Author: Guitar Ted

Put these tires on if you have a lot of paved road in your gravel loops, or if the bike you have needs to do double duty as a commuter, or touring bike. Give the Strada USH smooth, dry, dirt of finer crushed rock to run on and you won’t be disappointed. In these scenarios the USH is at home. Plus, with the choice of a tan sidewall, it can class up the look of just about any bike.

So, does WTB’s “Fit Rght System” work? Can you really measure your wrist, answer a few questions, and get a saddle for a bicycle that works well for you? Really? It sounds weird, until you dig into it, and then, it actually kind of starts making sense. I’ll leave the details to the scientists and professional bike fitters. All I know is that – yes. It does work.

The Recon HL 1600 is in a hotly contested category in the bike lighting market place. New contenders are out there with similar, and sometimes better, feature sets. As always, ‘caveat emptor’ when looking at this category, but the Recon HL 1600 is a solidly built, reliable light. While it has a basic feature set, (unless you own the proprietary Giant computer which opens up more features), it holds its own at the asking price of $126.00USD.

The Rocktown Rambler is a celebration of riding backcountry roads in the Shenandoah Valley. There will be gravel, some climbing, some descending, some singletrack, and a lot of fun! We welcome everyone that wants to have a good time – whether that is by racing, riding, or partying (or doing all three at once)! The Rambler is yours to enjoy!

As is often said, the best apparel and components simply “disappear” while riding, leaving you to enjoy the ride. The RX8 shoes from Shimano are the definition of such an apparel item. While either walking a gnarly, muddy dirt road or riding up and down hill and vale, the RX8 just got out of my way and let me do my thing.

A Tale Of Three Bars: Ritchey WCS Streem II – by Grannygear Introduction: The world of gravel riding has spawned a few trends and brought…

Similarly, wet mud riding does not impart a secure feeling when using the Strada USH. But then again, if you even think that is a good idea, well…..good luck to you. The obvious point here is that the Strada USH is best on dry dirt and gravel and is absolutely at home on rough, broken up pavement.

Salsa Cycles announced this morning publicly that the Cutthroat model will be a ground-up redesign for the 2020 model year. The Cutthroat is Salsa Cycles carbon drop bar mountain bike which is aimed at bike-packing and long rides in remote territory, ala Tour Divide. It also is a fairly popular model amongst some gravel riders.

TIME saw a need for not just gravel/adventure riders here, but for cyclo-tourists as well. Citing the typical need of these riders to use MTB shoes and pedals which are not as efficient on roads, the engineers at TIME decided that there are enough folks riding gravel, adventuring, and cyclo-touring now that a dedicated pedal for these disciplines is now a reality.

I thought the light beam color and pattern was excellent. I ended up running this on the medium/800 Lumen setting, which to be honest, was more than bright enough.