drivetrain if it ends up in the chain).

-Hybrid bikes: Probably the best bet for the majority of people. A Giant Escape (called a Cross City in some markets) or Giant Roam, a Merida Crossway, a Kona Dew, a Trek FX, a Specialized Sirrus, etc. The list is extensive. They’re often made with aluminum frames and forks (and sometimes carbon forks, or suspension forks), they will cost about half the price of the steel touring bikes mentioned above, and they often feature mounts for racks and fenders. Some, like the Surly Preamble, come in steel, with a steel frame and forks. One of the Giant Escape models comes with pre-installed fenders and a rack, and that’s not uncommon to see with this type of bike, as they’re designed for urban utility cycling. If you are starting out with bikes, this is usually the best option for you. Ride a hybrid like you stole it for a year or two, work out what you want out of cycling and then upgrade, when you have a better idea of what it’s all about.

-Gravel Bikes: There’s quite a lot of overlap here with touring bikes. I’ve vaguely covered it before, but the name “gravel bike” covers a wide range of bike types:
All Road: Narrow tires, developed road bikes, aggressive geometry.
Standard-Endurance: Relaxed Geometry, endurance, ever wider tires.
Racing: More aggressive geometry, lighter, carbon frames very common.
MTB-like Gravel: Largely a matter of geometry. Lots of reach with a very slack head angle, allowing riders to get very rowdy on singletrack, as well as gravel roads.
Gravel-like MTB: Often basically a cross-country MTB with drop bars, of the type that is used for the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route or for faster racing, like the type of bike that was recently banned for use in the Leadville 100 mountain bike race. The former type (Salsa Fargo style) makes for a good utility bike. The latter type not so much.
Bikepacking/Adventure: Bikes that are designed for carrying a load, be it with racks and panniers and a full set of bikepacking bags. This is the type of gravel bike you really want for utility biking. Look for a steel frame, mounts for racks and fenders, etc. This is the category with huge touring bike overlap.

-Minivelo/Folding/Cargo: Folding bikes are excellent urban bikes, due to their ability to be stored in such a small space. Brands like Dahon and Tern make some very affordable models, while Brompton makes excellent folders as well, often on the pricier side, though. Check out Tern for small wheel cargo eBikes, as well as regular cargo bikes. Smaller bike wheels are inherently stronger than larger wheels, so non-folding cargo bikes with smaller 16-20 inch wheels are a great option for utility bikes. Like I say in the cargo bike section above, Tern’s eBike and acoustic bike cargo offerings come with a huge range of accessories.

-Mountain Bikes: Hardtail mountain bikes can make a great utility bike. Mountain bikes changed a lot, over the years, and it is the older models from the 1980s and 1990s, often with rigid front forks that make the best utility bikes. There is a whole community devoted to building up old Specialized Stumpjumpers and Rockhoppers as urban utility bikes, as well as Trek, Giant and Cannondale models, among others. Thing with mountain bikes is their gearing. It’s incredibly low at times to help you ride up the steepest mountain roads and trails, so it’s far and away the best gearing for utility bikes, in my opinion.

-All Terrain Bikes: I think these beat almost anything else in the list in terms of coolness in the urban environment. Think a steel mountain bike with rigid steel forks covered in mounting points for racks, bags and cargo cages. Throw on some heavy duty urban 29er tires, like Schwalbe Big Apples or Big Bens, a front rack with a bag and you have a monster truck of an urban assault vehicle. Think a Surly Ogre or Bridge Club, a Kona Unit X (or the forthcoming Unit-Y or Unity), a Bombtrack, a Jones, or any old hardtail aluminum 29er MTB with a Surly Krampus fork or a Seido BPS fork. Anything like that will work, and they can be great fun, as well as being very practical.

-Road Bikes: Improvise, adapt, overcome. You can ride with a backpack if necessary, filling it with groceries and supplies. It’s often not ideal, from the viewpoint of comfort (you get a sweaty back) or health and safety (your back may not like having to carry the weight of your groceries over bikable distances). Older road bikes, often made of steel, are excellent, and modern offerings like the Surly Straggler and Preamble are just fine as well, because they have mounting points for racks and fenders. Bikes designed for speed, formed entirely of carbon fiber and lacking attachment points for racks and fenders may not be as ideal, but as ever, the best bike is the one you have.

You are into racks and fenders, huh?

Sure, because when it comes to urban utility bikes, they are almost essential. Racks allow you to carry panniers, or a rack top bag on their upper platform. Cargo bikes often have huge bags as accessories, or space for four pannier bags, two on either side. Regular touring bikes can offer this capability as well (see the photo at the top of the page or below) with two panniers on the rear and two on the front. Panniers allow you to haul your gear with your body unencumbered.

Fenders are there for spray. In situations like days of light drizzle, a day of snowmelt in warming weather, or riding on paths flowing with water seeping from an embankment, you are protected from ground moisture. Also, if you get a rain cape or poncho, you can wear it over the top of your bike to keep the rain off, and the fenders stop the spray from coming up from below you, so you are protected from below as much as you are from above. Fenders also help to preserve your bike. Small stone fragments, washed up into your drivetrain by water can wear away at chains, cassettes and chainrings. Fenders stop that and keep everything on your bike much cleaner.

Specialized AWOL adventure gravel bike/steel touring bike sans pannier bags for visibility of racks and fenders.

Alright, any accessories I should look for?

-Racks: Look out for Topeak racks. Topeak sell rack top bags that side onto them and lock into place, while you can alsop use regular pannier bags on them. Topeak also make racks for bikes without traditional mounting points, so you can use them on a road bike or mountain bike without bolt holes for mounting racks. Tubus make light but strong steel racks (see rear rack in photo above) and Racktime, a Tubus brand, make aluminum racks (see front rack in photo above) with a whole system of bags, baskets, etc., that slide on and lock into place. There are a wide range of racks from brands like Axiom, Ortlieb and many others, some of which work with Tubus or racktime products as well. Some are incredibly heavy, like Surly’s steel racks, but they do offer a better carrying capacity, while Tubus split the difference, being lighter with lower carrying capacity.

-Bags: Tubus and other brands, like Ortlieb, make handlebar bags with mounting systems, often without zips, which can easily fail. My personal Ortlieb handlebar bag closes with magnets, for example, and opens frontwards, so you can stand over your top tube while you retrieve snacks or a light jacket from the bag. Many brands also make top tube bags, which can be very useful for carrying a bike pump and a few basic tools and spares, like a tube, in case you get a flat or have a mechanical issue.

-Mudguards/Fenders: SKS are my go-to brand for fenders. They have full fenders, for gravel adventure bikes and hybrids, and clip on fenders for bikes, like road racing bikes, that do not have mounting points. The clip on version is also usually quite light, so they offer protection while not affecting performance too much. Topeak, mentioned above with reference to racks, also make fenders, especially for mountain bikes.

Okay man, but do I really have to wear the nut hugging shorts? What about when I walk into a shop? I’m really not into those shorts.

There are certainly a couple of schools of thought on those shorts. Quite a few utility cyclists emphasize wearing street clothes and using flat pedals, so that you need never get changed for a bike ride, you can always just jump on and go. Ultimately it’s up to the individual. There is a strong case to be made for street clothing, especially if you ride slowly to avoid sweating. Still, tight cycling clothing is often better for your health. Damp cotton underwear is brutal when rubbed on skin during a bike ride and can cause a really nasty chafing rash, maybe even an abrasion. It’s a terrible place to have broken skin, inside your shorts, as it’s often warm and moist with sweat, so infections can start quite easily on and around your legs. The tight cycling shorts may look bad, but they stop that painful chafing. If you are concerned about wearing revealing bike shorts into a café, a supermarket or wherever, you can carry a pair of light jogging shorts in a bag to slip on before entering the shop, or just wear them over your shorts. I do it constantly, often because there are small holes around the pad of my cycling shorts, but it’s an easy fix for a perceived lack of modesty or to have consideration for others. I think women can wear a light sports skirt, and some female specific cycling pants come with a skirt integrally attached. It’s actually a better solution than shorts, in that it hangs over the saddle, allowing direct contact between the shorts and the saddle, while providing a natural look when off the bike.

The other thing, for me as a male, is cycling jerseys. They are often skin tight, and for many men, it helps—and I will try to be as delicate as possible here—with your nipples. I have, in the past, worn a heavier sports t-shirt and ended a ride with two trails of blood on the shirt from abraded nipples. It’s unpleasant, to say the least, as your shirt gets wet with sweat and moves around, if it is loose enough to do so. Tight cycling jerseys help, through not rubbing, or, if you are like me, very light hiking t-shirts and base layers stop painful nipple abrasion. To be honest, I don’t know how it is for women, but I assume that a sports bra stops any real problems.

The point is that while cycling clothing can look bad, and wearers may be derided as a MAMIL, a Middle Aged Man In Lycra, there are good reasons why people wear that type of clothing. I modify the clothing bit for my own modesty (and so the people around me feel comfortable in my presence) and I usually just look like a jogger or casual sports player, with shorts, a regular t-shirt, arm covers for UV protection, and, in Korea, the ubiquitious cyclist’s ninja mask made of sports scarves to keep the sun off your face and bugs out of your mouth.

Okay, got you. But how about helmets?

The question of helmet use in utility cycling makes people crazy. Seriously. Like howl at the moon crazy. In some places it is mandated by law. In others it is not. I have no strong opinions on helmets in cycling, it’s up to you and your local laws. Note that entire online forums have banned the discussion of helmets because of the arguments that ensue.

Wow. That sounds crazy.

Oh, you have no idea. When the stakes are low, the drama is always greater. You do you, though. Utility cycling is about being practical and making things work for you, it’s not about what others think will work for you.

Huh… Any final thoughts?

I feel that utility cycling is really a state of mind as much as anything else. It approaches the use of bicycles in a very practical way, making them more of a tool in your life, rather than a piece of recreational equipment or a toy. The success of utility cycling for you can depend on where you live, what cycling access to roads and cycle paths is like, and whether there’s a well-established utility biking scene locally. But overriding that is the psychological aspect of the practice. I really feel that any hurdles can be overcome if your thinking is in the right place and if you are really dedicated to making urban (or rural) utility cycling work for you. On that last note, I have a bike headlight that I use after dark in my urban environment. I once saw a guy in a cycling group I manage post photos of a long gravel driveway absolutely covered in snow, in the middle of rural nowhere, USA, with the only illumination on hand the exact same model of headlight I have. It gave me real pause, imaging having to do the same. Ride several miles out of town, in the dark, without streetlights, to a snow covered driveway, itself a mile or two long, and ride uphill to home with only an old Stella 180 headlight on the front of the bike to light the way. That was a guy whose head was very much in the right place, making utility cycling work for him.

There is also a lot of positive personal responsibility in utility cycling. The only fuel you really need is a big bowl of granola or oatmeal, with top ups throughout the day if you’re riding around town. You are not dependant on imported petroleum products or on a public transport timetable that may not suit you and your schedule. If you are riding a regular bicycle, you do not have to worry about battery charge and remaining distance. You have your own transport at hand and you are not relying on anyone other than yourself to move around the city or between towns. You are completely in charge of your own destiny. It’s a good place to be.

Image Collage via Wikimedia Commons.

So you may have seen the news? Yeah, that news. Kind of a lot, huh? A girls’ school bombed, more than one hundred and fifty casualties, thousands of other Iranian civilians killed and wounded, and a clear and present danger for non-combatants (and trout pout Dubai influencers) in non-aggressor nations caught in the cross-fire. In the offing an energy crisis unprecedented in most of our lifetimes, the mother of all blips set to ripple on through the world’s economy and the spectre of a devastating global financial crisis. The possibility of brownouts and blackouts in roiling summer heat, as an El Niño builds in the Pacific. A fertilizer supply crisis and the threat of renewed famine in some regions, perhaps lasting for years.

But what does it all mean for the bike industry?

And there, don’t get me wrong, I get it, I really do. But you gotta laugh sometimes, so you don’t cry. Plus, you have to respect a darkly humorous juxtaposition.

The world’s on fire. But first? Bicycles.

I’m worried, man. I feel like I’ve been here before, almost exactly 6 years ago, when the novel coronavirus that had emerged in Wuhan, China was still the fodder of memes, and was still being seen as a joke. I could see what was coming, and I managed to cut through it to an extent, for some people, but I was only ahead of the curve by a couple of weeks. Right now? I’ve got the same feeling, but this time it isn’t about the death of millions. It’s about global recession, maybe a depression if things drag on for long enough.

