Gravel bike or more hardcore?

Which bike concept suits me best and how do I want to spend my time on the bike?

Anyone who wants to buy a new or used bike will inevitably have to decide at some point how they want to spend their time with it. Of course, their requirements may also change over the years, as happened to me.

The best thing is to let you participate in my bike decisions.

It all started with the pure joy of riding. Before I started cycling seriously, I was fortunate enough to own a Cannondale F700, and in the 2000s I rode it up and down the trails around Vienna in the Vienna Woods, which were still designated hiking trails back then. At some point, however, my bike was stolen, and that made me quite bitter. Due to a lack of time and money, the matter was closed, and it wasn't until years later that I acquired my next bike through a customer.

A Stevens Strada 800 that I used to ride to the office every day because I just didn't feel like driving in the city. For that, the bike was and still is unbeatable. So it should be a mountain bike with narrow road tires that rekindles my love for bicycles. Back then, 26" tires were still up to date and V-brakes were still a good solution if you didn't want to have to go to the bike shop to have your disc brakes adjusted every 7 days. So a perfect undercover city racer that doesn't stand out but that made every bike courier (who back then still delivered packages in the city and were my biggest enemies) fear it. The bike has an aluminum frame, a mountain bike handlebar that I've made narrower over the years to get through traffic more elegantly and a Shimano Tiagra groupset that seems to be made for these requirements.

After years in Vienna, I rode with friends from Treviso, Italy to the beach in Jesolo, and suddenly something clicked in my head. I thought, if I could ride 70km on a bike, then I could also ride 100km... and a first round of Google searches opened my eyes to the world of bikepacking. I ended up riding that bike for days on end. A few new Ergon grips with hand rests, because my hands always fell asleep, and a comfortable saddle were enough to allow me to ride long distances. Later, I added a few Restrap bags so I didn't always have to carry a backpack.

One early summer evening, I found myself in the mountainous region of Valdobiadene, where I found myself on a mountain bike trail in the middle of the night. Suddenly, all my memories of the Vienna Woods came flooding back. The area there isn't all that dissimilar to the Vienna Woods; short 200-300 meter climbs are wonderfully interspersed with even shorter descents. A playground for bike enthusiasts. I was pretty fit by now, so I thought, why not take the trail down to the valley and squeeze in a little adventure?

After my first foray into the woods, I kept going back to the same mountain bike trail, riding down it once or twice a week on my Stevens. Three tube changes and a new V-brake set later, I was faced with the decision of whether to take my bike down there again or perhaps consider a new bike. So, the Stevens had reached its limits where my old Cannondale would probably have felt most at home.

Gravel but what?

What is good, what works and how am I supposed to find the right bike without ever having tested one of these bikes? In the meantime, a friend of mine who has been building bikes out of bamboo for years has plans to build a gravel bike. He then rode it around me so hard, especially in the forest and on gravel. So I tested out his bike and then jetted down the mountain bike trail on it. What a difference it was. The wide tires hold up in the corners, the disc brakes really slow me down and uphill the bike was so stiff that it wasn't really a decision anymore, it was just a question of when and how. After all, I wanted to go to Tuscany to take part in the Tuscany Trail.

Covid Banana Joe

Jan then built me ​​a frame out of bamboo. The Covid Banana Joe. It was going to be 40mm 700mm tires and a 1/12 Apex SRAM drivetrain. The frame couldn't handle any more weight. That was a bit disappointing, because I'd already realized by then that tire width makes a huge difference, and I was mostly out in the woods, only riding on the road to get to the next trails. But it had taken him almost a year to build the frame, and I was finally ready to ride it.

The feeling of finally racing with him and enjoying the surroundings was wonderful. Until my bike was stolen in Treviso's main square. That was in the spring of 2023, the summer of the Tuscany Trail, and I—no, Jan and I—were devastated.

Tuscany and then?

In the meantime, Jan had built another frame, and finally, we rode to Tuscany—he with his Model 15 and I with the Model 17. We had an incredible time. It was satisfying to see how well his bikes performed, and some of the people around us could hardly believe how we left everyone else behind, especially on the downhills. We were faster than everyone else, and that was with a not-quite-perfectly adjusted bike, a secondhand Apex groupset, and a bamboo frame.