In Praise Of The Carver All Roads

I’ve been an avid cyclist for the last thirty-eight years. The years have passed by, and I just reached my sixty-fifth year of existence, and retirement too.

These days, I average around 1600 miles of riding a year, offset with hiking.

I’ve been mountain biking non-stop since I bought my first Specialized Rock Hopper Sport way back in 1989. I learned mountain biking by riding, and falling down a lot. This was on old school, single track, cross-country stuff. I’ve gotten quite good at falling down over the years. I raced a bunch of times in Sport class (I was a horrible mountain bike racer) and managed a few podiums in off-road duathlons. I love mountain biking.

I have a good friend who lives nearby, a New Jersey native like myself, and we ride our mountain bikes year around here in SC. Rarely a week goes by that we don’t ride at least once if not two to three times. These days, I’m riding a Yeti ASR Turq, which is a great bike. We still hit the single track and try to ride the slightly more technical (for SC) stuff whenever we can.  Our rides range from 8 to 15 miles, depending on the day and temperature. I’ve never had great mountain bike skills, but my mid-intermediate level still lets me have fun out there.

I still road ride on my Bianchi Specialissima. I have a 12 mile ride from my front door that I often do during the worst of the summer heat. I try to squeeze in longer routes along the way.  My days of 50+ have passed me by, and now I favor the 30 to 40 mile distances. Like many others, I find the road less appealing with each passing year. Poor roads, ever growing vehicle size, inattentive drivers, etc., make road rides less fun than they used to be. I do still love the 1:1 feeling of exertion and speed that you only get on a only a road bike.

The park near where I lived through the 2000s, Pocahontas State Park in Virginia, in addition to having twelve miles of single track I helped build, had fifty miles of fire roads, so I’ve had a fire road-friendly bike going back so far it was called a “cross-bike”! It was perfect for training for the road, and perfect for when the trails were too wet or frozen to ride.

When living near Richmond, we had relatives north of Baltimore in MD. So I’d always toss in my cross-bike and hit the Heritage Rail Trail for some riding while my wife did the family thing.  I’ve got to admit it: I fell in love with rail-trails. 12.5 miles of 3% grade up, 12.5 miles of 3% grade down, turn around, 12.5 miles of 3% grade up and just about the time you were getting tired you had 12.5 downhill miles of balls-to-the-wall-big-ring fun riding out. Oh, what a blast!

Over the years, I think I’ve had six or seven different cross-bikes/gravel bikes. I’d include a few of them among my favorite rides of all time. I’ve sort of lost count of the number of rail-trails I’ve ridden: MD, PA, GA, AL, WV, NY, VT and OH, to name a few states. We have even done a few overnight adventures, staying in hotels.

We are fortunate enough to have a National Forest an easy hour’s drive away from home. The forest has somewhere around 100 miles of mixed gravel - paved road, where traffic is unheard of. This is real gravel riding, not well-maintained dirt roads, like you have up north. When Carolina clay becomes Carolina mud, big chunky gravel is the go-to fix. I love it! Over the last five years, I have gone from a traditional gravel bike, a Giant Revolt, to a front suspension model, a Specialized Diverge Sport, to something different, the Carver All-Roads.

For anyone who has not experienced it, running front suspension on a gravel bike doesn’t do what you might think. It simply makes the front end less sketchy. I must admit I had hoped it might take some of the strain off my rather old neck and shoulders, but it didn’t.

As it so often happens, the day I retired was the day I was offered one of those over-the-top consulting opportunities. That led me to living in CA for seven weeks early this year. Now, I wasn’t about to go seven weeks without riding, so I hit a local shop and grabbed a Trek FX-3 hybrid.  I was blown away by how much I enjoyed riding that bike. The biggest differences?  Nearly eliminating my neck and shoulder pain! And, the upright riding position feels so much more stable and easy to control. Look, I’ve been riding for thirty-eight years and my on-road bike handling skills are really quite good. After riding a hybrid style, I found I greatly prefer the position over a drop-bar gravel bike.

As you may have noticed, my home stable lends itself to the higher end. That led me to revisiting an idea had I had kicked around in the past: Does anyone make a really high-end, lightweight, hybrid? Well, it turns out that someone does - Carver!

While in CA, I began emailing back and forth with Forrest at Bike Man about a build. I explained what I wanted, and, since I saw it as my retirement present to myself, what my rather generous budget was. My build was completed in about a month, and with some convivial parts swapping, I couldn’t be happier with it.*

* I found the Jones H bars and the Cane Creek ee-Silk suspension stem not to my liking and switched to a conventional flat bar and carbon stem. If I should ever need more front suspension I would just run a larger tire.

Spring has arrived here in SC, so we transition from mountain bikes to gravel rides. I’ve been riding my All-Roads, and can’t express how impressed I am with it. I wouldn’t trade it back for a drop bar gravel bike for anything you might offer. The more upright position feels so much more in control on the rough stuff, and does alleviate most of my neck and shoulder discomfort.  Yeah, okay, it isn’t as sexy as a gravel bike, but I’m old enough now that I don’t care any more! Oh, and it is also wicked fast.

Funny, but it really has just one, single, solitary, sole, lone, weakness, and that is rider aerodynamics. The upright riding position does create quite a bit of drag when paved road riding or rolling down hill. My friend (roughly same weight, etc.) on his drop-bar gravel bike will pass me by every time. That is it! If you lie on the bars you can overcome the drag, but it is really so little to give up to gain so much.

I have the All-Roads set up for 20+ mile mixed gravel-paved rides and rail-trails. I’m setup tubeless. As shown, I run a TailFin 1.1 liter top-tube bag which is perfect for a car key, phone, wallet and snack bar. A TailFin tool pouch for necessities. And two Tacx water bottle holders. Where I have positioned the bags I’m running the Wolf Tooth water bottle mount repositioning slides for better access. They allow dropping the seat tube water bottle down and the top tube bag back to make room for my headset-mounted Garmin. This is a little snug on the man-bits when straddling the bike but room enough.

Bike weight, with bags mounted, is just an amazing 21 pounds 14 ounces.

As the saying goes, “you live and learn,” and gravel riding and unpaved rail-trails, although a true love, were becoming more difficult with the passing years. I am so happy I tried a hybrid, and so happy that Carver makes a high-end version. So, before you start thinking about stopping riding, or, yuck getting an e-bike, I’d encourage you to try a hybrid style bike, and I highly recommend the Carver All Roads.

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