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Andrew Onermaa: Ozark Gravel Cyclist community Jun 01, 2021

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This week we sit down with Andrew Onermaa, founder of Ozark Gravel Cyclist. Andrew is a passionate gravel cyclist and bikepacker who has channeled energy and love into creating a hub for Arkansas gravel cyclists. Ozark Gravel Cyclists Web / Instagram Join The Ridership Support the Podcast Automated Transcription, excuse the typos. [00:00:00]Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Andrew, welcome to the show. [00:00:02] Andrew Onermaa: [00:00:02] Hey, thanks for having me, Craig, [00:00:03] Craig Dalton: [00:00:03] super excited to learn more about your project. It was our gravel cycling, but the more I've talked to you on offline, the more I want to hear about your personal journey to the bike and all the things you've been doing. [00:00:15] So why don't we start off by just a little bit of your background. As an athlete and what led you to gravel cycling? [00:00:21]Andrew Onermaa: [00:00:21] That's a great question. So the journey of the bicycle has definitely evolved a lot in the last decade. So I realized, or did riding bikes in college as a means of transportation. My vehicle died on me. [00:00:36] Okay. I can't buy another car. What are we going to do? So what's the cheapest bike you can possibly find. It's going to be a bike that has. One gear and has nothing extra on it. So got a six gear bike, cause I was starting to hear about it. I was cool. This is in 2011, 2012, and I started really getting addicted to just the motion of moving through the landscape and interacting with vehicles and people and pedestrians. [00:01:09] And I started delivering sandwiches for Jimmy John's in the middle of the night, I'd be doing a graveyard shift of 10:00 PM til three or four in the morning and just doing it all by bike. And I didn't have navigation on my phone, so I'd be printing up stuff in the shop, turn by turn navigation and using [00:01:30] that to deliver sandwiches. [00:01:32] And I ended up just spending a lot of years traveling. Out west always had a fixed gear bike. It'd be my fun way to explore, but I'd still be pursuing other things. Climbing backpacking, mountaineering skiing, really just fully embracing the outdoors. But the bike was always, there is more of just a really fun way to explore in a way to shake things up. [00:01:54] And it. Like within the last two, three years, I finally got my hands on a road bike with multiple gears brakes, and it opened up a whole new world of cycling to me that I'd never seen. I can suddenly do much, much bigger Hills. I was living in salt lake at the time I was doing these canyon passes, seeing the landscape from essentially mountaintops. [00:02:18] And I was just blown away by how much you could see in an afternoon, they didn't even have to be a full day. And so that just fully consumed me. I was doing a lot of where I would bag multiple peaks in a day via foot. And I was like, man, I can apply this to the bike instead. Let's like, how many high points can I hit? [00:02:40] And so that really opened my eyes to how much distance you can travel on the bike. And then. I started looking over and what about these dirt roads that I'm seeing? I'm getting tired of all these cars living by like ruining the vibe per se. Like I'm out in nature and [00:03:00] all of a sudden you have 20 cars blow by and one person has to roll down their window and yell something or whatever. [00:03:06] And so I started dabbling into some dirt, but I wasn't confident with the skinny tires. So I went west. On the other side of the salt lake or it's flat. And that was my introduction to gravel. It was just this big open space with these random gravel roads, no information, no signage. And I would just try and I go for awhile for as long as I felt comfortable. [00:03:31] Yeah. And then I would turn around and come back and just cross my fingers for whatever reason I was thinking now that I'm on gravel. My bike's gonna explode. Everything's gonna go wrong. And I kept having rise where it's whoa, that was actually really peaceful and enjoyable. And I was by myself the whole time. [00:03:49] And that's, I started honing in on that aspect of this is something different. This is combining a lot of years of playing outdoors and this love of the bicycle. And so that's the quick summary of bikes. Over the last, almost decade until I moved back to Arkansas and got a proper gravel bike, my first gravel bike, and it's been a little over a year having a bike that's designed for this style of riding and it's just been phenomenal. [00:04:22] And just the more I've done it, the more I've just, I don't know, absorbed as much as possible as far as learning. [00:04:30] And getting faster. [00:04:33] Craig Dalton: [00:04:33] That's a super cool journey to the bike. I, I remember in connecting with the originally, when you were talking about your passion for mountaineering and climbing and hiking it's, as you came to it from a road biking perspective, it's pretty natural that you started to see those same peaks you'd hike and say, why don't I go up a dirt road rather than the paved roads. [00:04:53] It's really cool to hear that store, that backstory about how you got into gravel cycling. [00:04:58] Andrew Onermaa: [00:04:58] Absolutely. And a lot of the hesitation initially was I felt like it was going to calm, complicate things of being out in nature in that environment. Since I always did things by foot or by skis, I, it felt very minimal. [00:05:13] And I thought, oh, now that I bring a bike, I'm going to have to bring tools in case it breaks down, I'm going to have to bring bags to carry things and it's going to have to attach the bike. So a lot of the hesitation was more so thinking is going to complicated all and take away from the joy. But it turns out and you can just cover so much more ground. [00:05:31] And for the most part things work out. So you're not getting out there and just getting flats all the time and derailers falling off or anything like that. It's, you're just doing what you love and you're doing it in a really cool. Environment. [00:05:45] Craig Dalton: [00:05:45] Yeah. You came into the sport at the perfect time, because a lot of the kinks had been worked out of the system on the bike. [00:05:51]They are super reliable and I definitely see what you're saying about hiking versus biking. I often think to myself as I'm [00:06:00] hiking with my family, we're just covering so little ground compared to what I do on a bike. We have to pick such a small section to hike, whereas that would be one eighth of what I might ride in any given day. [00:06:12] And I always feel a little bit guilty, the amount of terrain I'm able to cover versus when I'm hiking with my family. And they're just seeing this little tidbit of what's on the mountain [00:06:22]Andrew Onermaa: [00:06:22] for sure. And then one, one thing I was overlooking for a long time was the. The element of enjoyment of downhill, running, hiking, whatever going downhill is not nearly as fun my foot as it is on a bike or on skis or something like that. [00:06:39]That in itself adds a lot of extra joy on covering that terrain. Cause you get to. Experienced these crazy speeds and be making on the fly decisions and audibles to Dodge, a little boulders, or hop over ruts and things like that. So that's, it's a blast. You work, you like earn your journey is the term and skiing. [00:07:01] And I feel like it relates to gravel riding really well. Really well, [00:07:06] Craig Dalton: [00:07:06] so true. I had run into a friend of mine's wife who was out on a all day, a mountain biking trip down onto the