I get the feeling the current moment may make Covid look like a picnic in a year or two. And if you’re unfamiliar with what happened to the bike industry during the recent pandemic, let’s get caught up in brief. Upon the first realization of what was happening, the bike industry panicked. But then, as it was seen that outdoor recreation was actually quite safe, demand for bikes boomed. Went absolutely nuts. People were buying any bike that moved and some that didn’t. Just to get outside, do something, have a reason for leaving the house for those who would ask.

And the industry embraced it. It was all of their Christmases come at once. Demand was higher than it had been in decades, and bike brands went to town with orders. But then the reality of the pandemic hit home, global shipping stalled and bicycles, as well as their components, and accessories—like everything else—became scarce. At that point, bike brands started making purchase orders from manufacturers, and to get to the front of the queue, the Taiwanese and Chinese factories asked brands to make huge orders. Bike companies signed the giant purchase orders, which wasn’t really a problem, because demand was booming. You couldn’t lose. Until you could. Things happened—you know, you were there, you saw it, just like I did—and the world, in fits and starts, slowly got back to something resembling normality. Meaning that casual cyclists, no longer locked down, no longer had a compelling reason to ride their new bicycle. Demand for bikes cratered, just as supply chains were really getting back into gear, so suddenly, the bike industry was left swimming in inventory, completely overstocked with everything, and buyers were nowhere to be seen.

The ramifications of those events has persisted to this day. Back in January I wrote about brands like Rapha and Brompton tightening their belts, but the pain in the bicycle industry hasn’t been confined to high end British brands. Canyon, the huge online retailer recently laid off staff, feeling the economic strain. The world’s largest bike maker Giant has also faced difficulties recently. Basically, everyone bought too many bikes in the pandemic era. To sell them, everyone has discounted the stock they have, eating into profits. There has also been very soft consumer demand in the post-pandemic years, as everyone who wanted to buy a bike bought a bike, not to mention the glut of used bicycles on the market, as pandemic purchases are sold.

Like many things, including the post-war global security order, the 2020s is seeing the culmination of many long-term trends, among them disruptions to the traditional retail model, of manufacturer to brand wholesaler and then to brick-and-mortar store. The really large brands have been struggling with Internet sales for years now, adopting different models of Internet sales, like Specialized and Giant. Trek, however, has been somewhat resistant to change, and in the long Covid hangover has been faring somewhat badly in the retail landscape, as they still own all of their own stores. As a company they’ve been wedded to a retail model that is fast becoming obsolete. The also bought so many bikes during the pandemic that they had to take out loans to pay for warehouse rental as well as to fund the acquisition of existing bike stores to turn them into Trek retail outlets. Servicing the loans had become something of a burden, and things have not been rosy for the Wisconsin brand recently.

The throughout 2023-2024 the bike industry mantra had been “Survive until ‘25,” and now no one really has anything new. “See you in heaven in ‘27?” Not all that catchy. But for now, 2026. War in Iran, Strait of Hormuz closed to shipping, combined energy and financial crises on the horizon, bummer all ‘round.

So what does it all mean? And what can I do?

With a global petroleum crisis, I think we may see Covid II, Electric Boogaloo. eBikes, man, lotsa them. If we see a protracted closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the worst comes to worst and there is a full-blown global petroleum crisis, a large portion of humanity will be looking for viable alternatives to fossil-fuel powered vehicles, especially those in places without a comprehensive public transportation network. As people scramble for a cheaper, non-oil dependent means of personal transportation, eBikes sales will go through the roof in a boom and bust cycle. Throughout the northern hemisphere summer demand will remain high, until rising prices, combined with the onset of colder weather conspire to crash the market, leaving bike companies holding the bag. Again.

Perhaps the coming crisis will buoy the industry, though, as it learns from the lessons of the Covid period and makes responsible orders, managing to balance supply and demand, as the world slowly but surely turns away from using fossil fuel powered vehicles in cities, leaning towards smaller electric vehicles for urban mobility. I know, really, I know. Still, a man can hope. I like the idea of electric urban mobility vehicles and see them as a viable future direction for humanity.

What can you do? Buy an eBike today, if you’ve been planning it but holding off. Or buy one within the next few months as 2027 year model bikes become available in the middle of the year. All of those eBikes have been made, assembled and are in boxes on ships away from war zones headed to shops near you. That may not be the same in 12 months’ time.

Same goes for small replaceable parts. Cassettes and chains. Lock in a spare chain or two and a cassette maybe. Some brake pads. Stash them away, and hell, you will use them anyway, even if I am tripping unnecessarily and nothing I say here comes to pass. The price of materials is going to go up, aluminum especially, as it’s highly linked to the price of the energy needed to produce it. Bike parts may go up quite a bit, meaning that buying a spare or two now can keep you riding happily later. Bike parts will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no bike parts. No need to go nuts like an Australian with panic bought toilet paper. Just enough and no more.

And that’s if you can find them in a year’s time. Recent history teaches us that everything will be sort of okay in 2026. As fuel prices really start to really bite, and global shipping takes a hit, in 2027, less ships will be carrying consumer goods, of the recreational sporting variety, as the world tightens its belt and ships the essentials like food and medicine.

There, though, there is an odd ray of hope. It’s not like the industry is lacking stuff to sell right now. For Trek and many others, inventory remains high and a regular old bicycles, without an electric motor attached to them are available and should remain so. You can see how having a large amount of existing inventory on hand, during a time of high manufacturing and international transport costs, would not be an entirely bad thing, and so while everyone will feel the effects of a global financial crisis, a recession or, God forbid, a depression, the bike industry, oddly enough, is almost well-placed to weather the coming storm. While there may be an eBike-based boom and bust, and while materials prices and shipping costs may increase, the warnings above need to be tempered by the fact that the bike industry has been creaking at the seams with oversupply. It may not be all that hard to find the things you need to find if the international situation continues to deline.

So, Mr. Mark, WWIII is threatening to break out and you’re only worried about bikes? Not, really, no. Like I say, sometimes you have to laugh instead of cry. Being myopically focused on bikes admist the chaos of the world in 2026 has just enough black humor in it to keep me going. Plus, I’m going to keep writing about bikes and the riding thereof. In dark times, you have to keep the focus on the stuff that means something, that’s real. I genuinely hope that things manage to resolve themselves, and the world untangles. I think we need to be ready for a global crisis, though, even if it never comes to pass.

Like I once said in an earlier time, before an earlier crisis: hang tough, mis amigos. In the hard times ahead you just gotta keep right on trudging forward, you know? One step after another, until you see the light at the end of the tunnel. If it’s actually an oncoming train, deal with it. Get outta the way, reset and keep right on keeping on. Nothing else to do, you know? You’ll emerge into the light and fresh air eventually. We all will.

Crankworx Rotorua Tuck No-Hander. Photo by Chris Sutton via Wikimedia Commons

And I’m back with a slopestyle update, after my recent Ōtautahi Slopestyle preview. Without question, Lyon Hyldahl was the highlight of the event in Christchurch, New Zealand. At 15 years old, he’s still young, but he’s not without courage. In his second run he pulled up short, lacking speed for the stepdown jump. The kid from Utah reset, though, and launched into a backflip barspin to tailwhip, a trick combo that just a decade ago would have seemed almost inconceivable for anyone, let alone a 15 year old novice competitor. He almost made it as well! He skidded and went down on the landing, rolled out of it and gave a cheerful thumbs up. It was reminiscent of Griffin Paulson’s debut at Silver Star, that personal stoke in the middle of a disaster of a run, knowing that the trick is possible and will eventually be landed. Cam McCaul in the commentary box said it best: It was a glimpse of the future of slopestyle, and that future was looking very bright in that moment. I was both charmed and impressed.

Still, we’re ahead of ourselves here. In the woman’s event Harriet Burbidge-Smith was third, Patricia Druwen managed second and instead of my predicted win for Alma Wiggberg, who didn’t end up competing, it was the Texan, Shealen Reno, who took top spot on the podium. Shealen really demonstrating the work she’s done to build new tricks on the airbag and in the foam pit in the off season. Well, more accurately, the work she’s done on building trick combinations. Her strength lies in her consistency and in packing as many variations into her tricks as possible.

The progression of the woman’s field is the main storyline this year, I feel, as the young women learn new tricks and start to make history as they perform certain moves for the first time in female competition. It’s an exciting time for woman’s slopestyle and Shealen Reno is emerging as a solid competitor. What she lacks in rotational moves off larger jumps, she makes up for in solid trick combos on other features. Patricia Druwen’s backflip in the sudden death trick-off format was impressive, and had she added just a single variation to it to form a trick combo, it probably would have won her the event.

The men’s field saw the lion-hearted young Lyon Hyldahl finish last, but something tells me that’s not the last time we’ll see him competing. I was thoroughly impressed to see such maturity in trick selection in one so young. In the event Erik Fedko took the win, which was fantastic to see. Of all the riders present, he was the one who really deserved it. David Godziek managed second, with Nicolai Rogatkin third. Chance Moore was fourth, Kaiden Ingersol fifth.

Interesting to see American newcomer Damien Anhder finish ahead of veteran riders like Griffin Paulson and Paul Couderc, part of the second wave of the new crop of riders shaking things up. Dane Folpp’s another, the young Australian coming off a gold level event win in Canada in 2025 to finish mid-pack, with other young riders like Jack Feick and Ayden Siebenaler, both from Canada, also starting to make their presence felt in events. It’s great to see an infusion of new talent into the world of slopestyle mountain biking, especially with some Antipodean flair, in a sport dominated by Europeans and North Americans.

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Slopestyle has a new feature in 2026, for the new Slopestyle Super League. All too often in the past, at the end of the day and as the standings on the podium became clear, we would see riders taking victory laps, conceding the win, often to Emil Johansson. The new format changes that, in that once finished, any rider within 10 points of the win is now allowed to select a single feature on the course to do a trick off of, to be scored out of a possible 10 points to be added to their score to possibly win the event. I’m completely onboard with the new format, I thought it really added suspense to the finish. All the way to to the last moment, Erik Fedko’s victory was uncertain, and his ultimate triumph must have been all the sweeter for it. There was a certain amount of chatter about the new format online, but I feel the competitors themselves answered any questions the online commentariat had raised. Conclusively. Slopestyle’s changing, and while the utility of new innovations in event formats and their impact will only become clearer as the season unfolds, early indications are very promising.

Now, last time, I discussed the current state of play in slopestyle. After a fight against an autoimmune disorder, Emil Johansson, the Swedish rider, dominated the sport of slopestyle for the first half of the 2020s, embarking on an unbroken winning streak of top-level Crankworx slopestyle events in 2019 that would last for years. While other riders would break through to convincingly win competitions in 2024 and 2025, Johansson returned to slopestyle competition in mid-2025 in Whistler, BC, in top form, denying Timothy Bringer the Triple Crown, and poised to retake his position at the top of the leaderboard, setting up a very interesting dynamic in the sport for 2026 with the new format.

That all changed at Red Bull Rampage in late 2025.

I will not relitigate Red Bull Rampage 2025 here, but like all other freeride fans, I have some very conflicted feelings about the event after 2025’s edition. Red Bull Rampage took a horrible toll on riders in 2025, and Emil Johannsson was one of them, wiping out disastrously and requiring immediate medical attention. At the time, his injury did not seem to be all that serious, as he was narrowly saved from falling off a cliff face and was soon known to have dislocated his hip. In my last slopestyle update, I was under the impression that Emil Johannsson was on the road to recovery from a relatively minor injury, and while I thought that he might sit out the New Zealand stops, I did think that we would see him in Europe. After a recent update from Emil himself, though, that will not be the case.

The bad news is that he also suffered a torn iliopsoas muscle, which retracted within his leg, a very rare injury. Surgery was attempted, but it appears to have failed, and further attempts to repair the muscle via surgery carry the danger of permanent nerve damage. Emil is currently managing to walk on flat ground unassisted, without crutches, and he is in considerably less pain from nerve damage, but he is far from healed and even if he hasn’t explicitly said it, it does not look like he will not be playing a part in slopestyle competition any time soon. He is working with the hand of cards he has been dealt and is in active recovery from his injury. While I am sometimes flippant, my heart really goes out the the young man, and I wish him all the very best on his long road to recovery. Emil Johansson will be missed, and his absence keenly felt.

