What's a Greenbelt Bike?

Prior to unveiling Frankenbike 3.0, I thought it was time to address what's obviously been on your mind, namely what's a Greenbelt Bike?

I'll keep this relatively short, I think: While I'm not totally married to this position, I think that a 90's hard-tail mountain bike, converted to a gravel bike with drop bars is the ideal bike for riding the NCC Greenbelt Trails in Ottawa.

This includes gravel along the River and wide dirt paths in places like Mer Bleue, Pine Grove, Pinhey Forest, Bruce Pit, Arlington Woods, Stoney Swamp and Shirley's Bay. There's bike paths connecting all of these, as well as hydro roads, City greenspaces as well as various campuses (Hospitals, Universities and Federal Buildings).

I think this sort of terrain is perfect for a hardtail to urban, gravel conversion.

​I'm not alone as it turns out, there's a whole world of drop bar conversions happening out there. My favourite example of this is a Facebook group called "Drops Bars and Knobby Tires", which is an entire inventory of people selling MTB-to-Gravel bike conversions like Frankenbike. 

I could equally argue a Cyclocross bike is even better owing to the larger wheel diameter being faster-rolling, and in particular for avoiding pedal strikes, but then I think the fatter tires on the hardtail MTB are in fact better in general for rocks and roots. 

I don't own a CX or modern Gravel bike, so I don't know what I don't know. I think if I was to buy a new gravel bike, I'd want the option to go the 650b wheel route, in order to still fit really big tires. Point being the 26" wheels on Frankenbike don't roll all that fast, but then again the point here is not to go all that fast. It's the ride quality of low tire pressure that I seem to be most intrigued with. 

I think that there's an optimal balance of finding the right level of comfort for riding on mixed terrain- including single-track, along with a lot of bike paths that connect the more groomed Greenbelt Trails- for distances up to 150km. 

In fairness, I have ridden both the Ride of the Damned and the Tour of Battenkill on road bikes with 26mm-28mm tires and that was just fine. I just don't think that tire size range allows you to maximize all of the fun on offer on some of the less obvious terrain we are highlighting on the site. 

With a global shortage of bikes, and opportunities for leisure activities curtailed by the pandemic, why not haul out the old bike in your shed and optimize it for what's right outside your front door? 

In the coming update on Frankenbike, I'll explain how I did just that. Sites like the Ottawa Bicycle Classifieds Facebook page are a great source of parts, and I've detailed a lot of my own research on sources for parts on Howie's Interweb Time-Waster.