Gravel? That’s Not Nice! – Bike Snob NYC

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We have a winner!*

*[If you’re the winner feel free email me, maybe we can find you…something.]

That’s right, further to yesterday’s post, the answer is that I swapped the cassettes, but I failed to swap the lockrings:

As you can see, the lockring for the 12-tooth cassette is bigger than the one for the 11-tooth, so when I put it on the 11-tooth cassette it didn’t allow the chain to fully engage the cog:

See, that’s what happens when you rush things. If I were a pro cycling team mechanic I would have just cost my sprinter the race:

If he were wearing a microphone, you’d hear him shouting, “HEY YOU SON-OF-A-BEETCH, YOU RUEEN DA BIKE, MARIO NO CAN A-USE-A HEES ELEVEN!!!”

So if you learn anything from me, it should be to take your time when doing bike maintenance. Hey, it’s not much, but it’s all the wisdom I’ve got to impart. For the real important stuff, like how to boost your cycling cadence, you’ll need to consult the experts:

Sadly, I’m not currently a Bicycling member:

Though unfortunately for them they tipped their hand and everything you need to know is in front of the paywall:

See that? All you need to do to boost your cadence is get a bike fit, shorter cranks, an indoor trainer, a computer and cadence sensor, a larger cassette, smaller chainrings, a gravel drivetrain, and a triple.

Though I notice they did leave out “downshift.”

Silly me, there I was thinking all you need to do to boost your cadence is pedal faster.

So why are cyclists so obsessed with cadence anyway? I’ve been riding for decades and I have yet to figure out the reason, though I do remember when I got my first cycling computer with a cadence sensor. So high-tech! Wow, a whole new number on the screen and everything! Unfortunately, unlike speed or mileage, which are cool and interesting things to know, I had no idea whatsoever to make of this new information. Sure, I now knew exactly how many times I was turning the cranks per minute, but was I turning it too many times or too few times? It was all tremendously exciting, and yet like a novice gamecock trainer, I had no context:

Then there was Lance Armstrong. It turned out he and all his competitors were mainlining EPO and blood bags by the gallon, but back then the “experts” claimed that the secret to Armstrong’s success was cycling genius Chris Carmichael’s brilliant high-cadence technique:

Pedal bike faster =win race? WHO’DA THUNK IT??? Man, for awhile there, Chris Carmichael had it made. All he had to do was ride around making up shit about bricks. He was even into singlespeeds and fixies before it was cool:

See?

Sure. And typing with one hand for four hours is equivalent to typing with both hands for eight hours. That’s why you you can use one hand at the office and then tell your boss you’re going home at lunch. (At least until DOGE gets wise to it.)

And yet here we are in 2025 and I still don’t know why the hell I should care what my cadence is. Doesn’t it just come naturally? But I guess nobody would read an article called, “PEDAL WHATEVER FUCKING SPEED YOU FEEL LIKE AND STOP BOTHERING ME.” So instead we get “Six Surefire Ways To Supercharge The Shit Out Of Your Cadence,” and YouTube videos with rhetorical question titles and people with dumb puzzled expressions–though usually you don’t have to watch them to find the answer:

It’s not, it sucks.

Yes, you’re all going to die.

Yes, but they can only be used with gravel shoes, and gravel socks, and ridden on gravel, or else you’re all going to die.

Speaking of gravel, the UCI Gravel World Championships in Nice has been cancelled:

They’re now looking for a new venue:

And obviously they should look no further than Cleveland:

There’s gotta be some gravel around there somewhere.

As for the gravel in Nice, I wanted to learn more about it and found this:

I then clicked on the #whatisgravel search link:

And found this:

Apparently gravel is now completely ineffable, though the message was accompanied by this image:

I guess he’s gravel personified, even though he’s standing on a surface made of processed gravel.

But maybe the most annoying thing about gravel is the punctuation–sorry the PNCTN. See, the gravel style manual requires all words to be rendered in all-caps with no vowels. However, apparently Open, the company with perhaps the most irritating model naming conventions in all of cycling (and that’s coming from someone who rides a bike called a Platypus) has been granted an exception and is allowed to use vowels just as long as they include a bunch of gratuitous periods: