Recently I came across this opinion piece, and I even read some of it:The accusation? Shimano doesnt care about gravel people:See, we know this because punters are conducting Internet searches for What is best garvel biek? and landing on their listicles:And even though Shimano does in fact have a whole line of gravel stuff its just not enough, becausetheyre dominating the UCI Gravel World Championships anyway?!?Is the conclusion to draw from this really that Shimano doesnt care about gravel? Or is the conclusion to draw that the GRX stuff is for the punters, but that both Shimano and the pros understand that the road stuff works on gravel too? This is an extremely dangerous situation, because if people start figuring out that not everything has to be gravel-specific then the whole house of cards is gonna fall! And happens then? Not to mix metaphors, but the gravy train comes to a halt. No more gravel helmets:No more gravel eyewear:No more gravel socks:Sorry, make that aero gravel socks:Also, no more FAQs on how to install your aero gravel socks on your feet for that matter:I honestly cant believe I just saw How do I put on my socks? in an FAQ, and I think cycling may have officially hit rock-bottom.Wait, no, this is rock-bottom:Sorry, its hard to keep track.But yes, were perilously close to everyone finally figuring out that the word gravel in a cycling context serves to other purpose except to increase SEO. As Ive pointed out before but dont remember where, if you remove the word gravel from pretty much any bike-related marketing it has no effect on the meaning whatsoever. Its like the little nut on your presta valveleave it off and youll never notice:Actually, the bike industry is clearly aware of the danger because you can see theyre slowly trying to replace the word gravel with the word adventure. This is a slight improvement, because sometimes the word adventure is gratuitous, and sometimes its not. For example, its reasonable to say bike adventure because not every ride is an adventure, but its silly to call a bike an adventure bike since any bike is capable of going on an adventure. Its like calling this a musical enjoyment speaker instead of just a speaker:If it were the bike industry thered be a different one for every single genre of music and the only difference between them would be the color.Anyway, hopefully Shimano reads that opinion piece and figures out they can slap a gravel edition sticker on their standard Dura-Ace drivetrain, put some olive drab detailing on it, and charge $1,000 more for it.Speaking of colors, the leaves are full of them:Yes, I had myself a real gravel bike adventure on my gravel adventuring bike this morning:This despite Shimanos utter lack of concern for gravel and adventure and adventure-gravelling:In fact, as you can see, Ive gutted my drivetrain in protest.At one point I also came across these seemingly abandoned wheels and tires:Fuck it, Im going tubeless, someone must have decided.