peninsula to a great spot called Scags. And she told me, oh, I got a text from him saying he just had the time of his life. [00:07:21] And he's, she's I don't, I just don't get it. And I'm like, it's hard to explain to a non cyclist, but it brings us back to our youth. It's. It's like [00:07:30] playing video games, wrapped into working out this constant decision making that you have to do. When you clear a section you want to just high five, your friends and you just have a laugh because it's just such an exhilarating sport. [00:07:45] Andrew Onermaa: [00:07:45] Yeah. There's many times where I'm in the middle of the nowhere and those are laughing, going down a dissent or just grinning ear to ear. Cause it's. It's so much fun, [00:07:55] Craig Dalton: [00:07:55] so true. I'm smiling. Just thinking about it. So you mentioned, and that your journey took you back to Arkansas and you are new gravel cyclists at that point. [00:08:04] And the reason I was super stoked to connect with you is because I love these community based projects. So you started a group called Ozark, gravel cycling. What led you to begin that journey and put a stake in the ground and say, Hey, I'm going to be a hub for activity. Nos are in the Ozarks and try to unearth information for, would be cyclists and start a community around [00:08:26] Andrew Onermaa: [00:08:26] gravel. [00:08:26] Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. So through fix gear riding, I honestly just spent a ton of time by myself cause it's such a very niche aspect of riding bikes that is hard to find other writers that did the same thing. And to have the same fitness or goals or schedules. So whenever I got a road bike, I was about to start racing for a team by no means was I going to be going to local crits or road races and dominating or anything, but I was just really excited on the aspect of [00:09:00] here's a group of people that love bikes and we're going to hang out and we're going to ride bikes and we're going to travel sometimes to events. [00:09:09] And do more riding bikes. So it was just this really cool group setting that got me excited. It reminded me of sports in high school, growing up junior high, middle school, things like that. It was just, I'm an adult, but also I have the shared activity that we all get to enjoy together. And so I was just really thrilled on having friends through a common activity. [00:09:38] And as soon as the pandemic happened, everything got canceled. So I never got to actually go to these races. I got to do a team camp, started doing some practice rides and then boom, everything canceled. So I was like, oh man, I was so fired up for this idea of traveling and riding bikes and checking out new spots. [00:10:02] And so when I moved back to Arkansas, one is to be closer to family. My grandparents are here. I wanted to help them with grocery shopping. I didn't want them to have to go out and do all these things by themselves. So I, one move was definitely to be around family, but the other was, Hey, things are shifting the ski resorts no longer open than I work at. [00:10:27] This seems like a good time to [00:10:30] pursue the bike a little bit more and just skip a few months of winter and jump straight to spring by moving down south. Showed up in Arkansas and I knew one guy that rode gravel in Arkansas, and that was literally it because we knew each other in college and our very first gravel ride together. [00:10:50] I basically told him, Hey, I was really excited on riding bikes with a group and trying to travel around and check out more places to ride, essentially make friends. And I told him that idea. He said, yeah, that's cool. We don't really, we have different, smaller groups, but there's no like central thing. [00:11:08] That's dedicated only to gravel right now. And so I pitched an idea of, Hey, let's. Let's do that. Me and you, we're having a good time right now, right? You probably have chief friends like this. I bet there's other people in Arkansas. We know there's other people in Arkansas that ride gravel. [00:11:23] Let's just try to connect more people. And that's really how it started was just me and one other person went on a gravel ride, had a great time together. And wanted to do it more and find other people to do it. [00:11:36] Craig Dalton: [00:11:36] So did you start off with a Facebook group? Cause I know now you have, you've got a website up and running. [00:11:40]How did you get started? [00:11:42] Andrew Onermaa: [00:11:42] Yeah, so it was whenever I first came back, I couldn't get a job when I first came back to Arkansas. So I was living with my mom and my grandparents and I was applying and trying to get jobs anywhere. Couldn't get a job. When I wasn't riding my bike, [00:12:00] I decided to make pursuing this a job per se. [00:12:04] It didn't feel like a job is I loved every single minute of it, but it's like, what can I do? I can create an Instagram account. That's like the very first thing I did create an Instagram account. Those are gravel, cyclists, boom. Here's three photos from our ride. Here's two people that like riding gravel. [00:12:22]What are some popular hashtags related to gravel? Who else in the area is riding gravel. So looking up ride Arkansas, anything I could do to try to find people through basically social media, I try to follow them and comment on their rides and be like, Hey, this is really cool. Where was this at? [00:12:42] And so it was just very genuine. Because I wasn't trying to do this Hey, this is a gravel authority and America is very, just start small, start local start focused. I didn't like, I love what's going on in the country, but I want to know what's happening right here, where I live. Yeah. Oh, I love [00:13:03] Craig Dalton: [00:13:03] that, and I've spoken to the Ohio gravel grinders and a couple other groups on the podcast and it's just so critical. [00:13:09] I think part of it seems to me that, there's. There's a challenge. Anytime you're getting out there in the wilderness. And just knowing someone did this route before you, or finding a group, that'll go do it with you. It's just so confidence inspiring. And it just accelerates that learning curve of, once you get hooked on gravel cycling, you just [00:13:30] want to explore new and different places as frequently as you can. [00:13:34] Andrew Onermaa: [00:13:34] Yeah. Hands down. And so it was that's what a lot of it was getting people together. Check out new roads that at least one person had been on it before. So we're like, cool. You've been on it. You're still alive. You're still talking to us, but let's go check that one out. And then on my days where I couldn't ride with anybody, I was scouting out new roads myself and trying to create new routes. [00:13:57] And then eventually bring people out to this other area I saw and then started adding some more consistent group prides. It was just once a month. And then it was every Thursday night and it just has grown very quickly just because. One there's a huge scene for gravel in Northwest Arkansas, but two we've just been consistent, no matter what it's been for a year straight, we've had a group of people riding gravel every single week. [00:14:27]Craig Dalton: [00:14:27] Amazing. So for the listener that may not be familiar with the Ozarks and Arkansas in general, can you just tell us where in the country Arkansas is and where are the regions that you love riding most in Arkansas? [00:14:41]Andrew Onermaa: [00:14:41] Yeah, that's great. So when I lived in Utah, it was actually one of my jokes. [00:14:46] I'd say, Hey, I'm from Arkansas named three states that border Arkansas, and a lot of people can do it. So Arkansas we're above Louisiana. We got Texas down to the Sou…