Man, I did not like to deliver that news. However, Crankworx Slopestyle in Memory of Kelly McGarry is happening this weekend in Rotorua, the first of the Diamond level events in the new Slopestyle Super League calendar on the course at Skyline Mountain Bike Park. The course was opened in 2015, having been designed and built by the titular Kelly McGarry, the New Zealand freerider, before his untimely death in New Zealand’s South Island just one year later. The course has seen periodic rebuilds and updates, but I am not expecting to see anything too radical on that front in early 2026, after the hip jump that appeared for the competition early last year, along with some other features. The now iconic course through the trees of Skyline always tests riders, and previous years have even seen near misses with flying seagulls, the seabirds never far away in an island nation. The weather’s also looking good for the event, with heavy showers on Friday morning set to give way to ample sunshine throughout Saturday, which should see the course dry and running fast for the main event on Sunday morning, the riders having had sufficient time to practice in the days before the rain.

For the women, there is a solid field. Shealen Reno is coming off her win in Christchurch, but she’s got some serious competition. Robin Goomes is back, but it remains to be seen how she goes on the smaller bike, after her second win at Red Bull Rampage last autumn and recent absences from slopestyle competition. Her friend Harriet Burbidge-Smith is also coming off a podium place in Christchurch, and cannot be discounted, but Patricia Druwen will be looking for the win as well, after being narrowly edged out of first place in the same competition. But! The technically gifted Swedish rider, Alma Wiggberg, is going to make her presence felt.

I think we will see Alma Wiggberg take the win, Patricia Druwen in second and Shealen Reno third.

My wildcard is Johanna Nausbaumer, the young German rider, although with such a wealth of female talent in the starting list, this is a very hard one to predict. It could realistically go to any of the women starting the event, and that will make for compelling viewing.

And for the men? Erik Fedko has the momentum of his win in Christchurch and a real fire in his belly pushing him forward. The only problem for him comes in the form of David Godziek, who, with Tim Bringer absent, would seem to be the main obstacle between the German rider and victory. Nicholi Rogatkin is also on form, by the looks of things, and can never be counted out, especially if he’s dialed in and restraining himself like he was in Christchurch.

Still, I’m saying that Erik Fedko will take the win, with David Godziek second and Chance Moore third.

Tobey Miley and Paul Couderc will also be looking for a spot on the podium, but with all that said, I think the wildcard rider to look for will be Lukas Skiöld. I really do not think we have seen the true potential of the Swedish rider yet, and as one of Emil Johansson’s closest friends and riding companions, he certainly has what it takes to ride with the best in the sport.

On a personal level, I always love to see Rotorua, even if from afar. The name Rotorua means Two Lakes, in the Māori language, and I have Māori ancestry, through my mother’s side of the family. My forebears lived right there, around the second of Rotorua’s lakes, Lake Rotoiti. The sun’s often shining in the late New Zealand summer during Crankworx Rotorua, and the way the sunlight falls through the trees of the course always makes for an atmospheric event. That will be especially true in 2026 with the newer, earlier start to the event, to avoid windy conditions later in the day.

I am going to thoroughly enjoy the first of the major slopestyle events of the year and I hope you do as well, before we touch base—vis a vis the 2026 Slopestyle Super league—in Europe in a month or two. I’ll see you all then.

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Korean Mountain Gravel

I have never been to Iowa. Or the Midwest. I haven’t been to the US in general. And that’s not to say that I don’t want to—I would really like to eat some Cincinnati Chili and catch up with my mate Marty for a Browns game sometime—it’s to say that when it comes to gravel, I know Korean gravel very well. I also know New Zealand and Australian gravel and that’s about it. And look, my intent in this series was never to attempt to educate Midwesterners about gravel and the origins of gravel bikes, or to argue that gravel bikes should not exist or are somehow unnecessary. I was solely interested in putting down some thoughts I have had after speaking to people in Korea, where I live, and in other places, via the Internet, about gravel cycling and gravel bikes. The lack of understanding about who, where, why, when and how gravel bikes evolved had always stood out to me, as well as certain issues that came up in those conversations, such as markedly high gearing. Basically guys were raising concerns—kinda whining at times, grumbling about gravel bikes—and yet they didn’t know the history of the bikes and why the things they were complaining about were features, rather than bugs. I was attempting to contextualize gravel for a more casual, non-Midwestern cycling audience and may have rubbed some more dedicated gravel cyclists up the wrong way.

Hence why part #3 of this series was somewhat muted, after I chopped its ass to bits while seriously questioning my subject matter, my intent and my written voice. In all honesty I was going through some quite heavy self-doubt, wondering if I should be here speaking about gravel, questioning myself and my reportedly verbose style. Never a comfortable thing to do, but cathartic in some ways. I probably do need a proofreader and an editor for the things I write, but I have neither, and at the moment I only ever ride gravel up on the sides of Korean mountains. That’s enough for me, though, and for this newsletter. Has to be, there’s nothing else.

Years ago, in an online forum dedicated to gravel, I made a comment in a thread without thinking it through, and got a very cutting remark in reply, along the lines of “do you even ride gravel, bro?” I mean, yeah, technically I did, but I was riding mountainous gravel fire roads on a hardtail 26” alloy MTB with a 3x9 drivetrain, at a time when even I realized that in that person’s world, such a bike was becoming very—and I mean very—passé. You couldn’t even really buy 700c gravel bikes where I lived at the time, but that’s why the guy was being aggressive. To him, gravel meant riding drop bar 700c bikes with 40 mm wide tires on long open gravel roads through rolling farmland. I was very much aware there was a new style of riding going on, I could see a new type of bicycle on the Internet, people were talking about cool sounding new events and I was really curious about the new scene happening in the US, and yet this person was dismissing me because of my equipment and location. The situation now is completely different and no one’s trying to exclude me from anything, but I felt certain similarities. I am keeping on keeping on, though, and writing about gravel, and bikes in general, from where I am, from my own perspective, mountainous as it may be.

And I’m writing unapologetically in my own voice. I get that you shouldn’t start sentences with a conjunction, but that’s sort of where all the fun lies in allowing yourself to go way off the reservation in your personal writing. You can break the rules, and it’s okay, no one’s calling up the language police. Yet.

With all that said? I think gravel’s very cool. I honestly believe that gravel bikes, and their bearded granola-eating cousins, All-Terrain Bikes, or ATBs, are important to cycling and cycling’s future. Right now the cycling industry is in mild chaos, for a variety of reasons (can you say “pandemic demand, panic buying, massive overstock, discounts across the board, huge downturn?” Or would “hubris” be quicker?), but as has been the way for the past decade and a half, I feel that gravel bikes will really help with a lot of the heavy lifting required to pull the industry out of its current slump. Honestly? It wouldn’t be all that tragic of some bike brands did fold, so that the rest of the industry might descend to feast upon their carcases like rabid hyenas, and, distracted, allow space for the new, innovative and cool to flourish, cough like Primos Cycles cough.

So last time, I was dismissive of the criticism that gravel bikes are just 90s mountain bikes with drop bars. Still am, it’s ridiculous and completely overplayed. They may superficially resemble 90s MTBs with drop bars, but they have actually given back a lot of the the fun those early mountain bikes offered. Think about the MTBs of the 80s and 90s. They had strong steel frames, and you could throw a bag on the rack, put in some swim trunks, chocolate bars, a banana, a couple of sandwiches and go explore that road, you know, the one you saw last weekend up in the hills, to go find out if it does actually lead out the fire road you vaguely know of and form a really big loop that you could ride. Maybe even camp up there? For many, having a gravel bike is like regaining a little bit of childlike fun, in a “have bike, will travel, become friends with a dog and have a swim” kind of way. Mountain biking, in some ways, particularly in many company catalogs and promotional materials, became all about shredding the gnar, or, in the case of cross-country mountain biking, optimized for weight and speed. A lot of commentators, speaking about the death of casual adventure in modern mountain biking, hit on the All-Mountain/Enduro point hard, but that style of riding never displaced XC MTB. Instead, the focus of cross-country mountain biking turned towards lightness of equipment, speed and racing. Not always, but think of braze-ons and mounting points (the threaded bolt holes for the small bolts that you use to attach things like racks and fenders/mudguards). On a lot of the early mountain bikes they were very much in evidence, and you could easily make a touring bike with a mountain bike base. On many modern bikes braze-ons became an afterthought, or were left off entirely. Gravel bikes, or perhaps more appropriately, adventure gravel bikes, like the Kona Sutra Ltd., Specialized AWOL and Surly Straggler, to name a few, were covered in the little things, and really regained the adventure focus that mountain biking had once had. Gravel bikes are, in some ways, the fulfillment of the promise of early mountain bikes. Adventure-focused machines with no pretense to racing or high-performance descents, throwing around rooster tails of loam.

A quick note there: The Salsa Fargo, like the Salsa Cutthroat, and the Salsa Warbird, for example, can all be called gravel bikes (mainly because of the drop bars they share), even though they really are different. The term gravel has come to encompass a truly huge range of different types of bikes, and while I’m not going to get into that too deeply here, I will look at it in the future sometime. Suffice to say, I’m not trying to claim that a Salsa Warbird, or an Evil Chamois Hagar for that matter, has reclaimed the spirit of adventure of 80s Specialized Stumpjumpers, but I’m sure you you get what I mean. A certain type of gravel bike, close to an ATB in spirit, covered in bolt holes for useful attachments, opens up experiences like those provided by vintage mountain bikes.

Now, a gravel bike is entirely appropriate for a lot of terrain. Take Korea for example, a multitude of gravel fire roads with well-made concrete roads leading to the start of the gravel, with large stretches of textured concrete on the steepest sections, with good drainage. They’re called fire roads or forest roads, and they serve those purposes, but the possibility of war is never far away in Korea’s thinking, and mountain gravel roads serve a definite purpose as secondary military routes for outflanking an invading force, or aiding in a precipitous tactical withdrawal, not to mention their purpose in conservation and forestry. They’re great to ride, but you really don’t need a dual suspension mountain bike up there on smooth mountain gravel with 50 to 75 mm (2-3 inch) wide tires. 700x40C tires are fine, even barely textured 700x32c tires work, if you enjoy a little underbiking at times. Thing is, for many situations, a gravel bike is enough bike and sometimes even more. For a lot of people in a lot of places, gravel tires are all they really need.

But Mr. Mark, I hear you saying, weren’t you freaking out about gravel bikes in general and gravel bike gearing in those same mountains a week or two ago? Yes, yes I was, and I stand by everything I said. Everything. Gravel gearing is often too high, it just is. But you can change that, especially with the new Shimano GRX 1x 12-speed drivetrains, for example, components based on the excellent Shimano mountain bike groupsets. Throw a 30 or 32 tooth chainring on there and spin up the hills (I was running a 28t chainring, I loved it, thing was just fine for me with a 10-51 tooth cassette). The new Shimano GRX 12-speed basically is a mountain bike groupset, as it shares components with the 1x12 mountain bike ranges, from Deore to XTR, and being 1x? That means that the the two derailleurs, front and rear, do not need to work together as a system, and that makes it very easy to use a smaller chainring. Worried about your gearing? Think it’s too high? Just spend a few hours reading about bike stuff. You know how people can talk for hours about cars, right? They’ll tell you the ins and outs of buying a new or used automobiles and provide relevant critiques of various companies and models. They’ll do the same for real estate, electronics, whatever. As soon as they are buying a bicycle, though, all of that seems to fly straight out of the window and they’re suddenly helpless. No one needs to be, and hell, there are resources everywhere. Get a cheap Chinese chainring from Aliexpress and have the guy at the local bike shop put it on for you. I have a bunch of them, new and used. They’re cheap, decent and they work just fine, even if they’re got some really—like really—odd names. Why would you name a bike company “Snail?” I digress, though. Throw MTB gearing on your gravel bike, do whatever to get those gears better for climbing. There are ways to make it quick, cheap and easy with just a little research.

They can be little beasts to climb, those Korean mountain roads, but you know what? They’re gated and there are no cars up there, except for official Korean Forest Service vehicles carrying official Korean Forest Service rangers (smile and wave, boys, smile and wave). I don’t need to explain to you why that’s a good thing, but it applies to gravel everywhere. If there are other, sealed roads available, most cars are going to take that option, leaving you alone on the gravel. There’s safety in the gravel-centric approach to riding, no matter where you are.

They also make excellent utility bikes. Gravel bikes, that is. Like I said above, there are a range of different gravel bikes, but many of them do have mounts for racks and fenders, like many mountain bikes used to. In places like the UK, bike commuting has been taken to a new level. In Europe in general, but the Brits really know how to do it in bad weather and in cycling specific clothing at a normal pace, instead of on heavy European town bikes in street clothing at a literal crawl. It used to be that they would buy certain types of cyclo-cross (CX) bikes, like the Surly Cross-Check, for the attachment points and tire clearance, but it turns out that gravel bikes, the adventure type, with their endurance geometry and mounting points, do the job very well indeed. Considering that there are now 700x40c and 700x50 (that’s 29x2.0) slicks, light and supple road bike tires in what were once unimaginably wide sizes—Jan Heine was right—a gravel bike as your only bicycle makes perfect sense. One set of tires for countryside rambles on the weekend and another set for the weekly commutes. Take for example, the Surly Midnight Special. It’s further towards the adventure end of the spectrum, but that’s a good thing for a commuter. It’s a steel bike, with a lot of strength, and it has all of the mounting points you need for racks, to hold pannier bags, with your work clothes, lunch, spare jacket, etc. It’s got fender—or mudguard—mounts, so that you can put on full coverage fenders and ride through damp days, even through the rain. But the really neat thing is that it’s a Surly, and that means it’s very adaptable to different roles. It will fit 27.5x2.1 mountain bike tires, for weekend outings, just as it will fit 700x28c tires for weekly paved commuting. There’s a flexibility often built into gravel bikes that many other bikes lack.

Same goes with bike-specific clothing. Take, for example, the gravel specific bib shorts with cargo pockets. They’re not for me; I always have a bag or three on my bikes and I wear Decathlon running shorts over my bibs to hide the holes around the chamois pad. I’m not really part of Rapha’s core audience, if ya know what I mean. But still, for the non-racing roadie, those cargo bib shorts have been a revelation. I’ve seen them adopted for use on the bike by even by the most militant roadie fundamentalists, because they’re genuinely a great idea. Road riders, the really traditional guys who embrace road cycling religiously, will never really make use of bags on their bike, preferring a cleaner look. They tend to jam everything they need into the three large pockets that road cycling jerseys come with, on the lower back, just above the bottom. Yes, Castelli, Pas Normal, whoever. They’re genuinely trying to sell you stuff by branding it with the magic gravel appellation, but hell, when the things are actually good and useful, there’s no need for snark, no matter how they’re marketed. Gravel, as a category, once countercultural and outside of the mainstream, is now actually feeding useful ideas and products back into mainstream cycling.

Now this is very much conjecture on my part, so take it with a grain of salt or two, but think about it. A gravel bike with drop bars removes the expectation of shredding the gnar with the MTB bros. Ride a dual suspension Enduro rig, or a trail bike and opt for the safe line? Go around the jumps? You’ll be questioning yourself, worried about the judgement of others of your lack of skill or your excessive prudence in the face of broken collarbones and deep spousal anger. A gravel bike takes that away, you’re expected to take the safe line, with those tires, forks and handlebars. That geometry. It almost takes the pressure to perform at a high level away, and not necessarily the expectation of others, but of the annoying bro part of your brain that still wears its goggles around its neck, full face DH helmet propped up on its head while sipping a red bull, and judges you, the sensible adult, with the harshness of fading youth. A gravel bike invides sedate exploration rides in the countryside, or group rides on mixed surfaces, on roads and light trails rather than hectic descents down mountainsides.

Lastly, it’s Mabo, it’s the vibe, as Dennis Denuto might say. There’s a particular YouTube presenter from a popular bikepacking website and to me, he’s one of those guys you know you could almost instantly be friends with. Gravel bikes have a vibe like his, and it’s not uptight. Not in the slightest, there’s no judgement there in many cases, just a shared stoke. Think of Australian and US bike racers who have made it to the big time in Europe on the road racing scene, guys like Lachlan Morton and Alex Howes who, in moving away from the road, ride onto the gravel. As gravel cyclists they seem to have a very different personality, a very different vibe about them to road cyclists. Road cycling has fitness down to an incredible science at this point, but the gravel is seemingly where those pros go to have fun with that fitness. Gravel’s a good time.

And for this series? That’s a wrap folks. For now at least. Gravel will keep gravelling right along and the periodic freakouts will continue until morale improves. Or something like that. Suffice to say that with the corporatization of larger events, like Unbound and Gravel Worlds, in combination with new entrants into the gravel space, bringing road tactics to gravel, drama will never be all that far away. Meaning that I will be back to gravel at some stage, maybe even before you know it. Not to the Midwest, though. Bay Area Gravel with the Prince of Darkness? The demise of the new adventure at Big S? Old Ronnie Romance even getting a look in? Oh, I think so. Coming to a March near you in 2026. But first? Slopestyle. More slopestyle. Has to be done, because in 2026? The slopestyle is freaking awesome and I. Am. Pumped. I’ll see you all next week in Rotorua, my ancestral home.

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Bong Eup Sa: Site of an ancient Buddhist temple, now a very old monument close to a family member’s farm, down in the Korean heartland. Those stones? There were standing there like that before the USA was a country.

Hola.

Been a slightly warm February here in the ROK, after a brutal January. Not unexpected, but very welcome. Still cold, though, but more like a winter in southern Australia than the hardcore pipe-hitting subzero (Celcius) February we had in early 2025. We’re having a bit of a chilly spell again as I type, with snow on the tops of all the surrounding mountains this morning. Spring’s almost here, we just need to stay warm for another week or two.

My Zwift indoor cycling experiment is over, victim of a dry rotted trainer tire and the need to slim down the household bicycle fleet, but I will be back to it, perhaps in rainy season? The thought of the sauna that I make the room into, combined with the sauna outside, is a bit much, however. Next winter on the flat bar road bike that I’m going to have by then? Sounds like a plan. For a man enamored of alt. cycling and alt. bikes, I am edging ever closer to the dark side. FTP, VO2max, HRM, Strava. Power meter?! Perhaps, perhaps. But yeah, Zwift is amazing for indoor cycling, it keeps you involved and active and I now know that my new-to-me trainer works just fine. Probably wildly inaccurate in terms of power output, but meh, it keeps the fitness up in the colder months and I was oddly hesitant to ride outside in the deep cold this year.

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Closer to home, the kids go back to school today, I’ve been at the local gym for some workouts that will help with basically everything and I have been riding outside, notably an early season running of my four passes ride, that became three. There’s a virus in our house and I’m the last holdout. Still, routine and peace will abound in the near future as the days get ever warmer, we shrug off this virus and the year continues apace.

So here in the newsletter we had a very gravel-intensive February, and that will continue into March, with a newsletter coming your way tomorrow. The big thing for March, though, is Crankworx Rotorua slopestyle in a week or two. It’s the only sport that I ever watch for entertainment, and the 2026 season is looking amazing at this point, with the new format bringing a welcome level of uncertainty and excitement right up until the last minute. I was very impressed with Christchurch and am looking forward to Rotorua, not to mention Europe (District Ride!) and finally Canada, in the dog days of Summer for us in the northern hemisphere. So, in March we’re off to New Zealand for Crankworx, we’ll loop back across the Pacific to Morgan Hill and after that, who knows? I’m looking forward to it all, though, and I’ll see you there.

On some mornings gravel just refuses to be negative.

If you’re anywhere near the bicycle space, I’m sure that by now, you will be aware that gravel bikes and gravel-specific products can be somewhat polarizing. The entire idea of a separate cycling category of gravel can be very triggering for some people, and every time a new gravel bike launches, or a gravel-specific product is announced, comments sections fill up, almost immediately, as people rush to offer their opinion of the new product. Some of it positive, as people express their excitement for the new offering, but a lot of it negative, as people offer critiques. The negative comments can be utterly scathing at times, and I never really got all of it, personally. I can see how some critiques are valid, to an extent, but sometimes things just go overboard. The real watershed moment for me was the reaction to the Canyon Grail’s Hoverbar. It was a drop bar with a biplane form, something you had to see to understand. To me, it represented an innovative and interesting new product, a functional component with a well thought-out purpose. I thought it was really neat.

The Internet, however, did not.

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With the right ear you can hear reverberations of the anguished howls that met the release of the Hoverbar across the intervening years. I felt that the popular reaction was well and truly ridiculous, with freak outs in every outlet that posted news of the new bike. There are, of course, reasons for such comments being made, though. I think that my main question, when I see that type of comment, is whether it has merit. Now, as ever, all of what follows is opinion, liberally mixed with speculation. I do not profess to have all, or indeed, any of the answers, but there are some ideas, compelling or not, that do help to put the criticism of gravel cycling into perspective.

The most common critique I see? Gravel bikes are basically 1990s mountain bikes with drop bars. There’s real relevance to that criticism, if you willingly ignore frame materials, component materials, frame geometry, wheel size, tire tread patterns, philosophy of use and a slew of other things. A Canadian mountain biking site recently made the pro-gravel tongue-in-cheek point that with the advent of the new full suspension Trek CheckOUT, and now-discontinued Niner MCR, gravel bike technology has moved out of the 1990s and into the early 2000s. I had a slight chuckle at that, as I have never taken the critique seriously either.

Still, the 1990s. Grunge was huge in the first half of the decade, the music and the entire subcultural movement. It had a certain style, grunge, think Kurt Cobain, ripped jeans, Converse hightops, old band t-shirt, woolen cardigan and white-framed 1950s women’s sunglasses. With that in mind, I distinctly remember the first time I saw a flyer for Coles or Woolworths, big box stores, advertising grunge clothing. It was immediately obvious that corporate interests had taken over the signifiers and had commodified the cool of grunge, and I really think there’s a lot of that in gravel. There’s sometimes a feeling that a truly underground scene, in this case, gravel riding, was taken over by corporate interests, that greed, rather than a liking for bicycles and an enjoyment of riding them on gravel, has come to the fore. The common refrain you hear is that the bike industry just wants to sell you things, and yeah. That’s 100% true. That’s just how capitalism works, they really are in it to make money. What that is to me, though, the oft-repeated criticism of the bike industry just wanting to make money, is a poorly articulated way of consumers expressing their dislike of being marketed to, and I get it. Like when grunge fashion came to the mall, sometimes we know that corporate interests have taken over, and that there are corporate managers in offices somewhere, using brain-numbingly dull corporate language to describe the profits that the company they work for can expect to make from the exploitation of something that was cool. The problem for marketers is that people aren’t stupid, we know when they’re borrowing from the imagery of something real, something cool, to feed products back to us based on the next hot thing, in this case, gravel. It’s a very valid criticism, but it is often tempered by just who is doing the marketing, and how popular they are as a brand. Gravel cycling doesn’t exist in a bubble, and things like political climates and corporate practices have their influence, making the critique less cutting at times, and more relevant in others, depending on just who it is trying to sell the things. This one’s nuanced.

Related, in a way, is the idea of the gravel tax. We’ve all see that when something is popular, the market takes notice, in this case of gravel. That can manifest as someone merely slapping the gravel label onto an existing or slightly modified product. Think shoes produced in camo (anything for cycling produced in camo), cycling shirts in plaid, and gravel-specific cargo pocket bib shorts. All you need to so there is to insert the term gravel into the name of the thing and bump up the price, and that’s the gravel tax. It’s a relevant argument, it happens often, and I am somewhat sympathetic, but there are always other products and different labels. No one’s forcing anyone to buy anything, and if you’re anything like me you are looking at the cheap alternatives.

Another issue is the fact that in many events, there can be more energy and authenticity than money. Event organizers have expenses, just like the rest of us, and in the face of corporate funding, maintaining the independence of your event can be extremely difficult. There, allowing corporations in to capture images to use for marketing purposes, to accept sponsorship dollars for your event, or even to sell your event outright can be all to easy. Gravel has definitely seen that happen in recent years, as larger corporations, flush with cash and looking to expand their event portfolio move in and buy out the founders of events that have grown to be huge. There, I think that many feel a sense of betrayal, in that they are aware that it is their disposable income and attention that is the product being sold. The people who made the scene became the commodity. Still, as above, it all depends on corporate practices and the goodwill or lack thereof that various companies have made within cycling. This, to me, the criticism that gravel has sold out, is sort of a valid point. But as ever, there are mitigating factors. Grassroots events have not gone away, more and more of them pop up every year. There is nothing stopping the individual from supporting small and local events with real authenticity, or hell, even starting one of their own.

