Top Stories from CyclingTips: Evil Bikes Goes Gravel, Top Stories of 2019, & Tech of the Decade

 I don’t get why everyone is so jazzed about a carbon Surly either....

 I'm just surprised Evil made it into a PB article. Maybe they have a chance to get a bike into one of the field tests.

 @steveczech: hopefully soon with an enduro killing new wreck(steep sa; lower stack)

 @jrocksdh: That would be awesome. Love my Wreckoning on everything except sustained climbs (that steeper SA would definitely help).

 Peak gravel right there. I'd own one, but not at retail.

 Sean Connery was asked, who replaced Dave Lee Roth as the lead singer of Val Halen? To which he replied, “Chamois Hagar.”

 @Superburner: and they were shot after that. Bring back DLR VH.

 @Superburner: this is probably way over most of the reader's heads as far as references go but it's awesome! #vanhagar

 @shockdonkey: Yeah only genius' like shock donkey could get that totally impossible to figure out analogy... /s

 It would be even better with 200mm of travel front and rear.

 @jimeg: For real. Beautiful lookng bike but truly absurd price for a Chinese mold popout

 keep the 7 bottle cage mounts though?

 @steveczech: we’ve asked them for a bike for both the 2019 and 2020 field tests. We’ll keep asking...

 @brianpark: Well... you definitely can't do a field test if they don't send a bike for testing. Makes sense to me! Thanks, Brian.

 It would look even better with 200mm travel up front..

 Favorite bikes for the Kom hunters on fire roads.

 Gravel is the new plus bike

 Double the market though @fishybob ... also for the roadie who's too ashamed to admit to his spandex buddies that he's becoming a mountain biker.

 @nojzilla: common... they aren't that bad.. i like my 2.8 tires on my HT in winter.. great grip and good fun...

 @Clem-mk: or just guys like Geoff Kabush who excel at both disciplines.

 Congratulations on a dumb comment!!!

 @markar: how so Huckleberry?

 or a mountain biker with respect for trail sustainability. we're not all selfish dude-broz

 Not really. Where I am trails close after rain due to the clay soil, so a gravel bike is great for getting out into nature and off road away from cars while the trails are closed and keeps the wear off the mountain bike tires and drivetrain. Also it is something to ride with my wife who likes biking but doesn't really enjoy mountain biking.

 Would you mind if we'd engage in a fistfight, right after tea?

 What do they have to argue about? A road bike's a road bike, give or take a little give in the materials and 4-5 grams here and there. Best bum cream? Length of your sausage smugglers?

 Just wait til they cover a doping story.

 @vinay: As long as helmets are off, I like my chances.

 it's called electrical tape because it conducts electricity

 its used to electricaly isolate stuff...

 wait...that's illegal!

 @f00bar: wrong, another name for it is insulating tape. Therefore it does NOT conduct electricity.

 Turquoise for the dentist’s?

 @DHhack:Turquoise for the dentist's what?

 @stumpymidget: apparently some of you still don't know how to recharge batteries

www.youtube.com/watch?v=brdmnUBAS00

 @f00bar: got a good chuckle out of that one. Cheers dude!

 N+1

 @yerbikesux PB own Cycling Tips

 then you can have just the tips

 Damn right! ...and that frame should be red with a name like that.

 @mikeyrides: 100% should have been offered in “rocker red”.

 Ya know, cross country used to be reeeeeally popular when it was what gravel biking is now. Maybe there's a reason for that?

 @Bob-Agg: that's exactly right. And I think that's totally fine.

I love my over capable trail bike. And I'd give this gravel bike a shoot if i could. It's different. The feeling on a cx or gravel bike on the trail is different from a xc bike.. but not so far off my 1990 mtb. It pedals great-better and can do some light trail duty with light descending. And that's plenty fun.

 @Bob-Agg: Yeah. Riding a bicycle for long distances over a whole variety of different surfaces is really fun. Having a bike that seems designed for exactly this type of riding makes it even more enjoyable.

 @Bob-Agg: I miss the efficiency. That's why I still have a hardtail and absolutely love it. I do, however, have a 160 fork on my hardtail. Is there a full suspension that's designed specifically for efficiency(like a CC bike would be) that's set up with a slack head and is good for descending? I'm having knee surgery next week and the doc indicated that my hardtail-riding days are numbered.

 It’ll take a 29x2.1 but those are pretty chunky for most riding. But then again I’m a slob still riding 700x40.

 Yeah, an XC hardtail can work fine as a "gravel bike", but it's at a different point in the DH Bike to Road Bike spectrum. I wouldn't want to do a lot of pavement or smooth gravel on a hardtail mountain bike because it's not as fast. The upright riding position, wide bars, and lower gearing are the problem. If you built up an XC hardtail with a long stem and some drop bars, and raised the gearing to handle the higher speeds... well, then you'd basically have a gravel bike. This could certainly be done, though my gravel frame also has bosses for bikepacking, and works really well as a touring bike for long road rides if you swap out some skinnier tires - tires too narrow for mountain bike rims.

I don't have the bucks for a half-dozen bikes, so the two I do have need to cover a lot of terrain. The gravel bike handles everything from road to light singletrack, and the full-suspension mountain bike handles everything from gravel to the steep and butt puckering.

Honestly, if I had a 3rd bike somewhere in between, I'm not sure it would get ridden that much.

Edit: That said, I have no idea what this Evil bike is supposed to be for.

 @pixelguru: honestly i could see it where i mtb in Marin. Few trails (2 maybe 3 and they're short.. 2 of them not even legal to ride) are trail worthy. Most is just poorly maintained to decently maintained fire roads.

So to get there and get my fix I ride among gravel bikes. I get up slower and down infinitely faster as they try to pick a line where they don't die as soon as there some kind of single track. These guys would be far happier with a more aggressive geometry. They still couldn't do the 3 trails I do but that's not the point. They could descend the light stuff i descend to get there and not do the single track stuff as slow.

 just switch the drop bar for a regular flat bar and voila! you've got yourself an old school mountain bike

 I just wonder if they could make a bike with chainstay that don't have permanent contact with the cain on some given gears. May be we should clarify to chainstay does not mean it's where the chain stays?

 @f00bar: or take your old school mountain bike and put a drop bar on it. Got yourself something pretty evil.

 They have high standards of hideousness to maintain from their MTB range though, to be fair.