On dirt, the slightly slower steering feels great at speed, helping the tires keep purchase on washboards and rocky sections. So handling tends to the more stable side it feels slow to turn in on paved descents, but manageably so. The geometry is a kind of broadly written cyclocross-ish chart, with similar head-tube angles and trail, but leggy 45cm chainstays that push the total wheelbase out a good three centimeters more than Van Dessel’s cyclocross race-focused Aloominator. The WTF seems, in every respect but one, ideally made to take you there. West of Boulder, some of the paved roads disappear gradually: first to dirt, then unimproved fire-escape routes and, finally, down to whispers of doubletrack through alpine meadows and glens. But the bike really lives for unpaved exploration. But it’s more spirited than I anticipated, and the gigantic tire volume helps the bike soak up almost any imperfection on a paved road and even limits the buzz from the tire knobs. Shod with 700x40mm WTB Nanoraptor tires, the WTF rolls somewhat slowly on pavement, as you’d expect. RELATED: The Best Adventure Bikes of 2016 The build kit Van Dessel picked for our tester is a straight-ahead adventure bike, with a full Shimano Ultegra 11-speed drivetrain and 685 hydraulic disc brakes, with a wheelset upgrade to Mavic’s rugged Ksyrium Allroads, is $3,449-not chump change by any stretch, but neither is it ridiculous. Joe LindseyĪ ride on the WTF offers a similarly endless horizon of options. The WTF can be built any number of ways, like this smart-looking 1x11 commuter build with swept-back flat bars, fenders, and racks. The WTF, says Bull, is the descendant of the dear old CRB, which was beloved for its ruggedness and versatility. Van Dessel today is best known for no-nonsense race bikes, but the brand got its start with city bikes and an ahead-of-its-time all-road adventure bike called the Country Road Bob. Many of the most creative and genre-busting bikes we see today originate with smaller brands-the Van Dessels and Surlys and Rivendells-who can take a chance making something that the accountants at Big Bike will nix because unit sales don’t justify the investment. The WTF is the kind of bike that comes closest to fitting that bill. I’ll admit a quixotic fascination with the idea of the One Bike, the quiver-killer that reduces your fleet to one impossibly versatile machine and a few wheelsets. About the only restrictions are that it’s disc-brake only, and won’t take a modern suspension fork (the geometry is not suspension corrected and the steerer tube is 1-1/8-inch rather than tapered).Īll of that is what attracted me. Minimalism: It is all of those things in one bicycle. The WTF, like a 12-bar blues solo, offers seemingly endless riffs. It’s a winter road bike, a commuter, loaded touring rig, gravel/adventure bike, monster crosser, even rigid 29er mountain bike. Here’s a short list of how you can build a WTF: flat or drop bar 2x or 1x drivetrain single-speed or internally geared hub via an oversize bottom bracket shell that accommodates an eccentric chain or belt drive with tires from 700x25mm slicks to 29x2.1 knobbies. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.The Van Dessel’s versatility can be seen in one image: rack and fender eyelets quick release or through-axle wheel compatibility and a split seatstay for belt drives. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice.
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