Gravel was once almost countercultural, outside of the mainstream of cycling, lacking the restrictive rules of a sport such as cyclocross and not subject to the heavy-handedness often seen in the governing bodies of various sports. There was something of a frontier vibe, an energy often labeled the spirit of gravel. The critique here often has to do with outsiders and newcomers not respecting this idea. Gravel races have traditionally not been segregated by gender, where everyone within different categories starts together. Also, like a brevet, gravel races were commonly undertaken by racers racing as individuals, rather than as organized teams of people. The rules are not detailed, though, as traditionally, the spirit of gravel and of self-supported racing has dictated much of the behavior of racers. Put yourself in the position of a more traditionally minded bike racer, though. You note the lack of specificity to the rules, and you start to think about tactics. You get some men together, and, using the classic tactics of road racing, you combine energies to pull a woman along with you, in your slipstream. Taking turns to go ahead and break wind, a group of you act as a single racing entity to benefit one person. You come to a water stop in the race, where all of the other women are stopping to replenish their water supplies but you ride past as a group, as the men in the group have closely husbanded their water and a couple of them hand a water bottle to the woman. The woman goes on to victory and your group flies into an absolute controversy, where people are raising the spirit of gravel at every turn and accusing you of going against it. You acting within the bounds of written rules, and yet you are being emotionally attacked on all sides for a violation of an unwritten rule.

You can see how people were outraged at the time, because that actually happened. All of the leading women in the event had followed the spirit of gravel, and yet a small group of others, acting within the rules, if not within the spirit of the event, had used professional racing tactics to win a race. It’s a huge issue for gravel, especially right now. Big gravel events have tickets that cost large amounts of money, and there is commonly a lottery system that aspirant riders must enter to even have a chance to pay an exorbitant sum for the privilege of being beaten by professionals. This is a really compelling critique, because I can sympathize. As above, though, no one is being forced to take part in the larger events with professional riders, people can always vote with their feet.

Still, the critique regarding disrespect for the spirit of gravel raises important questions that are as yet unanswered. Gravel is currently grappling with the place of professionals in racing, especially in the US, where gravel has basically become the de facto style of bicycle racing. A certain large cycling company has entered the space, sponsoring a prominent gravel racer on a winning streak, and may be poised to introduce a team racing style to gravel events. Gravel is seemingly growing away from its roots, as certain large sporting bodies also look to move in and assume regulatory control and sanctioning of events. You can see how those who made gravel what it is today, the people who kept showing up, might be opposed to such moves. They lived the spirit of gravel, and now there’s a wholesale movement into the space they built, as various outside actors, with various agendas of their own, look to gravel as the salvation to their own problems. The issues surrounding the so-called spirit of gravel are really very relevant to my mind, as I feel they are merely the visible portion of a iceberg of serious issues facing the world of gravel cycling.

Just recently I saw an article about a custom frame—a unique handmade frame that you cannot buy—with the new 32” sized wheels and prototype gravel tires. One of the first comments was someone being boringly but predictably miserable about how the industry always tries to make people buy new types of bike. To reiterate, it was a comment about a bicycle that you cannot be bought in a store, a bicycle handmade by a bespoke framebuilder who owns a tiny company dedicated to making very nice custom steel bicycles. I’m sure the constant flow of negativity around innovations within the gravel space will not stop any time soon, and some of the points made are not without merit, but it does get tired at times, the reflexive leap to misery. Ultimately, though, it is up to the individual to engage or not, to forge their own relationship to and understanding of what gravel should be.

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Whistler Joyride with wildfire smoke haze. Photo by Ninaarnold1 via Wikimedia Commons.

So what’s slopestyle?

Back in 2005, as Crankworx, the mountain biking festival, was just getting started at Whistler-Blackcomb in BC, Canada, there was an idea for a new type of event, born of freeride mountain biking. Competitors would ride a track filled with jumps and drops, doing tricks in the air. That year, Darren Berrecloth, a pioneer of freeride mountain biking, pulled a huge 360 spin off a drop in the inaugural slopestyle event. It was a pivotal moment in mountain biking, illustrating just what was possible with aerial maneuvers in competition and showing the potential of slopestyle as a spectator sport in its first ever outing.

Now, two decades later, competitors ride a course filled with jumps, tricking their bikes while in the air. Riders are judged on a series of criteria, receiving a score out of 100 for their run down the course. All athletes are given two runs through the course. In the first run they are seeded according to their current world rankings, and then, in the second run, they start based on there they finished in the first round, low scorers going first. The highest score of the two rounds counts, so if you crash in your first run, or make a small mistake, you have a chance to make up for it.

Riders ride slopestyle mountain bikes, hardtail or full suspension mountain bikes with small 26” wheels, front, and sometimes rear suspension forks, a single speed drivetrain, like a BMX, and other adaptations to allow them to be tricked in the air, like an interrupter for brake lines so that the bike’s forks can be spun around and the tail whipped. The bikes are relatively small and light, allowing for maximum air time and faster tricks.

So, uh, do you ride slopestyle? If not, what’s the attraction?

No, I ride road and gravel. For me, slopestyle is the only sport I enjoy watching for entertainment, like some people might watch football or tennis. I really enjoy it as a spectator sport, along with some other freeride mountain biking events.

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So what’s the state of play in early 2026?

Slopestyle’s changing, hopefully for the better. There has been a reimagining of slopestyle, with the new Slopestyle Super League (SSL), creating what amounts to a new world tour of slopestyle, something that’s been long overdue. In the past there were a slew of events, and the structure of the Freeride Mountain Bike World Tour, the governing body of the sport, was somewhat complex. The new SSL streamlines things with a series of events leading to a finals series and a clear path of progression for aspirant athletes.

Crankworx hosts diamond (the highest) and gold (second highest) level slopestyle events, but the new SSL is not limited to Crankworx, with independent gold and diamond level events, equally part of the SSL, happening in Europe in 2026. Elsewhere in the world, independent silver (third highest) and bronze (fourth highest) level events will also be taking place.

Crankworx returns to New Zealand in early 2026. The Crankworx schedule has changed significantly in 2026, with the NZ events anchoring the competition in February and March. Things get underway this Sunday in Christchurch with the Ōtautahi Slopestyle event, a warmup for the main event in Rotorua, the Slopestyle in Memory of McGazza event, commemorating Kelly McGarry, the New Zealand freerider. The Crankworx Cairns stop is out in 2026, and I can’t see New Zealand being passed up by Crankworx anytime soon, as the South Island events, followed by Rotorua in the North Island, are iconic at this point, and, I believe, more financially viable than the Australian edition. I don’t think we will hear too much complaining from competitors, as the big clay bowl in far north Queensland that was the Crankworx slopestyle site was not universally beloved.

Crankworx Europe is out entirely, for another year, after years of stops in Innsbruck and Les Gets, but it’s a District Ride year, with the event being held in Groningen, the Netherlands, for the first time, after previous runnings in Nuremberg and Catania. Before that, though, there is Bikefest in Slovakia to get through, a gold level warm up event before the urban slopestyle event in Holland and a chance for aspiring riders to get their foot in the door of slopestyle. The District Ride has been held somewhat irregularly over the years, but it does entirely shut down the center of a major European city for a day. If I was pressed, I would probably admit to being the most excited for the District Ride in 2026, as there’s just something about tightly packed medieval cities like Groningen being transformed into a slopestyle course that appeals to me. The stakes are also incredibly high for error, in that there are paving stones below, rather than grass and dirt.

The flow of the SSL is a good one for the Athletes, with three major stops, as the tour moves on to Canada for the mid-year finale and last stops of the tour. Whistler, BC, is no longer the final event of the year, as Joyride, the Whistler Crankworx slopestyle event, has been moved forward to June. That’s a nice piece of thinking, in that all main season athletes will have the chance to ride in the home of mountain bike slopestyle, the Whistler-Blackcomb bike park. Joyride’s absolutely iconic and will be a great venue for the ultimate event in the regular season.

Crankworx Silverstar, part of the Crankworx Summer Series, like the event in Christchurch this week, will see the first ever playoffs in the SSL on the very progressive Rheeder and MacDuff-designed course there. This event will determine the starting lineup for the ultimate final in Mont Sainte-Anne in late summer at the latest venue for Crankworx, in Québec.

Okay, man, but that’s kinda dry. Is there a narrative? Anything interesting going on in 2026?

Oh hell yeah there is. Crankworx introduced the Triple Crown of Slopestyle, a competition requiring a rider to win three Crankworx diamond level events in a single year, in 2015. That year Brett Rheeder came very close, but really felt the weight of the final event at Whistler, missing out on the new award. In 2018, after Brett Rheeder won the opening event at Crankworx Rotorua, Nicholi Rogatkin came back strongly with wins at Les Gets, Innsbruck and Whistler, taking the Triple Crown of Slopestyle for the first time ever. 2018, and Nicholi Rogatkin’s win that year was the end of an era in many ways. A young slopestyle rider from Sweden, Emil Johansson, having tasted victory in the FMB World Tour in 2017, would battle an autoimmune disorder throughout 2018, before coming back to dominate the sport the following year. In 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023, Johansson would win the Triple Crown, with very few mistakes along the way. He did crash at Cairns in early 2022, allowing Nicholi Rogatkin to win, but his winning streak was otherwise unbroken.

And then came 2024.

Early in 2024, the men’s field did not start at Rotorua, due to a dispute about conditions, while the women had their first ever event. Cairns, to my mind, witnessed the end of an era in 2024, when, for the first time since the winning streak began, David Godziek became the first of the field to beat Emil Johansson in fair competition. Rogatkin had won previously, in 2022, but without Johansson competing in his second run of the day. Godziek beat Johansson fair and square, a fact that Johansson acknowledged immediately, in what was an absolute watershed moment for the sport. Godziek went on to win the Triple Crown in 2024, and a new era arrived. In 2024, at Innsbruck at the final event to be held there, Timothe Bringer, the French rider, had come second, holding Johansson to third, a result almost unthinkable just a year earlier.

2025 saw the rise of French rider Timothe Bringer, as he won in both Rotorua and Cairns, beating Godziek in Cairns, as Johansson was out of competition with injuries. On track for his own Triple Crown, Bringer arrived at Joyride with Emil Johansson back in form, after injury. The Swede laid down a blistering run at Whistler very early in the day, leaving the Frenchman second and laying open the 2026 season. Godziek and Bringer have both demonstrated that they can beat Johansson in fair competition, the spell is seemingly over and yet. The threat is there. Will Johansson come crashing back to show 2024 and 2025 as mere blips on his record? Or will the rest of the field step up and comprehensively demonstrate that they have caught up to his level? 2026, with the new format and the field in flux will be a hell of a ride, and I am excited to see how things shake out for the men.

As far as the women go, the progression in the level of riding is going fast. After their first season in 2024, the women have continued to push the boundaries of what is possible and I am excited to see world firsts in women’s slopestyle competition, something I think we will see from the likes of Alma Wiggberg and Patricia Druwen. I am also very interested to see how riders like Shelan Reno progress with their bag of tricks and how they manage to stay ahead of the new crop of up and coming riders like Johanna Nussbaumer from Germany.

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Okay, sounds good, but who are these people? Can you give us some athlete info?

Women

Harriet Burbidge-Smith (Australia): The Aussie Battler. Among slopestyle riders there are perhaps two camps, those on technical end of the spectrum, and those on the more freeride end of the spectrum, hitting really big jumps and terrain, and Hazz is right there in the latter. She’s been contending with injury, so we haven’t seen as much of her in competition as her level of riding might otherwise suggest.

Patricia Druwen (Germany): The Dark Horse. She may be the best of the women? Her current tour ranking doesn’t reflect her true capability, and it’s my opinion that she has it in her to be the best in the world.

Mia Moore (Canada): The New Blood. We have seen her previously, perhaps having allowed nerves to get the better of her. A lot of room for improvement over previous showings, but she has had time to practice in the interim.

Shealen Reno (USA): The Texan. Shealen has been very consistent since her debut, landing safely and finishing mid pack. She has real potential for growth with new tricks, but she remains a solid performer.

Robin Goomes (New Zealand): The Warrior. A real stand out performer and probably the best female freerider in the world at present, having won Red Bull Rampage consecutively in 2024 and 2025. It will be interesting to see if she goes towards the SSL in 2026 or concentrates on freeride.

Alma Wiggberg (Sweden): The Assassin. Probably the best of the women when it comes to the more technical side of slopestyle, as opposed to the rowdier freeride style. Definitely a contender for winner of the inaugural SSL competition.

Men:

Ben Thompson (Canada): The Local Kid. Ben grew up in B.C., Canada, just down the road from Whistler, the venue for Joyride. He was the little boy in the crowd, dreaming of joining his heroes pulling tricks in the sky above the Whistler resort.

Max Fredrickson (Sweden): The Veteran. The talk of retirement is growing, but the Swedish rider is clinging on. After a podium finish at Whistler Joyride in 2024, his results in 2025 were less convincing, as he finished in the middle of the pack.

