Yeah monstercross wasn’t for racing, it was for gravel and camping and what would become bikepacking atmo.
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I think Sam Allison was very influenced by Matt Chester and people used to race his Singular Gryphons in the UK, but yeah, the end application often ended up being Bikepacking. Sam has always been keen on single speed too. Lots of Singulars over this way, possibly cos poopbarning is the national sport.
Oh yeah, Matt Chester! Great bike weirdo.
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Wasn’t matt cheater one of those framebuilders that took a bunch of deposits and then inevitably got under water and couldn’t fulfill the order queue?
like looking into an ill-advised mirror
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The OG Instagram filter look really elevates the image.
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ISWYDT. I feel like there were many forum posts on either MTBR or elsewhere about someone plunking down cash and wondering about their frame two years later. This blog post was recent:
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A brain injury will fuck you up. Interesting read.
And in 'Murica it can bankrupt you too!
Bike repaint inspiration
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eh sure but why waste time on thermochromic when you could have sent it to the Waterford shop for some fucken sick pinstriped flames instead
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why not pinstriped thermocromic flames?
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So when you rest on the top tube at a stop light you leave a color-changing chamois print?
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Asking the important questions.
I kind of want a mood fork/teabag witness TT.
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it’s taf; @EndpointBraden tarck colourway?
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It’s really expensive
I looked into it
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2010 Kiwi Brevet, my buddy on his Singular Gryphon. Hes always run narrow tires while poopbarning, but 2.2 to 2.3 for his normal rides. His only other MTB is a Fat chance buckshaver. Hes building up a new Ti Gryphon right now. Everyone else was on 26ers. Seat-bags were not quite a thing yet.
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My Masi had 2.0 race kings and couldn’t take the wheel out with the tire inflated.
All this monstercross talk is bringing up nostalgia. Mutano raptors felt like a big deal when I finally got my hands on them.
I’m chugging along on writing up all this stuff as an article On the Origins of Gravel, and since I’m kinda a dummy about this, what production bikes really helped to push things into shape?
I get the sense that there was a steady evolution, with a lot of custom or small batrch stock bikes popularizing things, but also that there was a lot of overlap between racy gravel, bikepacking, and rando-but-lightly-offroad.
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