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What is a "Gravel" bike really ?

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Andre Jute:
All right, you guys, I give over. You've all eaten more floaters in more Australian (and African! and British!) cities than me. I admit, I ate only a bite of the disgusting thing in Melbourne.

Out for a ride on my gravel bike, because The Crane, having belatedly heard that it is a gravel bike, now insists that for its twelfth birthday I show it some actual gravel -- which will be difficult because even the smallest lane around here is decades-old blacktop. Maybe I can find some loose gravel on top of tarmacadam repairs.

Digging down into the topic "What is a "Gravel" bike really ?" it occurs to me that defining the thing negatively, it surely isn't a bike on which irreplaceable historic coachwork* can be chipped by flying gravel, or any steel bike for that matter, especially these days when manufacturers misled by environmental propaganda cover even steel bikes with soft water-based paints. By extension then, a gravel bike is best made of some corrosion-resisting material: aluminium, titanium, carbon fibre (and I'm not so sure about any resin/fibre composite because it is brittle and small pointed impacts can crack it).

* See the last three pages of the photo essay at http://coolmainpress.com/AndreJute'sUtopiaKranich.pdf

jimi84:
thankyou so much guys, I have read all the discussion of gravel and road bikes here.
I kinda hit the wall contemplating which type of bike to buy. So will need your views on this.
Maybe I share with you guys my cycling habits.
I do mostly PCN/pavement cycling (~90%) and sometimes road (~10% of the time)
Most of the time I go around 20-40km on east coast PCN on rented bikes.So I have been looking for hybrid bikes. Another reason is from what I read here, hybrid bikes hit a higher speed than mtb (i'm looking to do longer distance in the future)

So far I have short listed 2 bikes that are within my budget and looks good on the spec. In fact on the verge of buying this weekend.
1) Diamondback Insight 2
2) Polygon Helios F300 (the shop told me its hybrid? seems like flat bar road bike)

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