Nicholi Rogatkin (USA): The Hype Man. What can you say? Triple Crown winner, typifies what could be called the North American Amplitude style. Go big or go home. It will be interesting to see how his 2026 season unfolds, as he has been held back by crashes in competition in recent years. One of the best freeriders on the tour, equally at home on a much larger bike in heavier terrain as he is on a slopestyle bike.

Paul Couderc (France): The Passion. He’s a wonderful rider to watch and is always threatening to knock others off the podium.

Griffin Paulson (Canada): The BC Boy. Typifies the North American Amplitude style, but like Rogatkin, it does not always help his cause. Frequent crashes in competition have held back what promised to be a major talent. I once predicted that it would be Griff that knocked Emil Johansson out in fair competition. I was wrong, but I know that he had it in him to do it. With a certain degree of restraint, I think we would see a lot more of him at the top of leaderboards.

Lucas Huppert (Switzerland): The Worker. Trained as an electrician in his native Switzerland, he’s not afraid to work hard in the off season to learn new tricks. Huppie is probably overdue for a podium, and with the right day of riding under his belt, he may just get there in 2026.

Chance Moore (Canada): The Veteran Rookie. New to the higher levels of slopestyle, but is riding like a veteran and not making the small mistakes due to nerves that have tripped up others upon debut. The new SSL format should benefit riders like Chance Moore and afford them more opportunities to enter the higher levels of the sport faster. I expect to see Chance on more podiums going forward, after standing up there in third for his finish in Cairns in 2025.

Tobey Miley (Germany): The Determined One. A German rider who made a real splash in 2025 at Joyride, finishing near the top of the leaderboard and displaying real promise for the future, just edging out Canadian talent Chance Moore near the top of the results.

Erik Fedko (Germany): The Ace Pilot. Fedko may be the most stylish rider in the field, and he is probably my favorite rider to watch, in terms of smoothness and flow. His signature Indian air seat grab is certainly my favorite trick of the field and he may have been overlooked by the judges at times. He is due for an event win, and is one of 5-6 riders who can realistically make it happen.

Timothé Bringer (France): The Gentle Giant. Tim emerged in 2025 as the frontrunner in the early competitions. It’s going to be very interesting to see how he moves into 2026 after the successes and failings of his 2025 season.

David Godziek (Poland): The Lion Tamer. Godziek is amazingly clean with certain tricks, especially no-handers, and had the best year of his career in 2024. With a BMX background, Godziek is incredibly stylish and is very good at learning new tricks to incorporate into competition in the off season.

Emil Johansson (Sweden): The Swedish technician. Perhaps the best slopestyle rider ever? Certainly the rider with the most wins, after he overtook Brandon Semenuk for amount of won events. Emil has been absolutely dominant in the sport for the first half of the decade and all eyes will be on him in 2026, to see if he returns in full force, or has to contend with peer competitors like Godziek and Bringer. Personally I see Johansson as Martin Söderström’s legacy in the sport, as the older Swede mentored the younger man in his early days of competition. In many ways Johansson may be the ultimate expression of Söderströmism, the highly technical Swedish approach, as opposed to the more amplitude forward North American approach of Rogatkin and Paulson, or of Tom Isted, the UK rider.

Okay, but who’s going to win this weekend? What’s going to happen?

It’s a gold level event, so it’s jam packed with aspirant riders trying to improve their rankings under the new SSL system and gain entry into some of the bigger events later in the year. This new format allows for greater churn of competitors, which should prove to be really beneficial to the sport, as new riders move more easily into the bigger competitions, getting a taste of the higher levels of the sport before slipping back downwards to try again. I’m very enthusiastic for the new format and I am sure a lot of lesser-known riders will be very excited as well.

For the women I think we will see Harriet Burbidge-Smith third, Patricia Druwen second and Alma Wiggberg first. A wildcard rider to watch for will be Shealen Reno, if she has added to her repertoire of tricks in the off season.

In the men’s event I think we will see Chance Moore third, Erik Fedko second and David Godziek first. Tobey Miley and Kaiden Ingersoll probably have almost equal chances at third, but the wildcard rider to watch for is Jake Atkinson. He showed immense potential in smaller events up to 2023, success that hasn’t really translated very well to the bigger stage of Crankworx slopestyle events. It will be interesting to see how he does in an early season gold event, without the spotlight on him at the highest level.

I will be bringing you a preview post before every stop on the Slopestyle Super League World Tour in 2026, although I’m sure I will manage to be a little more brief for some of those at least. I’ll see you all in Rotorua.

Korean Terrain

Gravel is controversial.

It just is.

And it’s not even controversial in a big, important way, like some of the major issues facing humanity. No, gravel is controversial in a very dull, low-stakes way, with a low rumble of discontent ever-present in online spaces. The thing is, while I have, at times, questioned why that is, I do think I understand the motive behind the impulse to tear down gravel in online comments sections in part. While the negativity directed towards gravel cycling is basically reflexive at this point, it cannot be said to be entirely without reason. While the commenters themselves may offer a range of explanations, I tend to look past their rationalizations, if they ever make them, to try to see beyond their surface reasoning, to discern the underlying issues that may be giving rise to the constant stream of complaints by the gravel skeptical, no matter how poorly articulated they may be at times.

We have seen that modern gravel cycling, is, at its heart, a Midwestern American phenomenon, and yet, gravel bikes are sold globally. I believe that there is a major geographical disconnect between the terrain the bikes were created to be ridden in and the type of terrain in which may of the bikes are actually being ridden in.,

The cycling industry gave the world a type of bicycle optimized for a certain geographical region, and they never explained that fact.

Thus, the main issue with gravel, the biggest single issue with gravel bikes, and with the entire emergence of the Gravel Industrial Complex™, as I see it, is that the great majority of gravel bike riders in the world do not live in the American Midwest.

I am confident in stating that the people in comments sections denigrating gravel bikes are probably not from states like Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin in the US. They have wide open gravel roads to ride and they understand what gravel was born to be, because gravel riding is of those states. No, I would argue that for the most part, it is those from other geographical regions, where conditions may not be optimal for such a bike, yet where the bikes are nonetheless being ridden, who will make the constant flow of comments detracting from gravel bikes and the entire concept of gravel cycling.

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Let me be clear. Everything I say herein is my own opinion, and I understand that I am, to an extent, making sweeping generalizations. Of course there are notable exceptions to the examples I am about to provide, and I am not seeking to downplay them or ignore them, I am merely trying to explain what I believe is giving rise to some of the negative comments about gravel that I see online. I suspect that naturally, I am not seeing comments made by those who enjoy riding gravel bikes in the geographical regions that I mention below, because they are content with the bicycles they own and at peace with the idea of gravel cycling. Accordingly, I am certain that my perception is somewhat skewed; however, I am equally certain that much of which I say here is at least partially accurate, and contains a grain of truth.

Say you’re in the UK. You are a dedicated road cyclist, but you would also like to be able to ride off-road at times, on a machine that superficially resembles a road bike, on a machine that still marks you as a cyclist, rather than a mountain biker. It’s convenient, because you can still use all of your lycra and spandex road cycling gear, you don’t need a bunch of new mountain biking accessories and also, there is no expectation from your friends and family that you will suddenly become an expert mountain biker, catching air off huge jumps and shredding the gnar, as the very look of the bike tempers expectations in some ways. So you buy a gravel bike and you start to ride the off-road paths and trails that you have available to you. The thing is, you really don’t have long, open gravel roads near you where you live in the UK. You have canal pathways. You are trying to ride a gravel bike along narrow towpaths, paths lining canals where once horses walked, towing barges loaded with goods, grist for the mill of the Victorian industrial revolution. These are pathways are now devoted to cyclists, joggers and dog walkers, which can be narrow and crowded in the summer. In the winter they can be muddy in places, in the damp conditions, and icy, with puddles. Or you’re out in the countryside, avoiding busy roads by following narrow byways, grassy lanes between hedgerows, prehistoric travelers and pilgrim’s routes, cutting across the country, sometimes between farmers’ fields, over stiles and between hedgerows. In the summer they may be overgrown with stinging nettles, brambles and weeds, or they may be muddy and wet under tree cover and in the shade of hedges, where things take longer to dry out. In winter you may be trying to ride a gravel bike through ankle deep muck, as cows have been in the field, wandering along the firmer ground of the pathway from grass patch to grass patch and their manure has mixed with mud from recent rain. You see the release of yet another gravel bike on the Internet and, thinking of the rides you have done, your expensive jersey covered in filth flung up by your rear tire, shoes encrusted in mud, you allow your frustrations at the perceived limitations of the bicycle you have to flow out in the comments section.

Here, you are actually 100% correct, because you are in the UK, rather than the US. While you have discovered some of the limitations of gravel bikes in British conditions, before your purchase, before you bought a gravel bike, no one ever explained the evolution of the bikes for conditions in the Midwest to you, no one ever told you that the bikes were bred for ultra-endurance races on wide open gravel roads across single states that are larger than the entire country of England. In your case, in the UK, what might actually serve you better is something like the bikes that Geoff Apps designed, proto-mountain bikes, far ahead of their time, designed specifically for rambling peacefully through the conditions found in the British countryside, with wide tires and huge mudguards. Maybe even a fat bike, like Surly’s original Moonlander, with hugely wide tires for a range of terrains, that will get you through muddy sections without faltering. Maybe even just a humble old hardtail mountain bike, like the ones you keep banging on about in comment sections. Something with wide tires sporting an aggressive tread for grip in the muck, and affordable plastic mudguards from Topeak or SKS like those of a motocross motorcycle.

Or say, for example, you’re in New Zealand. Your bike shop has a gravel bike available and you have a lot of gravel roads around you. You are not that experienced as a cyclist, but you buy the bike anyway, because its tires seem perfect for you. It looks to be halfway between a road bike and a mountain bike and everyone’s been recommending gravel bikes like this to you, a relative beginner. You have seen people using their bikes for camping and you would like to give it a go as well. You set out from your home with your bike loaded with kit, and everything is going just fine. That is until you hit the incredibly tough gradient of the gravel road over the hill to the neighboring town, on your new bike, covered in camping gear. You think of the gravel roads you know, roads snaking up and up through damp forested hills. The thing you suddenly realize, is that in New Zealand, most gravel roads are in very hilly terrain, with relatively short, flat sections along rivers, broken up by steep climb after steep climb. You shift down through your gears and you are suddenly very aware of just how big the front chainrings are, and how small the rear gear cogs are. You think of how heavy your bags are, and how nice it would be for your legs to have lower gears that just aren’t there on your new bicycle. You are riding a bicycle that evolved to be ridden fast across low rolling terrain with short punchy climbs that are over almost as soon as they start, easily ridden in the smaller front chainring while standing. What the Midwest has is low rolling terrain, and while there are small hills out there, and tangled up pockets of land such as the Driftless region, there are no great mountain ranges. It’s country that was roughly ironed flat by glaciers in the last ice age, and that fact is right there in the name of the type of the gravel found in Iowa, glacial till. The bike you are riding in New Zealand grew out of country with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of miles of gravel roads, gently undulating through some of the world’s best farmland, laid out in predictable grid patterns, from Kansas to Alberta, straight gravel roads that march all the way to the horizon. The problem is, where you live in New Zealand, you have serious climbs, on narrow, winding roads, often in relatively steep terrain through thickly forested hills. The roads themselves aren’t technically all that different to those which can be found in Iowa and Nebraska, it’s the terrain that they pass through that is starkly dissimilar. There is a geographical disconnect between the terrain the bicycle evolved to to be ridden in, and the terrain that you are riding it in. No one ever explained to you that the gearing on the bike is intended for racing on roads across wide open plains. So you might turn to comments sections online, frustrated with the difficulty of climbing on your new gravel bike, as people on the Internet laughingly tell you to hit the gym and not skip leg day next time, not understanding your terrain and gearing. It’s not hard to see how negativity could grow from that experience.

I see the same type of mountainous gravel roads in Korea, where I live as an adult. In New Zealand, a great many of the gravel roads can be ridden year-round, as they’re transportation roads shared with trucks and cars, part of the state road grid, like those of Australia, or Ohio, for that matter. In Korea the mountain gravel roads are usually reserved as fire roads and logging roads, shut off from the state transportation network, the road grid, by gates. Obviously they would also be incredibly useful for the movement of troops and military vehicles in time of war, allowing secondary routes for flanking manoeuvres and tactical withdrawals, and indeed, some Korean gravel roads are very much under the purview of the military, especially those near the DMZ, the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas. Many of those same gravel roads in Korea are also blocked to the public for part of the year, from winter into late spring, further limiting their use for gravel riders, and yet the same issue befalls those who would ride them on gravel bikes. They’re incredibly steep in places and gravel bikes are often geared highly. I think the same can be said for parts of California, such as in the hills above LA. Those are gravel fire roads, somewhat like those of Korea, with less vegetation lining them, perfect for riding, and yet riders may find themselves struggling to find the correct gears for the terrain. Of course some people manage to ride their gravel bikes in such places, but they are often strong riders, physically adept with a good level of cardiovascular fitness. All too often gravel bikes are geared too highly for casual riders to properly enjoy riding them in the terrain that is available to them.