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World Bicycle Relief - Director of Philanthropy Kemi King May 25, 2021

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This week we sit down with Kemi King, Director of Philanthropy for World Bicycle Relief. World Bicycle Relief is an international, non-profit organization based in Chicago, IL that specializes in large-scale, comprehensive bicycle distribution programs to aid poverty relief in developing countries around the world. Their programs focus primarily on education, economic development, and health care. World Bicycle Relief -- Donate to support my team The Ridership Forum Automated Transcription (Please excuse the typos) [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. [00:00:05] This week on the podcast, I'm thrilled to have Kemi king from world bicycle relief. join the show. [00:00:12] If you're not already familiar with world bicycle relief, it's an amazing 15 year old non-profit that has delivered over 500,000 bikes to those in need around the world. [00:00:24]I'm very excited for you to get to know a little bit more about world bicycle relief from Kemi, and also hear about their ride on June 5th, the pedal to empower ride it's something, regardless of where you are in the world, you can get involved in. As well as three in-person events around the country that we'll get into. Stick around until the end of the podcast Cause we've got a special announcement about how local gravel riders in the bay area can get involved. [00:00:52]Ordinarily, this would be where I ask for your support of the podcast. But today I'd prefer that you go over to world bicycle relief.org and contribute to what they're doing. [00:01:03] As you'll learn from Kemi every $147, and that's a new bike for someone in need. So let's get together and support this great cause. With all that said let's dive right in to my discussion with Kemi. [00:01:18] [00:01:18] Kemi welcome to the show. [00:01:20] Kemi King: [00:01:20] Hey, thank you so much, Craig. Thanks for having me. And I'm excited to, to chat. [00:01:25] Craig Dalton: [00:01:25] I'm really excited to learn more about world bicycle relief and it was super [00:01:30] fortuitous that I ran into one of your contributors on the trail a couple of weeks ago, and learned about the upcoming events you have. [00:01:37] So super excited to dig into that, but before we get started, let's just find out a little bit about your background and how you got involved in cycling and. Ultimately joining the world bicycle relief team. [00:01:49] Kemi King: [00:01:49] Sure. It actually all started during a tough period of my life. I personally embraced cycling as a positive force and I wholeheartedly understand really how a bicycle can change everything. [00:02:00] And I think a lot of the listeners here can relate to that. For me, it really was profound. I went from a really unhappy overweight lounger to an, a joyful elite cyclist in three short years. I at that time founded a women's pro road team and found myself training and racing among some of the world's strongest people on earth. [00:02:22]I had been a supporter and kind of long time. Donor for world bicycle relief and was thrilled to take on the role of director of philanthropy for the Western us and Canada, just about two years ago. And now I get to support their mission daily and spend some of my time training and looking for that next extreme challenge, whether it's on a road or dirt. [00:02:47] Craig Dalton: [00:02:47] First off what an amazing journey into cycling. And I think as you noted, a lot of our listeners have mimic that same story back to me that the bicycle has been really transformational in some element of their [00:03:00] life. So it's really exciting to hear you say that and really excited to learn that you've changed that. [00:03:05] You've fueled that passion into a career first founding a cycling program, the racing program, and later finding world bicycle relief. Can you tell us about world bicycle relief and what the focus is? [00:03:19] Kemi King: [00:03:19] Sure. Yeah. World bicycle relief or WBR as we like to shorten it because it's a mouthful was founded in 2005 by FK day. [00:03:28] One of the founders of Ceram and Liam is buck day, a documentary photographer in response to the tsunami in the Indian ocean. And they want it to be able to provide some support to the people in Sri Lanka. So they quickly rounded up as many bicycles they could and traveled to Sri Lanka to distribute them and through the beautiful stories that Lee Leah captured. [00:03:52] And the time that they were able to spend just meeting with the people and capturing all that information, they brought back this this. Devastation to light to the rest of the world. And they quickly learned that their work would not end there so together with support from Ceram and other industry leaders FK and Leah designed a rugged, especially design and locally assembled Buffalo bicycle and launched. [00:04:19] World bicycle relief to mobilize and empower people with bicycles to help them conquer the challenge of distance, achieve independence and thrive. Over the past 15 years, [00:04:30] we've distributed more than 550,000 Buffalo bicycles to students, healthcare workers and entrepreneurs across Africa, south America, Southeast Asia. [00:04:41] It's a sustainable and scalable program. That's led by strong infrastructure of trained local mechanics, assemblers and supervisor supervisory committees. [00:04:52] Craig Dalton: [00:04:52] There's a lot to unpack there. I have a question, when they first saw the tsunami disaster, was there something they knew specifically that the bicycle could change in that community? [00:05:03] Obviously, people were throwing money at it, but throwing bicycles at it was probably a unique proposition at that moment. Yeah, it [00:05:10] Kemi King: [00:05:10] really was. They just, they knew that people couldn't get from place to place. Everything had been completely destroyed. And the only thing that kind of couldn't make its way through any of the roads or the destruction was a bicycle. [00:05:22]And they were able to quickly provide some of that. [00:05:25] Craig Dalton: [00:05:25] You mentioned the specifically designed Buffalo bicycles, which some of the listeners may have seen pictures of, but can you describe why it's important? The sort of important elements of the design, and I know you alluded to them being locally assembled and some of the local infrastructure that probably revolves around having the exact same bike in every project you're involved in. [00:05:47] It [00:05:47] Kemi King: [00:05:47] actually came from some exploration in the field. We, we believe that all answers are found in the field. And as our team was spending time in Africa, they were looking at these what they called bicycle shaped [00:06:00] objects, and they were bicycles that were falling apart that weren't actually fulfilling the needs that the people using them were required, were requiring. [00:06:09] So they decided that something had to be created. That was a little bit more sturdy and a little bit more capable of hauling loads up to 250 pounds and working in that That area of where the train was a little bit more rugged. So they created the Buffalo bicycle and it is one, one size fits all. [00:06:30] It's one bicycle. It has all the same parts and pieces we have about 2,500 mechanics in the field that service those bicycles and shops that locally that assemble the bicycles to distribute and keep those bikes up and running. [00:06:46] Craig Dalton: [00:06:46] So I've seen pictures of people riding with multiple family members on the back or big loads of maybe they're the wears that they've had from a farm or something to transport. [00:06:56] So it sounds like it's a very utilitarian bike that can serve a lot of different purposes. [00:07:02] Kemi King: [00:07:02] It can, it's a, it's something that's amazing that just this bicycle. Helps those, access medical care, they get farmers and produce and milk to the markets. And. Pile on the kids to get them to school. [00:07:17]Craig Dalton: [00:07:17] So it's been a 15 year journey and presumably the organization has continued to grow both in its size and impact over the year. Had there been any changes, obviously with the global pandemic, have there [00:07:30] been any changes in your plans or execution across the world? Yeah, [00:07:34] Kemi King: [00:07:34] so much has happened obviously in 2020 with COVID and we were able to transition a little bit last year to provide 2,500 bicycles for COVID 19 response, pretty immediately. As COVID hit and we distributed still 40,000 bicycles last year hitting our historic 500,000. Along the way, we also launched our 21st program country in Columbia. So even though last year had some. [00:08:02] Crazy times. We still were able to take care of some of those needs and focus on, some immediate needs at hand with [00:08:10] Craig Dalton: [00:08:10] COVID. Yeah. I have to imagine a lot of these bikes are being used in unexpected and new ways to help support, PR potentially getting vaccinations out or certainly servicing the health needs of rural communities. [00:08:23] Kemi King: [00:08:23] Yeah, just livelihood needs to find food and other things in those areas as well. [00:08:28] Craig Dalton: [00:08:28] You mentioned Columbia as being the 21st program and that's in south America are the majority of programs across Africa or what territories have you been addressing? [00:08:38] Kemi King: [00:08:38] Yeah, most of the programs are in Africa who found that the largest need was there. [00:08:43]But there's definitely need. All over the world. Like I've mentioned, we've been in Sri Lanka, we've opened up into Columbia. We had some really unique partnerships that allowed us to open up there. We also are working on a multi-carrier drive training, which will open up a few more [00:09:00] opportunities and allowing us to distribute In areas where there might be a few more Hills [00:09:04]Craig Dalton: [00:09:04] co Columbia may qualify as one of those countries. [00:09:08] Kemi King: [00:09:08] Yes. Yes. At the moment we're focusing on some flat areas, but definitely has has its needs with the Hills. [00:09:15] Craig Dalton: [00:09:15] Like when you introduce a program into a country, is it critical that you build on the ground infrastructure to support the bicycle as you're delivering. [00:09:24] Kemi King: [00:09:24] Yes. Yeah. We've got programmed facilities now in bettering Kia, Colombia, where we've got a team that supports a warehouse and provides the assembly and the mechanics that are needed for that area. [00:09:37] And as we can distribute around those areas and spread our little bicycles throughout the country He had some really interesting programming there's of course, with COVID things have been shut down a little bit more and schools have been closed. So our programming has been a touch different, but now the need to get back into school is dire. [00:09:58] And I'll touch a little bit more on that as we go as well. [00:10:00] Craig Dalton: [00:10:00] Yeah, that'd be great to talk about where WBR is today and in 2021, what are the kind of key need areas that you guys are trying to address? [00:10:10] Kemi King: [00:10:10] Yeah. As we look at what's happened and where we are, the odds against women and girls in developing regions actually have amplified over the past year. [00:10:20] That's where a large focus of ours will be because 47 million women have been pushed into extreme poverty. And about 10 million [00:10:30] additional child brain brides have happened over this past decade, 11 million girls won't return to school this year. So with the pandemic, it's created short and long-term challenges for our communities. [00:10:43]While I, as the world's eyes ways to open back up, we need to ensure that those programs aren't left behind provide opportunities to ensure that they can rebound and thrive. [00:10:54]Craig Dalton: [00:10:54] How is the organization funded to do all this work? [00:10:58]Kemi King: [00:10:58] We've got a couple of different ways, obviously. We look for donors support too. [00:11:03]Everyone and anyone, we get some corporate partnerships. We have major donors and grassroots donors. Everyone that's willing to give whatever they can. We also do have some social inner enterprise programs with our Buffalo bicycles. So Buffalo bicycles is its own entity that allows us to provide. [00:11:24] Purchase programs for entrepreneurs. We also have other additional programs that will purchase the bicycles from us and distribute themselves UNICEF being one of those. We've got several other partners within Africa that purchase the bicycles and distribute as well. So we have a couple of different ways of bringing those those dollars into the organization. [00:11:44] Craig Dalton: [00:11:44] So when you referenced micro entrepreneurs that might purchase Buffalo bikes, are those people in these countries who have pass some certification and are looking to finance, bringing bikes into the country and distributing them. [00:11:56] Kemi King: [00:11:56] We've got a little bit of that. [00:11:57]We also have just, people that [00:12:00] come in to purchase the bike save their pennies and purchase a bike for one 47. Each bike costs $147. And they're eager to come in and make their own purchase. We've got small companies that purchase bikes. We actually had quite a few security companies purchasing bikes through COVID to get individuals to different areas or even into work. [00:12:20]So yeah, it was interesting to see the growth on that social enterprise side of the program. [00:12:26] Craig Dalton: [00:12:26] That's super interesting. You mentioned quite frequently Just the efforts you're making towards helping women around the world. And I think you've got a new program that you recently launched on that subject. [00:12:39] Yeah, [00:12:40] Kemi King: [00:12:40] actually as this errors are a new women on wheels program, we'll we'll be launching and that is to help these women build their businesses care for the sick reach school on time, serve the community, avoid harassment advocate for girls. Increase their incomes. There's a whole list of different things that these women are continuing to do by breaking boundaries and serving their communities. [00:13:06] So we've got this longstanding relationship with people and partners in the field who have first hand experienced what is needed to drive those meaning that meaningful change. We've proven repeatedly and recently, without response to that, to the pandemic outreach, we're positioned now with our Buffalo bicycles to lead on more programming and hope to bring in more [00:13:30] communities where we can mobilize. [00:13:32] Craig Dalton: [00:13:32] Is that an initiative that you're fundraising for specifically, or do you tend to fundraise as an umbrella organization and then fund the different initiatives internally as makes [00:13:41] Kemi King: [00:13:41] sense. We do both. We do focus some interesting campaigns each year on a specific area. So this is really focusing on our women on wheels and how we can message around focusing just these funds on providing that that need for women. [00:13:58]I there's so many different stories of how those women's lives have changed. One of my favorites, I'll just start sharing a couple of stories. Dull Shawnee was actually one of our very first recipients in Sri Lanka to receive a bicycle and it allowed her to go to school and become a nurse. [00:14:16] And my favorite part about devil's Johnny's bik…

