We love seeing dropper posts in unusual places. It's long been our belief that they can provide relief to more than just Enduro and Trail mountain bike riders. Which is why we love our 27.2 posts, they provide an option for the Cross Country racer all the way to the gravel grinder.
Recently the team at Breadwinner Cycles shared a build of their all new G-Road model - a versatile drop bar beast designed for all day mixed terrain adventures - featuring our Rainier IR 27.2 dropper post. The G-Road is the bike brand's 10th model in their line up, and fits that perfect niche - "a road bike for mountain bikers; a mountain bike for roadies."
We would define these custom steel bikes as drool worthy. The brand is fueled by Tony Pereira and Ira Ryan, who were independently building bikes for a decade before coming together to form the Portland based company they run today. At Breadwinner, each of the bikes they build are still a collaboration between the two founders. We encourage you to check out their lineup here.
If your eyes have been on the bike industry for the past few years, you've noticed these gravel grinders and adventure drop bar bikes carving out a new category in the market. With more and more featuring the option of internal routing for a dropper, we get questions as to why these type of bikes can benefit from a dropper post.
First off, everyone going downhill can enjoy the clearance a dropper affords you. Just changing your body position to get a little more crouched can help tremendously, especially when road conditions aren't perfect. This alone is a good reason to equip a bike with a dropper post, we think confidence going downhill just increases the fun factor. We've also found having your seat in the dropped position makes mounting the bike less of a hassle when it's loaded up with panniers full of loot for a good bike packing trip (or even your commuting gear).
Whatever your reason, we're stoked to see droppers becoming more universally accepted outside of just trail bikes and hats off to the crew at Breadwinner for pushing the envelope!