Here, standard gravel bike tires work just fine, because instead of mud, you have dry or damp gravel to ride on, on roads shared with cars, in New Zealand, or fire, logging and military roads in places like California and Korea, and such roads are just fine for gravel tires. There’s often no getting around the fact that you are riding a bike geared for gravel in terrain more suited to mountain bike gears, though. The global bike industry is selling gravel bikes to people who want to ride gravel, with gearing that is, I believe, much too high for many riding mountainous gravel roads, even on modern gravel bikes with sub-compact adventure or gravel gearing.

On that point, the limitation is not entirely the fault of bicycle companies. Bike companies commonly buy components from Original Equipment Manufacturers, known as OEM components, and in this case, drivetrain components commonly come from Shimano and SRAM, and increasingly, Microshift. In the past, mountain bike components were compatible with road bike components, but that hasn’t been the case for years now. The combination brake and gear shifting levers of road bikes can, for example, shift rear mountain bike derailleurs at the 9 speed level, but Shimano front mountain bike derailleurs cannot be shifted by Shimano road levers. In the recent past, it was difficult for product managers to buy components off the shelf that could be easily lowered in terms of gearing. SRAM was marginally better, and Salsa, in particular, worked with SRAM components on bikes like the Fargo, to enable mountain bike gearing to be used with drop bar shifting and braking. In the past a judicious combination of SRAM road and mountain bike parts could be used to allow for a drop bar mountain bike to be geared correctly for mountain bike riding, but things changed in the industry.

There was a revolution in gravel gearing, as the years went on, and companies realized that gravel bikes were geared to highly. The main drivetrain companies saw that people, and indeed, bicycle companies, were coming up with homebrewed solutions to alter gravel gearing to be lower. Shimano, SRAM and Microshift all went on to introduce dedicated gravel groupsets, drivetrain components positioned between dedicated road and mountain bike gearing. Still, I would argue that while the gearing was optimized, it was actually optimized for ultra-endurance racing in the Midwest. The industry managed to optimize gravel bike gearing for the geographical region where gravel bikes were born. Even after the gravel gearing revolution, it’s my feeling that gravel gearing remains much too high for the average person buying a new gravel bike, outside of relatively flat geographical regions.

For those of us obsessed with bikes and cycling, in the modern age it’s not all that difficult to alter the gearing on a gravel bike to make it lower and easier for climbing, it just requires a little time, effort and money. Someone like myself, for example, might buy a new bicycle worth $1,500, instead of one worth $3,000, factoring in the need to buy different components to personalize the bicycle. Honestly, for many of us, it’s expected that when we buy a new bike, we will have to change a certain amount of parts around to suit ourselves. Pedals, grips and saddles are commonly changed to suit the buyer’s preference. Take the WTB Volt saddle, it’s one of the industry’s great placeholder components. It’s cheap enough to spec on a new bike and relatively inoffensive to a rider’s bottom, but they get changed every day. You buy a bike with a Volt saddle and almost immediately swap it out for one you prefer. These days, with 1x drivetrains (a single chainring at the front with a large cassette in the rear), it’s also fairly quick and easy to change a chainring as well, provided you have the tools, the knowledge to buy the correct part and enough confidence in yourself to take a wrench to your brand new bicycle, allowing you to have a bike that is much more capable when climbing. For the average person buying a bike, though, it is not hard to see how frustration could grow and manifest its presence online in the comments. You spend, what is to you, a very large amount of money on a bicycle, and yet it does not come with the gearing you would like, the gearing that would suit you and help you to enjoy your new bicycle, to get you over the hill to the campground without too much grinding away in a gear that is too high. You are not used to buying bikes and optimizing them for your local conditions, or you are entirely lacking awareness that it is even possible to do so. I know that I personally rode components that were uncomfortable and completely unsuited to my body for far longer than I ever should have, because I just did not realize at the time that many people change such components almost immediately after buying a bicycle. I suspect that for many, it’s sometimes hard to escape the feeling of being cheated by the cycling industry, by being sold a bicycle that they might feel is not entirely right for their riding, in their local terrain.

The problem is not just one of mechanics, though, but also of philosophy. For a lot of popular brands producing gravel bikes, the emphasis has been on fast riding, on a drivetrain derived from racing. While that looks amazing in marketing materials with photographs of dawn over Kansas, and a long line of cyclists on a gravel road racing through beautiful farmland, it often just doesn’t work for non-racers outside of the Midwestern US who have bought a gravel bike for recreation. Gearing has now evolved, but in many cases, attitudes and public understanding haven’t caught up. Even if if is entirely possible to put a smaller chainring on a gravel bike for use in certain geographical regions, to be sold in certain markets, I feel that the industry would still be resistant to the change. Their marketing materials rely on racing imagery, and the big cycling brands are eager to sell you the image. Gravel bikes, perhaps as much as road bikes, are sold with racing imagery, but there is also the truth that they were born of racing. Refined modern gravel bikes are themselves the physical manifestation of the midwestern gravel racing scene of the 2000s and 2010s, products created for a specific task in a specific geographical region.

The world of cycling has woken up to some of the issues I discuss above. Gravel bikes have ever wider tires, for terrain like British towpaths, and with new groupsets from companies like Shimano, gears are becoming ever lower. These issues are not as bad as they once were, but they are far from being conclusively solved. People like Grant Petersen and others, like Jeff Jones, outspoken and respected figures in the alt. cycling community, have identified these problems and have spoken out against them, especially the issue of the industry being overly influenced by racing and basing their marketing around it. Still, I do not expect the steady stream of negative comments aimed at gravel cycling to end any time soon, and in understanding why that may be, it’s worth repeating:

The bike industry gave the world a type of bicycle optimized for ultra-endurance racing in the Midwest, and they never made that fact clear.

Gravel Bike with bikepacking bags. Photo by Pacopac via Wikimedia Commons.

Gravel. Right now, it is probably the biggest, most commercially important subcategory within cycling. People all over the world are buying gravel bikes, in greater numbers than other types of bicycle in many cases, as well as gravel accessories. It’s a category of cycling that is incredibly popular, but at the same time, a category than can be incredibly controversial, sometimes in a very petty way. For those who are steeped in the online cycling space, it is impossible to ignore the low but persistent grumbling about gravel, a dislike by certain individuals that can, at times, be oddly passionate, for what is, at the end of the day, just another type of bicycle. Here, it is my contention, and an argument that I will continue to make, that in a great majority of cases, this controversy, this oft stated great dislike of gravel, frequently stems from a basic misunderstanding of what gravel bikes actually are, where they came from, and the evolutionary forces that shaped them, something that I feel should be called The Great Misunderstanding. In this, Part 1 of a series on gravel and gravel bikes, we are going to examine the origins of gravel bikes, looking at some of the history of gravel riding and the forces that have shaped bicycles to form the gravel bike that we know today. In later posts we will delve further into controversy, but for now, understanding exactly where gravel bikes have come from and their reason for being, their raison d’être, will give us the grounding in the subject that we will need to explore things further.

It’s a bit like trying to find the first real rock and roll song, tracking down the origins of modern gravel. There are a lot of credible candidates, and gravel has always been there in cycling. I rode gravel roads on an English city bike, a Raleigh roadster and a BMX, as a child in New Zealand, because gravel roads were all we had. People have always ridden gravel roads for the same reason, think of itinerant shearers in the Australian outback, travelling from job to job by bicycle on dusty tracks, or of the pioneers of the Tour de France riding over unpaved mountain passes. Think of American road bike racers—when such a species still existed—coming out of a long cold winter with snow on the ground, taking to the long flat gravel roads that surrounded their heartland towns and small cities to do what they called gravel grinders, long rides on gravel roads to dispel the winter from their legs and to ready themselves for the upcoming racing season. Think of the stern Jobst Brandt, with a young Tom Ritchie in tow, leading rides on road bikes with slick road tires, deep into the hills of California in the 1970s. People have always under-biked, have always ridden slightly less capable bikes in demanding terrain, or have taken to the gravel roads at their own doorsteps on whatever bike they had available. All that is to say, gravel, as a clearly defined riding category, was not born in the twenty-first century, nor even the twentieth century. Gravel has been around for as long as bicycles have existed.

Gravel has, however, come to prominence in recent times with dedicated bikes, clothing and accessories. There are now whole gravel race series, and a growing number of professional gravel cyclists. Gravel has been said to have “saved the industry,” although that has been said of basically every new innovation that sells well in the cycling space for decades now (fat bikes, I’m looking at you). Still, from my personal vantage point, I feel that there is an acute disconnect, in terms of understanding, between the average consumer, having been recommended a gravel bike by their friends and acquaintances, and the industry at large. So why gravel? Why a dedicated bicycle for a type of road surface?

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It was in Iowa, in late 2004, when two bike shop mechanics, Jeff Kerkove and Mark Stevenson, bored with their shop owner’s repetitive tale of riding across the state on a road bike in a single day, conceived of a similar ride, across the state of Iowa, but on gravel roads, on poorly maintained B-roads, and on singletrack trails. Kerkove was an endurance mountain bike racer, steeped in the culture of the 24-hour mountain bike endurance events that were popular at the time, who, after hearing yet another repetition of the owner’s story, turned to Stevenson and asked a fateful question:

“What if you made a race across Iowa for mountain bikes, on gravel roads?”

“Sure, why not?” was Mark’s answer.

To which Jeff replied, “Then let’s do it.”

The modern gravel cycling movement probably started in that moment. Some may question that assertion, but Mark Stevenson, aka Guitar Ted, tells a compelling tale about the race born in that moment, the Trans Iowa, and he has the receipts to back it up. He was also one of the first inductees into the Gravel Hall of Fame and is widely recognized among his peers for his role in the birth of the discipline in its modern form, even if he gives Jeff Kerkove credit for having the original idea.

The gravel roads of the Trans Iowa were originally conceived of as a way to get mountain bike riders across the state without touching too many paved surfaces, and thus, the ride, the Trans Iowa, as it was originally envisaged, would be an endurance mountain bike race across the state of Iowa. The gravel roads that the race would traverse? They were a way of tying together rougher technical terrain, the singletrack sought by mountain bikers, as well as what are called B-roads in the US, unmaintained roads suitable for tractors, agricultural equipment, off-road motorcycles, quad bikes or MTBs. If you go back and look at early photos of gravel races, you can still see the endurance mountain biking influence, with photos of guys on 26” cross-country mountain bikes, out riding the gravel roads of Iowa. Mark Stevenson has quite openly stated that without Jeff Kerkove, and crucially, his 24-hour endurance mountain biking blog, its readers, as well as Kerkove’s racing buddies and acquaintances, the Trans Iowa would never have gotten off the ground.

Some very serious cyclists came to the new race in 2005, the Trans Iowa or TI, among them riders from neighboring Kansas, eager to see what was happening in Iowa and to gain experience in gravel events for a race that they were soon to put on, a race they would call the Dirty Kanza, now known as Unbound. If you’re at all conversant with the gravel cycling space you will understand what that means, but suffice to say, the event started by Jeff Kerkove and Mark Stevenson, aka Guitar Ted, helped to influence what has become probably the biggest gravel race in the world. Unbound, then known as the Dirty Kanza, put on in the Flint Hills of Kansas, started in 2006 with a field of 34 riders, of which 15 would finish at the pop up tent in a hotel parking lot used as the finish line. These days, close to 5,000 people start the race, and entry is strictly controlled with a ballot system. There are now countless other, large and well-known gravel events, such as STB GRVL and Gravel Worlds, as well as smaller, more intimate events, run on a shoestring budget, much like many of the larger events once were, when they were starting out. Gravel has surged in popularity in recent years, even with its early ultra-endurance style. Gravel, in fact, is currently so popular in the US, and so ubiquitous as a style of bicycle racing, that it is being seen as a pathway into the highest level of cycling, with junior talent being spotted in gravel events by US Cycling, with an eye to creating future Olympians.

The name, Trans Iowa was quite literal in the early days, as riders traversed the entire state of Iowa. Remember that the entire impetus for the event was a reaction, by an endurance mountain biker, to a bike shop owner’s story of riding across the state of Iowa in a single day. Later events would adopt a loop format, to assist in race logistics, but the distance would remain 320-340 miles (515-550 kilometers) to be ridden within 34 hours. Other events, like Unbound, were classically 200 miles (320 kilometers) long, with cut-off times at checkpoints along the way, before different distances started to be offered later. Gravel races were, from the outset, extreme endurance events, and they still are in many cases. Even though gravel has surged in popularity, and event organizers have started to offer shorter courses, races like Gravel Worlds in Lincoln, Nebraska, still feature a 300 mile (480 kilometers) category. The famous Unbound has even, since 2018, offered an XL course that is 350 miles (560 km) long. In addition to the distance, riders must gain impressive amounts of vertical elevation along the way. While the route is fairly flat, at those sort of distances, all of the uphill sections of the long undulating roads start to really add up to thousands of feet and/or meters.

Endurance isn’t just about distance and elevation, though. The weather plays a huge part in such events, with scorching heat in some years, while in others, rain and hail may assault riders along the way. If the course sees heavy rain before the running of the event, riders may have to slog through hundreds of miles of thick, sticky mud, sometimes likened to peanut butter. In one Trans Iowa, no one finished. Exceptions are not made for weather; riders do not get special consideration. Fail to reach the cut-off point within the allotted amount of time? You can’t continue with the race.

The nature of the courses dictated a new style of racing, self-supported, where riders would be responsible for themselves. They would carry all necessary water, food supplies, tools, etc. on their own bikes. There would be no support cars, no private resupply from family or friends driving cars on the course. All racers would have to rely upon sparse official checkpoints and commercial services available to all competitors along the way. Racers would have to be their own manager, part racer, part nutritionist, part tactician and part mechanic. Offering help to fellow racers is just fine, but competitors cannot rely upon others. It’s like being in a war, you always use the other guy’s bandage for the other guy’s wound, because you might need your own one later, for yourself. Same goes with food, water, patch kits and tubes. Use the other guy’s supplies to help him or her, because you may need yours for yourself down the road. Break down in the middle of the night on the side of the road beside a farm in Iowa? Better be carrying spares and tools to get yourself going again, because help is not on the way. You are responsible for yourself. Ever since the inception of gravel racing, the self-supported ethos has been taken extremely seriously, by organizers and by the riders themselves.

Jeff Kerkove, having played a significant role in the birth of the modern gravel movement, would shortly thereafter leave Iowa and go to work for Ergon, a European company specializing in ergonomic handgrips and saddles in Colorado. Mark Stevenson, aka Guitar Ted, would continue with Trans Iowa alone and with assistance from others. Kerkove’s departure from Iowa is a minor detail, but one that points to the central place of mountain bikes and flat bars in the early gravel scene. For 24-hour mountain bike endurance events and long gravel races, the flat, comfortable Ergon grips make perfect sense, especially the touring versions with integrated bar ends, allowing for multiple hand positions on flat bars, and you can see why the company was so interested in the burgeoning gravel scene in the US. It must have looked like the promised land to German corporate growth strategists casting their eyes across the Atlantic. I am sure many riders used Ergon grips in those early events, with mountain bike bars, but there were seismic shifts happening in terms of equipment in the burgeoning gravel scene.

Cyclocross is a type of off-road bike racing, traditionally popular in western Europe—France, Belgium and the Netherlands—where racers use what, to the untrained eye, appear to be road bikes with wider knobby tires. Races are held on short courses of 2.5-3.5 kilometers or 1.5-2 miles, on paved surfaces, trails in woods, muddy grass etc. There are obstacles such as low gates, short steep hills and staircases within the course, where riders must get off their bikes, shoulder the machine and run past the obstacle before remounting and riding away. From the start of Trans Iowa, since the very first event was announced, American cyclocross (CX) riders, wanted in, and there was mild friction as they advocated for the admission of drop bar bikes, a type of bike they saw as being superior for off-road endurance riding, to the new event, which, at that early stage before the first event, was still limited to mountain bikes. Finally, diehard endurance mountain bike racer Jeff Kerkove relented, and allowed for basically any bicycle to take part. The rest, as they say, is history.

While some riders were mounted on 26” mountain bikes, in the first Trans Iowa, others were on drop bar cyclocross bikes with relatively narrow knobby tires, tires compliant with UCI regulations, namely those up to 700x33c wide. Cyclocross, as we have seen, is incredibly popular in Europe and comes under the oversight of the sport’s governing body, the UCI, leading to some very stringent rules about the equipment that you may or may not use in sanctioned events. For our purposes here, the main point is that CX bikes are only allowed to have tires up to 33 mm wide. Early 29ers would also be raced, and there are old photos of the first ever mass-produced 29er, the Karate Monkey, sporting drop bars, being raced on gravel, with the original 29x2.1 (the equivalent of 700x52c) WTB Nano tires. Soon enough, though, in the US, there was an emerging consensus, an emerging type of bike for the endurance gravel racing events springing up in Iowa and neighboring states like Kansas.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, late in the 1990s, an urban underground cycling scene had sprung up, centered on single speed mountain bikes, and with an underground ethos, as part of a wider punk scene, DIY races were being organized and held in wooded urban areas. Quite a few guys were brewing their own beer, and the two went together, homemade bike races and homebrewed beer. Just as an Alley Cat is an underground road race for bike messengers and urban cyclists, bandit cross is underground cyclocross racing. In Minneapolis, however, a bandit cross race was known as a derby. Groups were taking kegs of beer into the woods, making campfires and having parties with their friends, racing single speed mountain bikes on relatively short homemade cyclocross circuits, donning wild costumes, creating a whole local bicycle scene. Among the racers were employees of a local company called Quality Bicycle Products, who convinced their company to start making the single speed components the local scene needed to convert older mountain bikes to have single speed (1X1) drivetrains. Soon there was a steel frame available, known as the 1X1 Rat Ride. The Rat Ride name would soon be forgotten, and, in 1998 the frame would become known as the 1X1, while the new company producing it would be named Surly. Steeped in the culture of the derby, a year later in 1999 the fledgling company would release another frame, a frame easily convertible to single speed, designed for racing cyclocross with drop bars, rather than the flat bars of mountain bikes, built up as a bike known as the Cross-Check.

The Cross-Check would come to be the bike of the early gravel scene. It was a tough steel CX bike built around an affordable frame that would cheerfully accept a huge range of components, old and new, and could be set up with a wide range of drivetrain options. While European CX racing bikes were entirely optimized for short track racing, and crucially, the need to be shouldered and carried over obstacles, often lacking attachment points for bottle cages entirely, the same couldn’t be said of the Cross-Check. The Minneapolis scene respected the “bike is life” outlook, where bicycles became a lifestyle, a means of transport, a grocery hauler, a vehicle for recreation and an exercise machine, among other uses. Accordingly, the Cross-Check was entirely practical in nature, being provided with bottle cage mounting points, and came with a long, uncut steerer tube. This meant that instead of being an aggressive racing-focused CX bike, the Cross-Check could be set up as a long distance endurance racer fairly easily, by the riders and mechanics within the new gravel scene, leaving the steerer tube (it’s the long tube that sticks off the top of the fork and rotates, allowing the bike to be steered) somewhat long, giving their bikes greater effective stack, allowing the handlebar to be higher, for endurance riding, and leaving room above the front tire for handlebar bags to be mounted, carrying the essential supplies for self-supported racing. Also, and absolutely crucially, Surly always adopted the Fatties Fit Fine or FFF philosophy, building clearance for wide tires into the frame, often looking towards the future and allowing clearance for wider tires that were not yet designed or manufactured. As it was, in Iowa and neighboring states in the 2000s, the Cross-Check could commonly be seen with one of the many variations of Schwalbe Marathon tires, wider European commuting and touring tires for 700c wheels. The Americans, free of UCI rules & regulations and eager to experiment with this new form of racing on gravel roads, were looking around for the equipment that would suit the long undulating routes they were riding, and the tires they arrived at were roughly halfway between the UCI regulated 700x33c size and the 29x2.1 (or 700x52c) of the original WTB Nano at around 700x40c.

It would be another of QBP’s companies, though, that would really begin to innovate within the gravel space. Salsa released the Fargo in 2008, an incredibly versatile steel 29er, designed from the outset to be an off-road bike with drop bars, and one that was raced on gravel. It was soon to be given suspension-corrected geometry, though, meaning that it could accept a suspension fork, and would go on to a have storied career as a drop bar mountain bike raced on the GDMBR, the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route from Canada to Mexico. It’s still out there today, grinding up the climbs on that route. Salsa wasn’t resting, though, and they would also release the Vaya, a lighter all-road bike, in company with other gravel grinders, as they were still known at the time, from other manufacturers, like the Specialized AWOL, that would also be used for gravel racing.

In 2012, though, there was a new dedicated gravel 700x40c racing tire floating around the place, the Clement X’Plor MSO. While gravel racers had previously used Schwalbe Marathons, touring and commuting tires, those tires cannot be said to be lively, and commentators have likened putting them on a bike to turning the bicycle into a dump truck. There are off-road versions, and lighter versions, but they are all fairly heavy and utilitarian, certainly not developed with racing in mind. With the X’Plor MSO, Clement had developed a relatively light racing tire, tough enough for gravel racing, yet able to be raced at a fast pace over hundreds of miles. In the same year, Salsa Cycles introduced the Warbird, a bike sporting the new tire. Thus was born the type of machine that you and I would think of today if someone uttered the term “gravel bike.” A bike, that to the casual observer resembles a regular road bike, only with slightly wider tires covered with smaller knobs than those of their mountain bike cousins. A bike that would be derided as a glorified cyclocross or CX bike in some markets, as even upon its release, people struggled to properly contextualize the new bike.

Gravel Bikes in Korea, illustrating bottom bracket drop and slack head tube angle. Photo courtesy of Don Hearn and Rod Matzdorff.

While the new bike would superficially resemble a CX bike, there were important differences. Think of a bike in your mind, and draw a virtual line between the centers of the wheels. Now think of the center of the crankset. On gravel bikes, the center of the crankset is and was significantly lower than the virtual line, with the chainstays, the two lower tubes holding the rear wheel, moving downwards to the bottom bracket, the spindle on which the cranks spin, at quite an acute angle, rather than being flat. This bottom bracket drop is pronounced on gravel bikes like the Warbird, providing some degree of frame movement, famously known as compliance within the bicycle industry. The headtube, the tube through which the steerer tube at the top of the fork passes, also has a slacker angle on most gravel bikes. The fork of a CX bike is usually on a steeper angle, and meets a low set of bars, so that the cyclocross rider is leaned forward aggressively while riding with a front wheel that looks to be tucked further backwards below the front of the frame. On gravel bikes, the fork is comparatively slacker (having a less steep angle) and the handlebars are mounted higher, allowing gravel riders to lean back a little, to help the athlete’s back on much longer rides, a geometry feature shared with endurance road bikes. The new bike would also have room for up to 40 mm wide tires. I speak here of the Warbird, but that general geometry has become somewhat standard for gravel bikes and many now have clearance for up to 50 mm or 2” wide tires and even more.

Accordingly, gravel bikes can be said to be characterized by a low bottom bracket, with low seat stays in the rear end helping to provide compliance and ride stability, a slack headtube angle making steering measured and predictable and a greater amount of stack allowing for rider comfort over long distances.

The dedicated gravel bike, as it was born, would be a bike more suited to the needs of long-distance endurance American gravel racing in places like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, than the more aggressive geometry of cyclocross bikes used for short track CX racing in places like Belgium and France.

Modern gravel cycling, is, at the very core of its being, a Midwestern American phenomenon. This point is essential to understand for anyone attempting to gain an understanding of what gravel bikes truly are, rather than what people might like them to be, and there is a singular truth behind their creation:

Gravel bikes, as we know them today, evolved to fit the needs of ultra-endurance bike racers in the American Midwest.

It is that point that I believe to be the key to understanding gravel bikes, and it is to that point that we shall continually return in this series on gravel. Understanding anything within the gravel cycling space must start with an understanding of where the bikes have come from and what they are designed to do. It is when this is understanding is lacking, as it so often is, that I believe unnecessary confusion ensures, bringing with it the derision, frustration and anger that are so common in the critiques leveled at gravel bikes and gravel as a cycling category. It is to an examination of some of those critiques that we will turn to next, as we continue our contextualization of gravel cycling.

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