 Hello my bike loving friends. Today I'm going to talk about the awesome Trek Checkpoint. All right, check it out. My girlfriend and I just rode these beautiful machines all the way across the United States. And one of our main goals was to hit as much dirt as possible. So we rode a lot of rail trails and old country back roads totaling about a thousand miles. So we put these babies to the test. My girlfriend had the awesome carbon SL5 and I had the ALR5. You're probably wondering, is the Trek Checkpoint right for you? Well, I can't answer that but I can tell you why I absolutely love this bike and that might help you on your decision whether or not you should spend a couple thousand dollars plus on a new gravel bike. Let's start at the very beginning. Pulling these bikes out of the box for the very first time was so exciting. New bike day is the best. They look so good straight out of the box especially Ali's bike which is the SL5. It is just so sexy. The paint job is awesome. We didn't make many modifications to the bikes. We added on some rear Bontrager racks so that we could put on some panniers. We chose to go with the Orte Leib back roller plus panniers or panier if you're French. I did change out the tires and I put on some really, really nice Schwablet Marathon Plus Tour tires. I've been on many, many bike tours and these tires are the absolute best and you want to know why they rarely go flat. We rode these things 3,500 miles. Neither of us got one flat tire. What I like about the ALR5 is that you can put on four water bottles which is really key for bike touring. Ali's frame is a little bit smaller so she could only hold three water bottles but I'm a nice guy and I would give her some of my water when she ran out. How you like that? We only had these bikes for a few weeks before we started our tour so we didn't have a whole lot of time to get a feel for them but that was okay because right out of the box they felt very comfortable. Sometimes you need to make modifications to a bike. You need to get a new seat or something. We didn't change any of that and it was perfect. They were so smooth from day one. The biggest selling point for these bikes is that we had essentially zero maintenance to do over a three month bike tour covering 3,500 miles. They were always just ready to go no matter if we got rained on or we got all muddy, clean them off a little bit and they were ready to rock and roll. To me that means a lot because when you're on a bike tour you don't want to deal with having to fix stuff all the time. You want to just rely on your bike that it's going to work that you get on it in the morning and you can be able to ride it for 10 hours. They felt really comfortable. The geometry of a gravel bike is a little bit less aggressive than a road bike so you're up a little bit more. I never had an achy back or anything like that. To me a gravel bike really just means freedom. It opens up so many doors to you whereas when I've done tours in the past on a road bike I can essentially only ride on the roads because dirt roads are just it's just too gnarly for a road bike but these gravel bikes they opened up so many doors for us. We could ride dirt roads and rail trails and mud and everything else and they handled really well which made me so happy because I wasn't just limited to the roads because as you know on a bike tour it gets a little old having traffic fly by you. The problem with riding on highways is your left ear goes numb because it's just cars whizzing by you the whole day like that. You want to get off on those side roads and those rail trails to be away from the traffic and more in tune with nature and that's exactly what these bikes did. We rode these bikes about eight to ten hours a day and we always felt comfortable. Even on the dirt roads where we're bouncing around all day these frames really took the shock quite nicely especially Ali's bike being carbon and you know it didn't beat up our bodies. We would wake up the next morning feeling fresh get back on and ride again and again and again. A lot of people out there in the YouTube world have asked me if they should get the checkpoint or the Trek 920 and I do have the 920 and I've done some tours on the 920. The 920 I would say is specifically for going off-road. I mean if that thing takes full on 29 inch mountain bike tires it has the front rack it can hold a lot more weight. The frame is a lot beefier so if you're looking for something that you just want to go straight bike packing with and never touch pavement I would get the 920 but if you want a little bit more speed or I should say a lot more speed I would go with the checkpoint. But there is some crossover because both bikes can definitely handle dirt and off-road and both bikes can also be pretty fast on pavement. The SL5 is women's specific so let's ask my girlfriend Ali what she thought of the bike. So I'm going to be honest this was my first time being on a gravel bike or even a road bike type thing that fit me correctly. It is slightly different than the men's version. It's got narrower handlebars and it's got a different seat which was incredibly comfortable. It's got this ISO speed, what's it called? ISO speed decoupler. It's got this ISO speed decoupler on the back which absorbs a lot of shock and I found that super sweet for all the gravel that we were on and some of these Forest Service roads were really like rocky and slippery and this bike is smooth as butter. It really does ride really really smooth. Anyway I love the bike. It was perfect for me for this ride and I wouldn't have been on anything else. Now that I'm home from the bike tour, I still love riding this bike. It's a great commuter. I can go grocery shopping with it. It's a great gravel bike. I can take off those panniers that weighed me down all summer and go rage on some of these trails out here in Boulder. I'll definitely use it on future tours. I really really enjoyed riding this bicycle. It was comfortable. It was very fast. It felt safe with all the weight on the back of it and you know what? It looks good and that goes a long way. You want to be on a bike that looks pretty cool. There you have it. The Trek Checkpoint. These are super sweet bikes and I think at $2,000 for this one it's a really good value and this one I think is about $2,800 for the carbon version. That's a pretty good value. You're getting a lot of bike for the money and if you want to see these bikes in action we made an entire series of our ride across the country called Love Cycles. I will link it below and if you have any questions about these bikes that I did not answer in this video write a question down there in the comments and I will get back to you. I'm pretty good at that and you know what? Like and subscribe and tell your friends I make all sorts of fun adventure videos not just about bikes but running and all sorts of other fun stuff. Thank you very much for watching and I hope this helped you on your journey to buy either a checkpoint or a graphic bike because I love them. They are great.