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Colin Dalton: Father of the host. :). May 18, 2021

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This week thanks to vaccinations, I'm able to interview my father without whom I'd likely never have discovered a passion for the sport. At 84 years old and still riding every Sunday, I hope the conversation keeps you stoked to ride into the future and gives you a little glimpse into my introduction to the sport of cycling.

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In the Dirt 21: Gravel Guides and moving across country May 11, 2021

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This week we wish Randall well on his cross country journey, highlight the Gravel Adventure Field Guide from Trinidad, CO and discuss casual cycling shorts.

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Southeast Gravel Series - Founders Ben Renkema and Boyd Johnson May 04, 2021

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This week we welcome the team from the Southeast Gravel Series to the show. Ben Renkema and Boyd Johnson discuss the journey to creating a 6-event race series in North and South Carolina. The team share their passion for the Southeast region and the desire to create a competitive, yet inclusive series to serve the area. Southeast Gravel Website Southeast Gravel Instagram Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos): Southeast Gravel Craig Dalton: [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the show, we've got Ben Renkema and Boyd Johnson. Founders of the southeast gravel series [00:00:15] As you know, I love talking to event organizers because I think they're the lifeblood of the community and the sport. It's great having people put effort in and in the southeast ben and boyd have been [00:00:26]Contributing to the community for a number of years, both as riders and racers and Boyd as the founder of Boyd cycling. [00:00:34]The team decided to create a six events series throughout 2021 with the falling Creek pinnacle Punisher, actually coming up this weekend, May 8th. So if you're in the region, make sure to grab a slot. [00:00:47]There are three additional races stretching out to October 2nd. So if you're in the region or fancy a trip to the region, there's still time to get some great racing in. [00:00:56]Before we get into the show, I've got to thank long time program sponsor athletic greens. The most comprehensive daily nutritional beverage i've ever tried. [00:01:04]As gravel cyclists were often required to go super deep in our rides to reach those milestones we're shooting for. And if you're like me, you struggle a little bit with your nutrition and that's where athletic greens comes in and helps. [00:01:18]Athletic greens contains 75 vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin multi-mineral probiotic [00:01:26]Green superfood blend and more that all work together [00:01:30] to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet increase energy. Focus aid with digestion and support a healthy immune system. All without the needs to take multiple products or pills. That's the key for me. I love taking a drink every morning and just knowing that I've got my nutritional basis covered for my athletic greens use. I like to mix it with ice and on big ride days, I'll actually take it after the ride, as well as my daily drink in the morning. I've been an athletic greens user for many years prior to this podcast. So I was super excited to have them come on board as a sponsor. And even more excited that they've been a long-term sponsor. If you're interested in checking out athletic greens, simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. [00:02:15] [00:02:15]And if you do so today they're throwing in a year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. So remember, visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. [00:02:26]With all that said let's dive right in to my conversation with Ben and Boyd about the Southeast gravel series. [00:02:32]Gentlemen. Welcome to the show. [00:02:34] [00:02:34] [00:02:34] [00:02:34] Ben Renkema: [00:02:34] Thanks for having us. [00:02:35] Craig Dalton: [00:02:35] Yeah. Happy to be here again. Yeah. Excited to have you back Boyd and happy to meet you Ben for the listener, we had boy Johnson on the show. [00:02:43] I think it was episode 30 back in 2019. Talking about Boyd's experience as a writer. As well as the founder and owner of Boyd cycling, a great wheel manufacturer out there in South Carolina. So I encourage you to go [00:03:00] back and listen to that Boyd. You're in rarefied air of being a two time guest on the show. [00:03:04] I think there's only two or three others in that group. [00:03:06]Boyd Johnson: [00:03:06] That's good to be in that company. Yeah. [00:03:09] Craig Dalton: [00:03:09] Cool, Ben, welcome to the show for the first time. We always start by getting a little bit of your background as a writer. If you could just start by, just give us a quick synopsis of how you came to the sport and how ultimately you ended up riding off road on gravel bikes. [00:03:24] Ben Renkema: [00:03:24] Definitely. So I like to tell people that I've been riding gravel since, Oh, the early two thousands. I grew up in Holland, Michigan, and before I even knew bike racing was a thing. He used to take my crappy road bike and just bombed down gravel roads. Cause that's what we had a lot of. About a year later, I found out bike racing was a thing. [00:03:40]So I went with my best friend did my first bike race. And that was it started as a mountain bike race, or mostly gotten into road racing. About 2007, started racing at a professional level on the road, did that all the way until halfway through 2019. And then, yeah, partway between that, Boyd and I were teammates for awhile And yeah, we both had this common we'd love to explore, ride off road on road bikes. [00:04:04]And that's kinda how Southeast gravel came about. [00:04:07] Craig Dalton: [00:04:07] Nice. And if I'm not mistaken, you spent a little time with some stars and stripes on your back. [00:04:12] Ben Renkema: [00:04:12] I did. Yeah. I was lucky enough to have won three national championships as a cyclist. I'm the best one being 2017 elite national championships for the criterium which, trying to win that race for a long time. [00:04:25] So I was super stoked to win that. Nice. [00:04:27] Craig Dalton: [00:04:27] A good way to go out. And probably 2019 [00:04:30] was a good time to end a professional career on the road. Given what happened in 2020. [00:04:34] Ben Renkema: [00:04:34] Oh, it made it very easy to end my career that I had a heart condition halfway through 2019. It forced me into, retiring. [00:04:42]But I'll tell you what, 2020, when no one was racing, it wasn't as hard as it should have been. [00:04:48] Craig Dalton: [00:04:48] I bet. I bet it gave you a little bit more time to think about gravel. I imagine [00:04:52] Ben Renkema: [00:04:52] exactly. Yup. What's really important. So [00:04:56] Craig Dalton: [00:04:56] gentlemen, why don't you tell everybody where in the country you're located and then I'm excited to get into the Southeast gravel series? [00:05:04] I think it's a real unique set of events and I was excited to watch the last one unfold on Instagram. [00:05:13] Boyd Johnson: [00:05:13] Yeah, so Ben and I both live in Greenville, South Carolina. He was actually living in Florida and he was talking about moving up to Greenville. I think this was 2012. And he was working at a bike shop. [00:05:24] He had been building some wheels and so we actually hired him as one of our first wheel builders and got him to move to Greenville. And we've been here ever since. He started his own company outside of. Southeast gravel as well. And so he's no longer working for Boyd cycling, we remained friends and we run Southeast gravel together and we run that out of Greenville. [00:05:45] Craig Dalton: [00:05:45] How did the series come about? Is this the first year for it, or did you have events prior to 2021? [00:05:51] Boyd Johnson: [00:05:51] So this is technically the third year. It's funny. The first year just happened by accident. I'm a big map geek. I like to go out and find [00:06:00] new roads and I plotted a 80 mile