This is a regular ‘feature’ on the Internet BOB. So having prepared this on my Craft writing space, I thought I would share it here also.

Commuter/tourer. Main ride to work, also main machine for light or credit-card touring. 1994 Shogun Alpine GT, converted to 650B. Fork by Joe Cosgrove. Downtube logo says ‘Sholto’ in memory of a friend. Love this bike and ride it just about every work day.

Road bike. Frezoni made by Joe Cosgrove, a framebuilder who lives about 2 km from me in Brisbane Australia. Joe’s primarily known for doing the paintwork on Llewellyn bikes.

Cyclocross/gravel bike. 2011 Cannondale CAAD-X. Just a couple of years before cyclocross bikes switched to discs. I now run a 1x setup, and it has mini-V brakes rather than cantis.

Bikepacking bike. Based on a 2011 Specialized Carve aluminium frame. Currently has a Trifox carbon fork. Fantastic device for long steady days on a rail trail or a back road through the bush.

Mountain bike. 2016 Kona Precept. 27.5 wheels, dual suspension. Cos singletrack is the best fun.

Folding bike. Brompton. Cos every home needs a Brompton.

Fiona on a steel bike, me on an aluminium bike. Loaded up and trucking and having the time of our lives.

I read plenty of stuff about bikes, both online and in magazines. Have done so for decades.

And one thing that I read often (so often!) in discussions and comparisons of bikes is that there is a discernable difference between bikes based on the material the frame is made from.

And this mostly is expressed as a diss for aluminium as a frame material.

Australian Geographic has just released a ‘guide to bikepacking’, which says the following, inter alia: " Aluminium is light, and it is cheap, but you will cop a jarring ride".

Can I get some science to go with this unsubstantiated opinion?

Specifically some science that shows that in a system which includes pneumatic tyres with up to 10 mm of “give” that a rider can tell the difference between the so-called “ride quality” of a metal (steel, titanium or aluminium) or carbon fibre frame.

I currently own six bikes. There is a road bike (Frezoni custom steel), a cyclocross bike (Cannondale CAAD-X), a touring bike (Shogun Alpine GT), a hardtail mountain bike (Specialized Carve), a folding bike (Brompton), and a commuter e-bike (built it myself, but the frame is a old Cecil Walker steel touring frame).

Four of my bikes have steel frames, and two have aluminium frames. In the past I have also owned titanium and carbon fibre framed bikes.

Here are some things which make a difference to how a bike rides:

• Weight (of you and the bike together)
• Frame geometry and how the bike fits you
• Suspension
• Tyres.
• How you feel about life at the time.

Here are the things which have no discernable effect on how a bike rides:

• Colour
• Frame material.

My favourite and most memorable rides are multi-day touring rides, hopefully somewhere scenic and interesting. And from the list above, I will take either the hardtail mountain bike or the touring/commuting bike for those multi-day rides.

One is steel, the supposed gold standard for “ride quality”. The other is aluminium, which Australian Geographic thinks is “jarring”.

I take the hardtail aluminium mountain bike if I think the route will be rough or gnarly.

And the reason is simple: the mtb has bigger tyres. About 55-60 mm wide, compared with 48 mm wide for the biggest tyre which fits the touring bike.

That is all there is to it. The steel touring bike, which is my favourite machine, which I have ridden 14,000 km on in the last four years (since I started using Strava), isn’t the right bike for rougher roads. The bike with the big tyres is.

So why am I so hot under the collar about this issue?

I dislike poor advice, and advice which focusses on the wrong things.

There are plenty of aspects of bike design and construction which are important differentiators that you can look at when buying a bike, and I’ve listed some of them above. Price might also be a factor for most of us, also longevity.

Those authors who push the idea that aluminium has a harsh ride in comparison to steel or titanium might be actually be doing bike buyers a favour.

If an aluminium-framed bike is cheaper and lighter than a steel one (and surely much cheaper than carbon-fibre or titanium), then just buy it. The ride quality you experience will be based on how the total bike fits you, and how the tyres you select work on the road/trail surfaces you ride on.

What won’t be a factor in ride quality? The aluminium. Cos physics.

Don’t believe me? Reckon you can tell the difference between bikes purely on frame material? Email andrew.demack@gmail.com and let’s set up a test.

See also:

• Silca’s Josh Poertner conducted blind tests. He found: “t when riders didn’t know what they ‘should’ feel, they really struggled to find differences in stiffness, compliance and weight between frames or wheels”

• Rob English’s column on the Escape Collective, ‘the myth of vertical compliance’.

In a few short weeks, sometime after EkkaCross, I’m going to go for a bike tour along the Mawson Trail. Yes, I am very much looking forward to it.

It’s a two-week tour on gravel roads and trails, and my friends and I will cover something just a little short of 1000km in those two weeks. From the Flinders Range through the South Australian outback to Barossa Valley vineyards, and finishing with a ride down from the Adelaide Hills into the South Australian capital.

The Mawson Trail is not your first bike tour. It helps to have some experience going into a two-week ride.

