Our garage · Provara's own · 2025
A Triaero Grava for unrushed days
A gravel bike for comfortable rides — Redshift raised bar because hand fatigue beats aero gains on a long day; flat pedals because not every ride is a workout.
Every garage needs the bike you don't have to gear up for. The one you can walk into the kitchen with after the ride, or stop for a sandwich, or pedal at conversation pace down the Burke-Gilman with someone who's having a hard week. This is that bike.
The Triaero Grava is ours, and almost nothing on it is the obvious move. The handlebar is a Redshift raised bar — wider, taller, kinder to the hands than a low drop after the third hour. The wheels are DT Swiss alloy, not carbon, because they're the kind of wheelset you don't think about for ten years. The pedals are flat, on purpose, because plenty of rides go better in normal shoes.
The groupset is SRAM Force XPLR D1 — the older 12-speed XPLR, not the new 13-speed. Two reasons. One, the shift quality on gravel is still excellent, and on a bike designed around unhurried days the half-speed-tier downgrade is irrelevant. Two, the price difference frees up the wheels, the bar, the saddle — choices you actually feel.
Building this one was a useful exercise in restraint. The default move for someone who imports exotic kit for a living is to keep speccing up. This bike is the one where we stopped each time and asked: would the rider feel that, or would they just feel the price?
The build
| Frame | Triaero Grava — gloss teal carbon, gravel geometry |
|---|---|
| Groupset | SRAM Force XPLR D1 — wireless, 12-speed (the older XPLR, on purpose) |
| Wheels | DT Swiss alloy gravel wheelset — the kind you don't think about |
| Cockpit | Redshift raised handlebar — every-day hand comfort over aero gains |
| Pedals | Flat — by choice, not compromise |
| Tires | Tan-wall gravel tubeless |
| Use case | Coffee-stop rides, neighborhood loops, gravel that doesn't need to be raced |
What we'd change next time
- We'd add bento-box mounts on the top tube for half-day rides. The Redshift bar handles a small bar bag fine but a top-tube mount is cleaner.
- We'd consider a slightly shorter stem (-10 mm) to bring the raised bar even further into the comfort zone — the current one is biased toward neutral.
Want one like it?
Spec yours in the configurator — we'll propose a final build to approve before anything's ordered. Orders open July 2026.