Which bike for the GDMBR?

Broken Road

While it’s perfectly possible to complete the GDMBR on a gravel bike with no front fork suspension and a conventional derallieur and chain set up, I am happy to trade weight for a little more comfort, and a little less worry about breaking delicate components; both mine and the bikes’!

Thus the titanium bike, suspension fork, and Pinion gearbox matched with a Gates carbon belt. I’ve always enjoyed Ryan Van Duzer‘s videos and considered the Priority 600ADX, but the shipping and duty was extreme, and it was also good to be able to support a British bike manufacturer and I’ve seen good things from Alpkit and Sonder.

Shout out to Matt Ryder too, who not only created a super video series on bikepacking the GDMBR, he’s a brit that also selected this bike, and we share many gear choices.

Weight:

Being titanium, it’s supposed to be a little lighter and more compliant than aluminium or steel, yet (especially with the suspension fork) it’s way, way heavier than a carbon bike, even before I start adding racks, bags and kit.

Gears:

The pinion gearbox provides 600% of range so very well suited to the trip. It’s sealed and maintenance free. Hurrah! I thought the twist-grip gearchange would be easy and fun, but my experience was that it was hard to operate and gave me blisters.

Adding the (eye-wateringly expensive) Instinctiv Shiftbox made things better, yet again I found the two-lever change very hard to operate, and almost impossible with my sausage fingers, when wearing gloves and using chunky handlebar grips.

The solution has been to repurpose two dropper-post remotes; downshift on the left, and upshift on the right, a-la SRAM. Hope it’s rugged enough.