I’ve been sparing the Roadini the indignity of salt and slush, however the roads had been briefly clear yesterday, so I leapt on the likelihood to take it out for a spin earlier than it snows once more:
I’m very, very, very proud of this bike:
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/IMG_5054.jpg?resize=736%2C552&ssl=1)
Not like this man along with his gravel bike:
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-05-160020.png?resize=736%2C602&ssl=1)
I don’t know if he shouldn’t have purchased a gravel bike, however I do know he shouldn’t have purchased that exact gravel bike, as a result of my goodness is it ugly:
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-05-160149.png?resize=736%2C788&ssl=1)
Sorry, that factor is objectively the other of beautiful. The buckled prime tube makes it seem like a metal bike that’s been in a head-on collision, and the wheels seem like these bizarre seed pods that set off individuals’s trypophobia. I imply it’s no Faggin, however it’s ugly.
So what ought to he have gotten as a substitute? Why, an “all-road” bike, in fact!
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-05-155843.png?resize=736%2C190&ssl=1)
I’m sorry, WHAT?!? You couldn’t get an all-road bike…in 2022? And I believed Specialised had been audacious for claiming they invented the all-road bike in 2004:
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screenshot-2025-01-20-073426.png?resize=736%2C364&ssl=1)
It was loopy sufficient that individuals thought the gravel bike was a brand new idea; now they suppose the versatile street bike can be a brand new idea. I’m not even positive there was ever a time you couldn’t simply purchase a flexible street bike. However I assume you may by no means underestimate the ability of promoting:
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/71360e93-3c8d-4eba-83eb-e548076f953b_text.gif?resize=400%2C218&ssl=1)
And what, pray inform, is that this revolutionary new all-road bike he ought to have gotten? Effectively, apparently it’s a Cervélo Caledonia-5:
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-05-160648.png?resize=736%2C580&ssl=1)
It’s like no different street bike you’ve ever seen, other than being precisely like each different street bike you’ve ever seen:
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-05-161156.png?resize=736%2C244&ssl=1)
It additionally has in-frame storage, and it takes fenders, and it’s laterally stiff but vertically compliant:
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-05-161037.png?resize=736%2C699&ssl=1)
Nice job, Cervélo, it’s virtually as versatile as a 20 year-old Jamis:
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-05-164122.png?resize=736%2C449&ssl=1)
Sure, bicycle advertising can actually make you’re feeling such as you’re beating your head in opposition to the wall, which is why my spirit animal is the woodpecker:
However not less than he will get to eat a bug on the finish:
I actually am the biking world’s preeminent avian photographer.
Talking of feeling like I’m banging my head in opposition to the wall, each time I have a look at the Desert Hipster Web site I discover one thing else that makes me need to go Full Woodpecker on the closest arduous floor, and now I see that after they go to a spot they put the title of the tribe that used to stay there on the finish of the put up:
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-05-154003.png?resize=736%2C140&ssl=1)
Now, I don’t know in the event that they all the time do that, because it’s uncommon that I make it to the tip of a put up. Nevertheless, on this case it’s a put up a few man in Connecticut with numerous cool bike components in his storage. So until the story’s about how he’s going to present the land beneath the storage again to the aforementioned tribes, or about how the storage was constructed on one in all their historic burial grounds and the ancestral spirits are attempting to kill him along with his assortment of classic derailleurs and chainrings, the inclusion strikes me as gratuitous.
You gained’t discover something like that on this weblog, that’s for positive.
![](https://i0.wp.com/bikesnobnyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-05-170500.png?resize=736%2C167&ssl=1)