course down by Clinton, South Carolina. [00:06:06] And after I got done with it, there was not a single Strava segment on the course. And I was like, Oh, we have to turn this into an event. And so I just put out a Facebook message a post and I said, Hey, Joe, just did this ride who would be interested in a cycling event up here. And 200 people commented and said that they would come out to it. [00:06:25] So we quickly made a bike Ridge. Paige started the event and we got 200 people to come to that first one. We really, it wasn't even Southeast gravel at the time. We didn't really even have a name for the event or anything like that. Ben came and raced it. And I think Ben, you got second or third place. [00:06:43] And after that we were talking about it and we knew that we had to make the series even bigger and better. [00:06:50] Ben Renkema: [00:06:50] Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. I think it was like that afternoon to the next day. Boyd's this is going to be a thing, like I need your help. Let's do this together. And I was a hundred percent on board. [00:07:00] Craig Dalton: [00:07:00] Amazing. I remember from our earlier conversation, Boyd, your love of adventure and just getting out there and discovering the lesser known gravel roads in your neck of the woods. [00:07:12] Boyd Johnson: [00:07:12] Yeah. And a lot of times, when I go out for an exploration ride, it's usually by myself because. Sometimes I find an amazing route like that. [00:07:19] And other times I ended up just hiking through the woods for awhile, carrying my bike with me. [00:07:24] Craig Dalton: [00:07:24] It's important to know your partners when you're going out for an adventure and what they're actually going to get into for sure. [00:07:31] [00:07:30] Ben Renkema: [00:07:31] Yeah, boy, Boyd has a little bit of reputation in Greenville. Eventually everyone started calling them Boyd rides where, he would try to get his friends to come with them, but everybody knew that. [00:07:41] Okay. We're probably going to be carrying our bikes through the woods. But it's funny. It's full circle. Now people pay us for that pleasure. [00:07:49] Craig Dalton: [00:07:49] Nice. Can you characterize the roads of South and North Carolina that you tend to. Tend towards for these gravel events. [00:07:58] Boyd Johnson: [00:07:58] So a lot of the, it's very different because we've got six different events. [00:08:02]Most of the gravel that we have it's cars can travel down the road. There's very rarely a situation where you're gonna find where vehicles can't get to. The brace we just had, we have a little bit of single track in there, but it's only about a mile or so Some of the roads are big, chunky gravel, and others are, you can ride a road bike on them. [00:08:21] No problem. [00:08:23] Craig Dalton: [00:08:23] Gotcha. So as far as equipment choices go, it sounds a fairly narrow tire would suit for most of the courses. [00:08:30] Ben Renkema: [00:08:30] I would say we, we've got our first two events while our first event is Clinton. We actually in 2019, our winner did it on a road bike with 32 mill tire. That being said he was a very skilled professional not something that everybody wants to do. [00:08:45] And then we have, I would say our roughest course is May 8th coming up falling Creek, pinnacle Punisher, that's something where you're gonna really want more of a 40 to 42 mil tire. Something even bigger if you want to be comfortable and have lot of competence, because [00:09:00] there are big boulders there's, big, gnarly gravel fast downhills with rough rocks. [00:09:04]And I think that's what makes Southeast gravel so cool is it's not just one event. It's very different. Yeah. [00:09:10] Craig Dalton: [00:09:10] So as you guys have laid it out, I believe it's a six event series. Is that correct? Yes. And starting in March, fairly early in the season and ending in October, obviously that's a, a full cycling season journey for the athletes as you laid out the courses. [00:09:28] Did you think about that? And did you think about adding elevation or complexity and technicality to the courses over the journey of the series? [00:09:37] Ben Renkema: [00:09:37] Yeah, we definitely put a good amount of thought into it. Originally the first event, which is the gravel battle of Semper forest was earlier, it was kind of February. [00:09:46]But I think 20, 20 Boyd, correct me if I'm wrong. I think it was like 30 degrees at the start. And so we decided to move it, a little later we put it into March. It what we did is we took our two S Southern most events that are, lower elevation. And we put those early in the year because it's usually about 10 to 15 degrees warmer that far South of Greenville, which is when you go North of Greenville kind of up into the mountains, it gets pretty cool. [00:10:10]So we stuck our events more towards the summer that are up in the mountains where it's cooler. So that was our thinking for that. And then also we wanted the. Doing air quotes here, the easier course, which would be the Clinton and the Greenwood chorus earlier in the year, just because, a lot of people don't have as much fitness yet. [00:10:27] So start with kind of the easier courses [00:10:30] [00:10:30] Craig Dalton: [00:10:30] and are the core, are you offering multiple distances for the athletes during each event? [00:10:36] Boyd Johnson: [00:10:36] Yeah each one has a a short and a long, and the thing with the Southeast gravel series is, It's not the ultra endurance gravel that, some events are popular with. [00:10:47] So our distances tend to be between 30 to 40 miles for the short course, and then between 60 to 70 for the long course. [00:10:55] Craig Dalton: [00:10:55] Great. Yeah. I actually liked that. That's my sweet spot. I found that kind of. Extension of this ultra endurance race kind of category doesn't necessarily fit with me personally. [00:11:07]I did my Leadville one hundreds, and I did that stuff when I was a little bit younger, but now it's nice. If it's a hundred K, I feel like I can go out there regardless of what my family duties have taken me away from my training. And I can still have a great day and it could feel APIC, but I'm not absolutely destroyed afterwards. [00:11:25] Ben Renkema: [00:11:25] Yeah, absolutely. It's something where, you can, you could do this event every weekend. And it's a lot of the racing that Boyd and I personally are used to, going into a criterium or, sub a hundred mile road race. It's not something you have to train months for. [00:11:39] Craig Dalton: [00:11:39] I also think it's neat. Sorry to interrupt, but I'd also think it's neat that you designed the earlier courses to be a little bit, maybe more beginner and intermediate friendly, just in terms of the profile and elevation so that someone can get into the sport early and get a taste of what riding and event might be like. [00:11:56] And then train up and learn the technicality for those more [00:12:00] mountainous stages or races later in the year. [00:12:04] Boyd Johnson: [00:12:04] Yeah, I think, we get the question all the time. It's I don't really race my bike. I want to come out and, can I just ride this? And so having some of the, easier to rain courses earlier in the season and less people get out and we encourage all levels of people to come out. [00:12:19]Whether you're averaging eight or 28 miles per hour, it's got a course for you. And we've had a ton of people where each event, we have so many people where it's their first ever gravel event and they come out, they have a good time and they're hooked and they want to do more of them. [00:12:34] And if they never want to race, it's great. We have rest stops. We've got food afterwards. It's a great community atmosphere. [00:12:41] Craig Dalton: [00:12:41] Yeah. How have you seen over the last few years, the gravel cycling community in the Carolinas start to grow up? [00:12:47]Ben Renkema: [00:12:47] It's definitely growing a lot. I actually went and did a. [00:12:51] A group ride yesterday up in Bravard, which is a little North of Greenville. And there was a lot of people telling me that, man,…

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In the Dirt 20: Cervelo Aspero and how to add suspension gravel bikes Apr 27, 2021

Show notes

This week Randall and Craig take a look at the new Cervelo Aspero and discuss its fit in the spectrum of gravel bikes. We then dive head first into a discussion of the myriad of ways one achieves suspension on a gravel bike. Cervelo Aspero Support the Podcast The Ridership Automated Transcript, please excuse the errors In the Dirt 20 Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. I'll be joined shortly by my cohost Randall Jacobs. [00:00:13]Each week we muse about gravel cycling and how it's fitting into our lives. [00:00:18] These episodes are supported by listeners. Like you simply visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride to support the podcast. Additionally we encourage you to visit the ridership a free global cycling community [00:00:33] It's something we created to serve the cycling community. And also serve as a back channel for any suggestions you had for the podcast [00:00:41]With all that said let's dive right into my conversation with Randall. . hey Randall, [00:00:46] how are you doing? [00:00:47] [00:00:47] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:00:47] I'm doing well, Craig, [00:00:48] Craig Dalton: [00:00:48] how are you? I'm doing okay. A little bit rainy day here in Marin. So I'm glad I got a nice ride in yesterday. [00:00:55] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:00:55] Very much needed given the water table throughout California and fire risks coming up next season. So not a bad thing. [00:01:03] Craig Dalton: [00:01:03] Yeah. Fortunately they were actually, so I looked at the weather forecast and I made sure I got our ride in on Friday, which was great to see you. And then I got a nice ride in on Saturday. [00:01:11] So I feel relatively fulfilled with my last few days of riding. [00:01:16] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:01:16] Excellent. Yeah, I've gotten been back on the bikes since being back in the Bay and I've gotten a few rides in with friends and it's been great. Two people who are vaccinated. The statistics increasingly show that the risk of transmission is exceedingly [00:01:30] low, at least with the variants that are out there now. [00:01:32] And so being able to go out for a ride with a friend and not have it be, something that has to be overly worried about is quite a relief. [00:01:39]Craig Dalton: [00:01:39] Absolutely. I think we talked about this maybe on the last, in the dirt. It is a little bit awkward right now. I We run into people on the trails and there's still, I'm pulling my mask up to be courteous, but it, I feel like there's going to need to be some statements by the government to say, Hey, it's okay to be outside. [00:01:54] If you're not, if you're vaccinated and eventually we can get back to normal trail use. [00:02:00] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:02:00] Yeah. There's a lot that shows that outdoor mask usage, when you have a lot of space can be somewhat performative. But I do think that, especially in dense urban areas, there's still some value to that. [00:02:11] And plus people are just getting over this traumatic experience of Being afraid of this pandemic. And so when I'm out and about, I have my mask with me and if I pass somebody even if I'm sufficiently distant, if they're wearing a mask, I honor their boundaries by putting my mask up and just, just so everyone is comfortable, but we're slowly getting to a greater degree of normalcy while at the same time needing to remain vigilant. [00:02:34] Yeah. [00:02:35] Craig Dalton: [00:02:35] Yeah. And we certainly have to acknowledge that other parts of the world aren't. Getting as close as we are to returning back to normalcy. So keep masking up, keep protecting yourself and keep protecting others for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But on, onto the gravel world, I saw pretty cool announcement from about their newest Sparrow. [00:02:53] Did you catch [00:02:54] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:02:54] that? I did. Yeah, it seems that they have shed some weights and gone internal with all the [00:03:00] cables and hoses and the I also, [00:03:02] Craig Dalton: [00:03:02] they did a good job of, aesthetically, it's a sexy, fast looking bike and I've always appreciated that they're very much in this race, bike category, which may not be for everybody. [00:03:13] But I think it is for some, and it's, it's an attractive package. [00:03:17] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:03:17] Yeah, and it's in the same mode of the, endurance, roadie type geometry. So this could be an excellent bike as the one bike for everything. Yeah. It's 72 head angle reasonably sporty handling and so on. [00:03:30]And they have this flip chip that is interesting in the fork too. So it's in the fork, the flip chip. [00:03:35] Craig Dalton: [00:03:35] Correct. And what's that [00:03:36] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:03:36] all about? So the way that, that they're marketing it in the way that they've implemented, it is it's really a way to maintain the same trail figure when you have tires of different radius. [00:03:49] And so if you have a six 50 by 47 tire, right? That's going to be 10 millimeters less radius than a 700 by 40. If you go 700 by 45, it's 15 millimeters. But just taking those two sizes. So it's going to be about 10, 10, 11 millimeters difference, depending on tire pressure and things like that. [00:04:07] And so they have a flip chip in there that keeps their, the trail figure at, around 58, 58 and a half millimeters, which they. Have defined as the sweet spot. And so if that's important to you to maintain the same trail with two different wheel tire volumes tire radio, and then that can be useful. [00:04:24] Craig Dalton: [00:04:24] So not effect of that. So what when for the uninitiated, what does that trail figure when you're [00:04:30] designing a bike and you said that, that 58 or whatever was what they thought was the ideal is that have to do with the steering quickness, the stability. What does it, how does it play out? [00:04:41] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:04:41] He can think of it partially as quickness. It's really like the proponent. It's also the propensity of the bison to want to travel in a straight line. And so it's hard to explain without a diagram, but just in terms of numbers, yeah. A lower trail figure is going to be a little bit more responsive. [00:04:59] So the ratio of input at the steering to output in terms of turning and so on we'll be great. Will be greater versus a. Larger trail figure, getting into 60, 65 or so that's going to be slower handling. So the inputs at the steering are going to be result in less outputs in terms of the bicycle actually turning. [00:05:19]Craig Dalton: [00:05:19] Okay. So if you talk about extremes, like if we talk about a chopper, that's got a very extreme high trail number. And as everybody can imagine riding a choppered out bicycle, when you turn the handlebar, it's very slow to steer. [00:05:34] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:05:34] Correct. And you end up with another problem. Which when you're talking about subtle differences in trail and, relatively steep head angles and the like, 70 to 73 range then you know, we'll flop, isn't an issue, but if you've ever been on like a really slacked out mountain bike, you'll notice that like the bicycle when it's straight. [00:05:54] It's at one height. And then when you turn it one way or another, the bicycle actually drops a little bit. So the bicycle has a natural [00:06:00] propensity to want to turn in. And in fact, the more it's turning the faster it's going to turn. Cause there's the weight, your weights pressing down is causing that turning it's supporting that turning. [00:06:11]And so that, that can be an issue when bikes get really, [00:06:13] Craig Dalton: [00:06:13] so that's the net effect on climbing, but the net effect on descending, if we talk about on the mountain bike side is. Just stability through rough [00:06:21] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:06:21] terrain, correct? Correct. And also when you're descending, you're, you're pointed downhill. [00:06:27] So your head angle relative to the downward vector of gravity is going to be more steep when you're going downhill. And so the steering characteristics are different. And so there's a bunch the variables here. [00:06:39] Craig Dalton: [00:06:39] Yeah. No, it makes sense. As I jumped from my. Heavily cross-country oriented 29 or a mountain bike to a more kind of all mountain bike that was full suspension. [00:06:49] It became way back in Slack and climbing became maybe less fun, but descending became a hell of a lot more fun. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Particular bike. I know if with the gravel athlete, a lot of times maybe you don't get into thinking about the geometry and what it's going to do when you're buying the bike, but you mentioned that. [00:07:09]The flip ship is just making it a neutral change between tire sizes. If you had two wheel sets on there, right? [00:07:16] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:07:16] Yeah. And neutral in terms of, again, this trail figure. So steering input to steering output and the propensity of the bike to want to travel in a straight line. And this is one way to achieve this. [00:07:26]And the other thing that, I look at this and it's okay, that's great. [00:07:30] But actually through the bikes geo in a little CAD program, and I just, queried what if I took the just. The standard, 51 millimeter trail position, and to change the wheels without flipping the chip, what would be the the impact on trail and the impact on trails only three millimeters. [00:07:49] So we're actually not, I'm not sure that the juice is worth the squeeze. With regards to having this extra components three millimeters of trail may be noticeable to somebody who's really can appreciate that subtlety, but frankly our bike actually has the same front end geo. [00:08:05]The DOB one is the same front NGO, 72 degree head angle in the large and a 51 offset. And I've written it with the 700 by forties and the node, the difference is subtle, but actually. The higher radius tire, like a 700 by 40 will, oftentimes you'd be running that tire when you're doing more straight, flat stuff anyways. [00:08:25] And maybe you want slower trail when you put on that higher rate, the greater radius tire. And so that change in trail is actually a benefit because it's it makes sense for the the tire being mounted. So are you [00:08:37] Craig Dalton: [00:08:37] suggesting maybe this particular implicate implementation of a flip ship didn't go far enough? [00:08:42]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:08:42] And think that there's it is useful if you are, if you really have a a sense of the subtlety when you change this, but don't expect a radical difference when flipping the chip versus [00:08:54] Craig Dalton: [00:08:54] changing the tire. It sounds if you're committed to one wheel size or another. When you put the six fifties on and you [00:09:00] put the chip in that particular position, you've got the bike that the Savallo engineer designed, correct? [00:09:06] Precisely. So if you're like a one wheel set kind of guy or girl. You got, what's promised to you by the engineers, but it's not necessarily trying to change the performance from more of a road bike experience to more of a off-road bike experience. [00:09:22] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:09:22] Correct? Yeah. It's really keeping the gravel focused experience. [00:09:27]Consistent across different wheel sizes though, at the same time, like there is a, I'd have to take a look at how they've implemented here, but presumably one position there would be well, so there's a, trade-off here too, in that you, in a road bike geo you want. You also want the generally the handlebar position maybe to be lower and maybe the axle to be more underneath your where your hands are on the bar. [00:09:54] So the either bars going out, the axle coming in, so that front ends more planted because on the road take like a high-speed road descent. You really want that front end planted because you have the grip and you want to feel you don't want the wheel wallowing. And then a lot of your braking performances there too on the dirt, it's exactly the opposite. [00:10:13] You want to be able to get your weight back. You have limited traction up front, you don't want the front wheel to wash out. And so you'd want to be a little bit more upright the axle a little bit further out and so on. And it's hard to this, this implementation doesn't really achieve anything with regards to changing that dynamic. [00:10:27] So it doesn't really make it more of a road, [00:10:30] more or less of a road bike in different positions. It's really about again, maintaining consistent trail. Across the two different wheel sizes that it accommodates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:10:38]Craig Dalton: [00:10:38] I think it's interesting. It's an interesting model. I know a number of people who ride this bike, a number of people, frankly, who have given up their road bike, because this one was so good at riding on the road, as well as off-road, as you mentioned, very close to an endurance road bike, geo with the exception that they D they have built in decent tire clearance. [00:10:57] I think at a six 50, you can go all the way out to a 49. [00:11:01] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:11:01] Correct. Yeah. And I can't recall what they allow with a 700 I'm guessing at least 700 by 40. Maybe it fits a 42 or 45. I think it was a 42. Yeah to overlap, probably come. That becomes an issue in some of the smaller sizes in particular, beyond that point, which gets into yet another one of these like variables that have to be considered when you're looking at all these geometry PM parameters. [00:11:24] Cause you can have the perfect geo, but if if you're gonna have to overlap, that's going to be a real compromise and may result in some safety issues. [00:11:31] Craig Dalton: [00:11:31] Yeah, for sure. I feel fortunate that I'm in the medium or 56 kind of size because typically I do all right. When it comes to toe overlap, [00:11:40] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:11:40] Yeah and I think we did one 70 cranks fee or one 60 fives. [00:11:44] I would not [00:11:45] Craig Dalton: [00:11:45] capitulate at the time in which I bought my bike and I went one 72, five, but I think I'm sold now that I would go one 70 in the future. [00:11:53] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:11:53] Yeah. Proportional, crank length helps with that a little bit and allows you to do a slightly tighter front-end geo on the smaller bikes without adding to that [00:12:00] risk of a tow, right? [00:12:01] Craig Dalton: [00:12:01] Yeah. And I don't have a particularly large foot, so that helps as well. It makes me skirt, the issue entirely. [00:12:08] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:12:08] So this gets into, so we talked about a little bit about geo. The other thing we wanted to discuss today is the advent of, suspension. We're starting to see suspension particularly for, front end suspension on gravel bikes. [00:12:18] Craig Dalton: [00:12:18] Yeah. I've been obsessing a little bit over it. Just trying to figure out the best way to articulate a conversation around suspension, because I think. A lot of times, and this may be true for some of the listeners out there. The moment you mentioned the word suspension, you get a hard stop. [00:12:36] I don't want to hear about it. I've got no interest in suspension whatsoever, but the reality is every single bike out there in the world is suspended in some way. [00:12:45] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:12:45] Absolutely. We u…

