I actually didn’t see this one coming, and I certainly didn’t think that I’d be buying a new gravel bike this year, but here we are, learning once again that anything can happen at any time.

This is a Cinelli Nemo Tig gravel bike, hopefully made with care in Milan, using Columbus Spirit HSS triple thickness steel tubes. The Cinelli was a long time coming, but I was always going to be buying the road version of the Nemo.

My thinking was that I wanted to get a steel bike so I could remember what it felt like (and to confirm that steel is, indeed, real), but a steel ‘performance’ bike never sat well with me considering I have two carbon road bikes and one (the Colnago) that could be dropped into the ‘superbike’ category.

While all this was stewing in my brain, two of my friends were telling me that I needed to get a gravel bike. I resisted till it hit me that I could tick a few boxes by doing so:

• I’d get my steel bike
• My long-time dream of owning a 1x could be fulfilled
• I could try disk brakes without putting them on my road bike
• And obviously, I could go out wearing plaid without feeling insecure. Win win all around!

I’m dealing directly with Cinelli and they’ve kindly agreed to sell directly to our company, making this move not very onerous financially, which helps a lot. Oh, and the bike will be custom made, although this is all done from a chart I had to fill out instead of going over to Milan to get sized up (Covid rules).

I suppose the next question is, what moustache style will I be sporting? I’m partial to the ‘chevron’ at the moment.