Exihibit 1: Twenty-five years ago I was driving through French farmland when out of the blue my better half directed me to immediately pull over at a barn on the side of the road. When I exclaimed WTF, she told me the sign on the barn indicated there was a bike museum inside. Based on the surroundings I was incredulous but figured we might as well investigate. The barn had an attached building, into which we entered to find something of a store containing various cycling and Tour de France memorabilia going back years, if not decades. After we finished perusing numerous display cases filled with amazing and entertaining tchotchkes, we climbed a staircase to what amounted to the second floor of the attached barn. That floor was about 30’ x 70’ and was filled with rows of bicycles dating back more than one-hundred years. On those bikes were nearly every invention that we think of as modern: disc brakes, suspension forks, full suspension, belt drive, etc. All these modern inventions were not modern at all – they had all been tried before. In most cases limited technology prevented the concepts from realizing their potential… at least until many years later. 

Exhibit 2: Around fifteen years ago riders were increasingly stretching the scope of their riding on drop bar bikes. Seeing bike shop mechanics tweak their CX (cyclocross) bikes into Swiss army knives, some bike brands picked the thread up and introduced bikes like the Specialized Tricross. By 2010 the Tricross was one of the best-selling drop bar bikes in America, though it was on the periphery of the mainstream. Despite this, the Tricross model ran out of gas and was discontinued. But that did not mean riders were not continuing to take the (gravel) road less traveled. Road racing bikes boomed in the first decade of this century, not unlike how mountain bikes did in the early nineties. Interestingly, mountain bikes tapped into a desire to ride “free” of the suffocating rules of road racing and appealed to the imagination of riders. Specialized re-invented the Tricross in the form of the Diverge in 2015. Other brands were in the mix as well, but the Diverge was certainly one of the ones at the tip of the spear. History, as it likes to do, began repeating itself as many riders paradoxically found the image of modern mountain biking too off-putting and jumped on bikes like the Diverge by the thousands.  

Exhibit 3: One has to only look at photos from early Tour de France editions a hundred years ago to see that riding drop bar bikes on gravel is not new. While those stages disappeared as mountain passes were coated with tarmac, one can find a re-birth of gravel in new races like Strada Bianche. First raced in 2007, Strada Bianche has quickly become a favorite along with legendary monuments like Paris-Roubaix, which dates back to 1896! 

Neither the bikes nor the style of riding is really all that new. Certainly, technnology has had a hand in expanding the boundaries of what, where, and how we ride. But at the core, riding a bicycle on a gravel/dirt road just to see where it goes is as old as the bicycle itself. That only reinforces what an amazing idea the bicycle was then and remains today.