Flat Bar Parlee Taos

This week we're featuring a Parlee Taos with a unique paint job and a flat bar treatment.

This Taos is purpose built for cruising around town in speed and style and is also capable of tackling all the technical trails that a rider could throw at it.  We used all the best components to make this bike as simple and as fun as a bike can get.  The Sram RED XPLR 1x13 speed electronic group has an excellent gear range for doing anything from steep climbs to fast descents and is controlled by an AXS Pod with two thumb actuated buttons for the most intuitive shifting experience possible.

The Parlee Taos frame weighs ~940 grams in a size medium, so it's one of the lightest and most capable gravel platforms on the market.  Its progressive geometry with a relatively steep seat tube and slack head tube is designed to handle a range of terrain but is also perfect for stomping the pavement when set up with some light and fast rolling tires.  The Schwalbe G-One Speed tires are some of the smoothest tires you could ever ride and they have very low rolling resistance as well.  When paired with the Zipp 303 XPLR SW wheelset with an internal rim width of 32mm, the tire volume is enough to create the most supple ride quality you can get.

Parlee designed this bike with versatility in mind, so the fork has flip chips and is also suspension corrected.  This means that a rider can alter the geo/trail on the fly with a quick axle reconfiguration or even replace the fork with a suspension fork without compromising the handling of the bike.

In a world of ever-increasing cockpit configurations, we wanted to use as many Parlee components as we could, so we opted for the Parlee stem, which has a 35mm handlebar diameter making it perfect for both Parlee road and various MTB handlebars.  In order to keep the bike comfortable yet snappy for the rider, we opted for a Whisky riser handlebar with only 10mm of rise.

All told this bike weighs in at ~18lbs and the flat bars lend enough leverage to the front end for very responsive acceleration.  At the same time, the long wheelbase doesn't seem to detract from the snappy acceleration and this thing feels stable in all conditions.

Bikes don't get much better than this for ultimate versatility, comfort and just plain fun.