Badlands

First Gravel race of Transiberica.cc for 24th of May

700k +15.000m
3 deserts
a bit of coast
Veleta pass +3.212m
south of Spain

https://youtu.be/qZ5SJqfrhLo

More info:
https://www.transiberica.cc/badlands/

Looks great!

Yup, looks amazing.

I've already reccied some of it...

Some Cabo de Gata from Transiberica this year.

I might be able to do a shorter event like this next year. Can’t justify another long one with the family situation at the moment.

Is it a road/ gravel bike or gravel/ mountain bike job??

A Mr J Fritzl had a neat solution for keeping the family drama to a minimum...

buys shovel, digs bunker

https://www.transiberica.cc/badlands/faqs/

GRAVEL OR MTB?

The route is around 85% off-road, most of it without special technical difficulties.
A gravel bike 40mm tyres is perfect even for those paved km. A MTB may give you an extra comfort on those few technical parts.
You and your bike will be welcome anyway.

Hmm probably need another bike then.
I’ve been looking at a Cannondale slate, any idea what they are like?
Maybe just a hard tail mountain bike is a better/ safer option.

What tyres can you fit on the blue thing? I dunno how Cabo De Gata compares to the rest of the route but it was rideable with 28F/34R.

I'd already replaced the crashed Tripster with the same frame so it was a no-brainer but if I didn't have that and wanted to do a lot of walking I might've taken the Inbred SS. Plan is to use flat pedals and sneakers anyway.

I’ve got slick 32s on at the moment. If it’s dry I could probably go to 35 maybe...? Issue is actually the rear mech.

Mason is meant to only clear 33mm but that seems a bit conservative.

What's the RD issue? (I mean, apart from it being SRAM, of course)

Issue is actually the rear mech.

Solution: fixie

I’ve not fully tested it but it appears to be within the plain of the chain stay.
Which indeed might be because it’s SRAM (the battery) but could suffer same issue with Di housing

Cannondale Slate

It's a cool bike, but not a very good one. Someone who's tried one for 30 seconds will come shortly to say it's "so much fun", which is at best debatable, but the handling is really not great. Fast though.

That'll never catch on...

I don't understand. Or do you mean the FD tyre clearance?

Sorry yeah front

Yeah my Di2 clears the 35 about the same amount as the frame. If the FD is the limiter you could run 1x spits or use a cable FD with less sizeable 'body' to get you extra millz clearance. Or the obvious solution... NEW BIKE TIME! (oh, we're not meant to be consuming so much so perhaps we should stop joking about new bikes... but still n+1 ftw)

New to me second hand is the answer then...? But not s slate it seems

Yeah, that would work. Like I seem to have a constant supply of Kinesii... I just have to keep getting run over or breaking them JRA and I get a new one every 10-12 months.
There's some Tripster frames on ebay that should go pretty cheap. Big clearances.

There is one for sale https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/339332/#comment14928984 if you change your mind. The one sided fork things scares me but thought it was worth a mention!

Thanks, I got excited by that the other day but it's way too small and I think its the rigid fork version

We were thinking of doing this on the tandem, it’s our favourite part of the world.

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it's more road/gravel than mountain bike...