GUIDE

The final piece in a series of deep-dives into my titanium dream bike, T-Lab’s X3. Fully custom designed and built to thrive across a broad range of riding conditions, my build biases toward reliability under heavy and frequent use in harsh environments.

Here’s the thing. GRINDURO is not ‘gravel.’ ‘Gravel’ is not a thing. It’s also not nothing.

The second in a trilogy on the process of designing a dream gravel bike, this piece walks through the way I refined my thinking and design for my custom T-Lab X3 modern gravel bike build, translating principles into specific decisions.

The first in a three-part series on the process of designing a dream gravel bike, this piece walks through the way I conceived my custom T-Lab X3 modern gravel bike build. This is a principles-based approach, which is meant to support decision making that lands riders on bikes they love.

For those with ample supplies of motivation and zeal, but insufficient kit for spring riding, this is a short guide to a selection of key pieces from Castelli. Quality cycling kit is expensive, so I hope this helps inform decisions that lead to many hours of happy riding, not regrets.

Two-hundred kilometer rides every month through winter; doable? All I actually needed was an objective, something to look forward to through the dreary days of November, as daylight hours diminished rapidly, and the stark reality settled in: winter was coming. And not just any winter; COVID-winter.

I try to paint a picture here that’s more about building a holistic understanding of the environment you’re riding, and a degree of ‘mastery’ around decision-making than about telling you which tires you should buy. That’s the last thing I want to do. I want to help you develop a deep understanding of the requirements you’re working with, which you can then assess against your priorities. This will ground good decision-making.

The early phase of the pandemic threw me for a loop; not right away, it took time to settle in. Work on the computer, Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting; I struggled. I read a lot of fiction in an unconscious effort to escape a reality I had little control over. When do we ever have ‘control’? Never. But we think we do. I had to ride my bike in a way I’d never needed to before.