Roll C:1 City

I bought this bike… I’m not really sure when. Roll still had a store on Lane Ave in Upper Arlington, they still had a shop in Chicago. The best I can pinpoint is sometimes after 2016 (I still had my Kona Jake then) and no later than October 2018. Roll has since not become a bicycle company anymore so it’s hard to say.

I’ve owned a lot of bikes. The Roll City served me really well, completely stock at least until 2023. The only change I made on it at somepoint in 2023 is swapping out the stock 700x35 tires with 700x28 gatorskins.

It’s really hard to describe how great the Roll City is. It is very simple. It has 10 speeds, no front derailleur and mechanical disc brakes so it’s nothing really special. It’s solid in a way you don’t think about. It’s comfortable. It doesn’t have great gears for going fast, it doesn’t have super hill climbing ones. It has gears for making your way around suburbia.

It was so solid and so invisible and just such a great bike. It has since become my son’s for the most part and that brings me to the next bike, the Roll Adventure A1:R.

The problem I had with the city bike in the end was that it wasn’t great for the 50 mile daily trips I was taking or touring. I really wanted drop bars and a retrofit was going to be expensive.

Roll Adventure A:1R

So I went back to Roll and looked at their touring / adventure options and came across the Adventure A:1R.

The “Adventure” configuration is pretty much just the City edition with drop bars. By the time I got some time with it, I realized it really wasn’t what I wanted and the store had closed. Thankfully, it’s just a bike and bike modifications are easy or at least easy with help.

The A:1R has the same gearing on an SRAM Apex with a 34T on the front and a 11-36 the back. I would have really appreciated something a bit more conducive to moving and an extra climbing gear in the back, but this will be a problem for future me. The current gear has you spinning out at around 17mph and this is no good. My plan is to put a 40T or 42T on the front and then ascertain the cassette situation since I’ll lose some climbing ability, which is generally not a huge problem in Central Ohio.

Here’s the current rundown of my configuration:

Frame

Medium, Aluminum

Drivetrain

1x10 SRAM Apex

Front Chainring

34T

Rear Cassette

11-36T

Brakes

Mechanical Disc

Wheel Size

700c

Tires

700x35c Panaracer GravelKing SS+

Saddle

Bontrager Aeolus Comp (155mm)

Pedals

Crankbrothers Stamp 1 Gen 2 Large

Storage, etc: