rewrite this content and keep HTML tags
Pity the modern bicycle consumer, who must somehow choose from among thousands upon thousands of nearly identical gravel bikes, the newest one being the oddly-named yet otherwise thrillingly generic Ari Shafer:
I’m glad the Ari Shafer has answers, because I have a question: Are you the same Ari Shafer who invited me to his Mets-themed Bar Mitzvah in seventh grade? If so I thought you’d have become something impressive like a doctor or a lawyer, not a just a bike with fattish tires like that Hilsen kid. Your parents must be so disappointed.
I also have another question: where can I find the spirit of gravel?
Dirt, exploration, and off-road adventure define gravel riding, but no one really knows what the spirit of gravel really is, or where to find it.
Really, nobody? Not even Ari Shafer? Here’s a clue: if you’re looking for the “spirit of gravel,” maybe start with the goddamn gravel:
Put your bike on it, ride the bike for awhile, and I’m pretty sure you’ll figure it out.
Anyway, apart from maybe a few people who think it’s the name of a Rush song, it seems to me that absolutely everyone knows what the Spirit of Gravel is, seeing as how you can’t shop for anything bike-related without having to hear about it, or look at a single bicycle-themed piece of media without having to read about it, including this stupid blog.
As for what makes the Ari Shafer special (apart from the extensive orthodontic treatment he received all through high school allowing him to finally get a girlfriend in college) it’s obviously the groundbreaking “rider-specific geometry”:
The rider-centric geometry fine-tunes balance and handling with proportional chainstay lengths, a slack 69° head angle, and 50mm fork offset for high-speed stability and agile cornering—all while virtually eliminating toe overlap across frame sizes.
Forget “Function Specific Design;” forget “Steath Carbon,” where “each tube is optimized to do a specific job.” Rider-centric geometry blows ’em all outta the water–or offa the gravel. See, for too long bike companies have designed a bike’s geometry around random stuff that isn’t the rider: end-tables, plants and trees, carpet-steaming machines… The Ari Shafer marks the first time in cycling history that someone designed the geometry of a bike not just for a human, but for the very same human who’s going to be riding the bicycle. This is nothing short of incredible, and is going to change the fundamental nature of the bicycle forever.
In short, I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy an Ari Shafer, though I can’t completely rule out the Sam Goldblatt.
Meanwhile, in other exciting cycling news…what the hell is happening here?
I guess with the advent of 32-inch wheels we can look forward to the complete disappearance of the stem:
So that’s how it ends for this venerable component, huh? It’s just going to shrivel up and fall off, like Ari Shafer’s shvantz would have in high school had he not taken matters into his own hands, so to speak. And presumably we can look forward to the eventual relocation of the handlebar to the fork crown:
What’s old is new again.
Finally, SRAM seems to have stopped the UCI’s new gear limit trial, at least for now:
The UCI must now adopt a new “non-discriminatory” safety measure if it wants to slow riders down:
Because of this justification, the BCA is requiring the “UCI to suspend immediately, and no later than 13 October, the implementation of the Maximum Gear Ratio Standard.” The BCA is also prohibiting the UCI from “imposing transmission ratio limitations or taking any other measure having the direct or indirect effect of prohibiting the use of certain types of transmission systems in any professional road cycling event governed by the UCI, either until the UCI adopts a new safety measure based on a transparent, objective and non-discriminatory procedure, or until a decision on the merits is adopted.”
I vote mandatory singlespeeds for all events across the board.
