Author: Guitar Ted

My opinion is that the Line Shoe might be best for someone that has a mountain biking first bent to their riding, and if they ride back roads, well then these shoes would be a comfortable, durable choice, with the caveat that they might be a bit toasty on hot days and that their wide stance may interfere a bit with certain bikes/riding styles.

Living up to its name, the Discover Big Flare Bar features 30° degrees of kicked out, drop section goodness. That’s the most flare on a bar that we have tested.

Cuero Full Finger Cycling Gloves: Quick Review – by Guitar Ted The apparel choices we make for riding are important and one of those things…

This past weekend saw the 10th running of the Gravel Worlds gravel races out of Lincoln, Nebraska. At the registration site, there was a bit of an expo featuring some of the sponsor’s wares and a few reps were about sharing some knowledge with the racers in attendance. Following are a few tidbits I managed to glean as I toured the expo tents.

This is an unusual debut, not only because it is from Knolly, and their first steel offering, but also because it isn’t another carbon fiber framed gravel bike. Let’s be honest, if you heard that “Brand X” was going to announce a high end gravel bike tomorrow, you’d expect it to be a carbon fiber frame. That Knolly decided to lead out with a hand featuring titanium and steel is very different, and noteworthy in today’s market.

As long as it isn’t too hot, these are actually pretty nice shoes for pedaling out on the gravel. My thought is that these would be better choices for warm to cool weather climates. Hot, humid areas will require shoes with more venting than the Line shoes have. Wide feet? These could be your shoes then.

The Flare 25 definitely does have a different feel. The vibrations I felt were……not muted, they were there, but not the same frequency, for sure. Other bars had a “zing” to them, which I could say might affect me negatively, but as for this SPANK bar, I cannot say at this point that it is “better” for me

Giant Bicycles Shuttle Flat Shoes: Checkpoint – by Guitar Ted Flat pedals are definitely a “thing” for mountain biking these days, but what about gravel…

Two words kept cropping up whenever Grannygear and I discussed these Boken 700 X 40mm and Boken Plus 650B X 47mm tires. Those words were fast and smooth. The IRC Boken models are some of the fastest and most comfortable tires we’ve tried.

Over the last two months (!!) that the final part of this review lasted, I have ridden the Noble GX5 as a “daily driver”, taken it out on some of the nastiest roads we’ve seen in years, and ridden it on “normal” Mid-West roads. Through it all, I have remained impressed with this carbon fiber bicycle with roots going back to another gravel bike I really like.