But for those people who see photos on Facebook or Instagram from my little adventures and wonder “could I do that?”, let me tell you that there’s nothing special about me, and I’m not any sort of athlete. I am a portly middle-aged man.

So, could you go bike touring? (or as the kids call it these days, “bikepacking”?)

Of course you could. The hardest part is deciding to go.

And here are some rides that I think are easy starter trips. You could do these rides with full camping kit, or just staying in pubs or motels.

Short tours around SEQ

• Stradbroke Island (Minjerribah)
• Darling Downs long weekend
• Stanthorpe base camp

Longer tours (which are still pretty easy)

• Central West Cycle Trail (NSW)
• New England Cycle Trail
• Orange 360 (NSW)
• Kilkivan to Ipswich on Queensland’s rail trails.

Longer tours which are slightly harder

• Stanthorpe to Ipswich
• The Great Queensland Rail Trail Adventure.
• The Munda Biddi Trail.
• The Mawson Trail

I shall put up a page describing each tour, so when the link goes live, there will be a description of each tour, including logistical challenges that need to be met, and a link to my Airtable database for each tour, with route plan and accommodation plan.

Hope you find this useful! Let me know if you go on any of these trips!

Road bikes and cyclocross bikes and gravel bikes and all-road bikes all come with drop bars.

But most riders of these bikes that I see out and about don’t take advantage of the benefits that drop bars offer.

I ride on the road with a couple of different bunches. And I race cyclocross at Qld CX events. And I ride around Brisbane and SEQ a lot. And I would say 90-95 percent of riders I see almost never use the drops.

There are two major benefits of riding in the drops:

• more aerodynamic position than on the hoods
• better control when braking and descending

And there’s one reason that most bike riders don’t use the drops:

• their sub-optimal bike setup means that its not comfortable

So what do you get out of being able to use the drops as an option when riding road or cyclocross or gravel?

Well, firstly it’s an option. I don’t ever spend a whole ride, or even a whole race, in the drops. Hands on the hoods, elbows relaxed and bent, is still the most common position for me when on either the road bike or the cyclocross (CX) bike.

But there are two situations when I always move to the drops, and a third when there is also benefit to being down there.

The first situation is descending, whether on bitumen or gravel.

Before I go any further, I have to credit Anthony Mortimore as the person who explained these principles to me in a comprehensive and convincing way. He runs an excellent weekend course on climbing and descending on the road bike. If you get to the end of this piece and want to put some of these ideas into action, do Anthony’s course (although it seems these days that you might have to go to New Zealand to do it). It will make you a better, safer, faster rider.

So, when descending on a road bike or CX bike, you want to be in a position that gives you the best control for braking and the most even or centred weight distribution. Being in the drops (assuming that your bike fit is correct) gives you a position on the bike that is low and centred (fore & aft), and also gives a grip on the handlebars that is able to withstand unexpected impacts from the road surface.

If you descend with your hands on the brake hoods, as many riders do, a sudden hit to the bike from a pothole or bump in the road has the potential to weaken your grip or even dislodge it altogether. If you’re on the drops, the force of the same impact pushes your hands harder into the bars, rather than off them.

The second advantage when descending in the drops is in braking force. If you are in the drops, you can brace your weight through your arms against the bars, and get your weight nice and low when you are braking. Doing the same manoeuvre from the hoods again puts you at risk of your grip weakening, and your hands sliding forward off the bars.

The third advantage of this position when descending is that is gives you the best way of keeping your weight pushing down through your outside pedal, thus giving you the best possible traction, the best grip on the road.

The second situation to be on the drops is when riding single track trails.

This is probably only applicable to cyclocross or gravel bikes. I don’t think many people are taking to the trails in Gap Creek or Daisy Hill on their road bikes with 25mm tyres.

But all of the advantages that being in the drops gives you when descending, are ramped up to the max when riding single track. For me, it is mostly about leverage to get the maximum braking power. Riding a cyclocross bike on single track is already very challenging. Riding it on the hoods is just asking for a crash.

I’ve ridden my cyclocross bike on single track at Gap Creek, Daisy Hill and Underwood trails. And my experience of doing so merely emphasises to me that being in the drops is the position which gives the greatest level of control over your bike.

And the third situation when I like to be on the drops is when riding in the road bunch on a windy day.

Once again, there are situations in group riding where you want to be prepared for all eventualities, and also be as aero as possible. And that’s what being in the drops gives you, if your position is correctly set up.

On a windy day the bunch tends to be blown around a bit, and positioning can be tricky. In most non-racing situations, the bunch should not set up in an echelon, because the echelon increases your width in the lane, and will appear from behind as through the bunch is much more than two-abreast.

And so maintaining position in a cross-wind or a headwind in a two-abreast inline bunch requires greater concentration and your best ability to respond to a changing situation. As always, the solution to that is to be in the drops!

To sum it all up: Katie f’n Compton rides in the drops. You could learn heaps from Katie f’n Compton.