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Ben Shillington: Guided Bikepacking with TDA Global Cycling Apr 20, 2021

Show notes

This week we talk with adventurer, instructor and guide, Ben Shillington about an upcoming 12 day guided bikepacking trip offered by TDA Global Cycling in Quebec, Canada. TDA Global Cycling Guided Bikepacking trip TDA Instagram Ben Shillington Support the Podcast Discuss in The Ridership Episode Transcription (please excuse the typos): Ben Shillington - TDA Cycling Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. On this week's episode we've got expedition guide adventure consultant and adventure instructor ben shillington coming on [00:00:17]To talk about a new guided bike packing trip from tda global cycling. [00:00:22]As we've talked about more and more bike packing and adventure riding on your gravel bike on the podcast. I thought this was a great extension. [00:00:30]And a really cool concept i hadn't seen elsewhere the idea of a guided bike packing expedition . [00:00:37] We'll get into all the details about the 12 day trip and what it entails. But before we jump in just a quick, thank you. To everybody who's been visiting. Buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Your financial support for the podcast means the world to me. [00:00:53]And it keeps me eager to find new guests to keep you on your gravel cycling journey, just as I continue to be on mine. [00:01:00] You may have gathered from some of my comments on the podcast over the last few years, that I'm a big fan of adventure. That includes adventures both on and off the bike. [00:01:11]Which is why I was super stoked to talk to Ben. Ben's been in big mountains all over the world, both as a Mountaineer. A guide and a cyclist. [00:01:21]With all that said i hope you enjoy my conversation with ben and let's dive right in [00:01:26]Ben, welcome to the show. [00:01:28] Ben Shillington: [00:01:28] Hey, Craig thanks. Thanks for having [00:01:30] me on, I appreciate appreciate your time and looking forward to chatting with [00:01:33] you. [00:01:34] Craig Dalton: [00:01:34] It's growing trend on the podcast throughout the pandemic to be talking more and more about adventures you can have on the bicycle and on a gravel bicycle. [00:01:43] So I was excited when the team at TDA cycling reached out to me and informed me about the new guided bike packing trip that they're offering this year. Yeah. We'll definitely get into the details about that, but I'd love for you to give the listener a little bit of your background. It's so diverse as an adventurer that I think it's relevant to the trip and just the experience that gravel cyclists will tend to have when they go out on their first bike packing expedition. [00:02:15] Ben Shillington: [00:02:15] Yeah, sure. Yeah I guess they're given a full CV. I've had the opportunity and pleasure, to work full time in the adventure guiding industry. So I started professionally, making money When I was 18. So I've been guiding and instructing in a variety of different fields from obviously cycle touring and bike packing mountaineering and tracking polar style trips, winter camping, so on and so forth. [00:02:38]So I've been able to have the opportunity to travel all over the world, leading expeditions or guiding on expeditions at least and instructing and educating folks in a variety of different skill sets. Yeah, over the last two decades. Yeah, I [00:02:52] Craig Dalton: [00:02:52] think that's so interesting bringing that broader adventure guide and instructor mentality to cycling. [00:02:59] I think [00:03:00] most of us, we'd get a bike as a child and we learned to ride it. And as we become passionate about cycling, we just ride further a field and get off road, et cetera. But it's not often we think about the need for guidance or instruction. Whereas in other sports, certainly mountaineering getting a mentor and getting guidance and instruction is so critical to your own personal safety and your ability to tackle more adventurous mountains and situations. [00:03:30] It's great to see that philosophy come into cycling via TDA cycling. [00:03:36] Ben Shillington: [00:03:36] Yeah. Yeah. We're pretty excited about that. as you've mentioned there at the top of this, that this is a new I guess a Avenue or a new venture for TDA global cycling. So TDA has been guiding cycling trips all over the world and pretty spicy ones. [00:03:50]And as far as adventure goes and getting into some, areas that you may not be it may not be first on your bucket list to think about doing something like that yourself. But the whole concept of that bike packing is to bring a little bit of an educational as well. [00:04:04]As the experiential kind of option to the table where folks can come out on this trip and although we're providing some security and we're, as far as some amenities and backups so on and so forth. We're also able to it gives them skills at the same time. [00:04:21]So that folks may feel a little bit more empowered or a little bit more confident on going out and doing their own maybe backyard adventures. And as they build [00:04:30] those skills and that confidence maybe take that a little bit farther on [00:04:32] Craig Dalton: [00:04:32] their own. Yeah, absolutely. So stepping back for a second about TDA cycling, I. [00:04:38] Since it was a, I almost say it was a bit of an understatement to speak to how crazy these trips are that they've put together. Okay. I know you mentioned to me offline that you guided a three and a half month long silk road bike packing trip for that company. I [00:04:57] Ben Shillington: [00:04:57] did. Yeah. And that was a, that was my first trip that I did with TDA. [00:05:01]And it was it was quite the experience, especially as leading that trip and guiding on that trip. Yeah. So it was a multi month three and a half months, I think pretty close. And we rode from Istanbul, Turkey to Beijing, China. So I think that would be what seven or eight countries that we specifically road through across the way. [00:05:18]So you can imagine a variety of different borders to cross a lot of different cultures to encounter quite a few stories because although, you have a plan and a backup plan, there's a lot of unforeseen little adventures that can arise on the way. We can't, I'd say probably 75% of the way. [00:05:35] And as I'd mentioned before probably say about 25%, that would be in what you may call a hotel. And especially as we got a little bit further East in the more populated Eastern side of China crossing the Caspian sea being I wouldn't say stranded, but I guess stranded on on a Russian barge across the Caspian sea to hitchhike in somewhere equipment across the the mountains from Turkistan into China and [00:06:00] bypassing a war and a whole bunch of intermittent little surprises along the way were a couple of the a couple of the. [00:06:07]Adventurous port. So that particular expedition with TDA [00:06:11] Craig Dalton: [00:06:11] amazing. When I think of bicycle tour companies, I think of the typical, or we're going to take you to the Alps or the Pyrenees and France and the week long cycling trip. So to learn about a company that is doing not only multi-week, but multi month trips, it's pretty amazing to check out. [00:06:30] Ben Shillington: [00:06:30] Yeah, for sure. And as you mentioned, it's these are bike paths or cycling expeditions really. Because, although there's an a to B there's no real guarantees, but the the skill set that TDA and primary staff have for keeping the thumb on the pulse and knowing what's going on internationally and having communications. [00:06:47] And these guys are experts at logistics and problem solving. And it's just amazing. Anytime that do get the opportunity to work with these guys they can make pretty much anything happen and deal with things in such a calm and collected manner that you know, even as a. A professional guide and I've worked in a whole bunch of different genres that always something to learn with how these guys are able to choreograph and really have these successful trips going through these amazing areas that you may not have otherwise thought you could even expose yourself to. [00:07:18] Yeah, there's [00:07:18] Craig Dalton: [00:07:18] absolutely both an art and a science to bring a group through. Some of these countries, even like landing in the airport and fi figuring out how to get your gear together and how [00:07:30] to get the right Porter or the right car, having someone in the background, just handling those logistics can make something that's still truly going to be an Epic adventure. [00:07:40] That's going to push her personal limits just a little bit easier and frankly, a little bit safer to pull off. [00:07:46] Ben Shillington: [00:07:46] Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So the individual still has to have their head in the game to make it through whatever that day's offering is. But like we keep mentioning, it's some of those really off the beat challenges that may come in that we don't have, that your average lady or gentleman wouldn't have experienced with that we can take [00:08:02] Craig Dalton: [00:08:02] care of. [00:08:03] As someone who's approaching, guiding that three and a half month trip with clients, was there criteria or communication with the client and the advance to make sure that they were prepared both physically and mentally for that type of trip. [00:08:19] Ben Shillington: [00:08:19] Yeah. So for most of these TDA trips and especially these longer ones and moving into the bike packing one, there's a lot of communication that comes ahead. [00:08:26]So that people understand what they're signing up for, want to make sure that the experience that they're signing up for is. Is what they are actually considering. Sometimes things might look different on a webpage or in a description than what you have in your own mind. [00:08:40] So the communications through email phone conversations happened way ahead of time. And then there's a bit of consulting. So on these other, the classic TDA tours there's bulletins that go out bike checks, medicals. Yeah. Gear, packing request sheets, or even mandatory, like on some of these trips, if we go back to the silk road, right? [00:08:59] You could only [00:09:00] bring, these two size bags and if it didn't fit, you weren't allowed to bring it on. You had to have these X amount of spare parts and nothing extra, so on and so forth. Because. The environment is changing so much that you can't be overburdened. So being selective with what you have, but making sure that folks bring the right things with them especially if there's no opportunity or limited opportunity to top up on those supplies. [00:09:23] So yeah, a lot of work goes in to getting people to buy into the trip objective and be as ready as possible. For day one, starting out on some of these bigger journeys. [00:09:35] Craig Dalton: [00:09:35] Was your experience that the relative fitness level of the clients made it so that it was a kind of simpatico team? [00:09:41] Or did you have outliers one way or the other. [00:09:44] Ben Shillington: [00:09:44] No. There's a suggested level of, fitness or strength or fitness would probably be the the right word, but no it varies across the board and my experiences with the trips that I've ran with TDA specifically you set that kind of expectation. [00:09:57] So people know physically what they're getting themselves into. And traditionally, just because of the longevity and the amount of organization people have on their end, To prepare to depart or leave, their lives behind for a month or three months. That general conditioning is there and, we hear it often sounds cliche maybe, but it's so much more in your mind than it is in your body. [00:10:18] That if you arrive with the right Headspace or you can keep your head in the right Headspace, the body's going to catch up eventually. So the spread across the day and these trips is, not particular riding in a solid group where everybody has to maintain a [00:10:30] minimal pace. There's a briefing in the morning, there's a general layout of the description of the route and the directions. [00:10:36] And, as obviously as times moved on, it's went into you being able to have GPX files. But it's always good to pair that up with the map and people can just. Unfold as they see fit and they'll check in, at a particular, lunch points throughout the day. So whether that ride day is a hundred or 190 kilometers, that are a particular spot where they'll check in for some food they'll need to arrive in camp. [00:10:57] There's always a sweep rider. And depending on the trip, there'll be an emergency vehicle out there. Even though these clients will be spread out, over, tens or, Maybe half, maybe 50 kilometers worth of terrain. We always kinda got an eye on where everybody is and they can just roll in at their own leisure because the whole objective of a lot of these trips is to connect people with the region that you're traveling in. [00:11:19] And the beauty of the bike is being able to move swiftly and efficiently, but also you can slow down and you can get off to check anything out that you see or, have those personal encounters and just be in the moment. [00:11:30]Craig Dalton: [00:11:30] Yeah. Absolutely. It makes it so special. And I think part of getting out there and nature often is experiencing a little solitude and a little time by yourself. [00:11:40] So doing that in foreign country, and as you said, to be able to experience the community and the food at your own pace is a really nice benefit and really adds to that spirit of adventure. I imagine. [00:11:53] Ben Shillington: [00:11:53] Yeah. And, and everybody has their own objective, right? So they might sign up to bike from Istanbul to Beijing, but, you might be a history [00:12:00] buff or you may, maybe you might be a fitness buff and you want to crush those miles as hard and fast as you can every single day. [00:12:05]Cause that's your goal. Maybe you might be into food or photography. Being able to give folks a bit of a heads up on what they may encounter and how they may get the most out of that experience. Then as long as they're not in a. A major time restriction, everybody can take that day in as they see fit. [00:12:22] Craig Dalton: [00:12:22] Yeah. We could continue to talk about the silk road all day because it's an area that I'm personally fascinated in and I've seen some of the bike packing events over in that region. It looks stunning. It looks rugged. It looks remote. It just looks like the place that any adventurer would dream of going. [00:12:39] Yeah, for sure. Transitioning over to the bike packing Quebec trip, that's on the calendar for this year. Let's talk about some of the details where it starts and stops the dates. And then we can get into kind of what the rider should experience and what you're looking to provide to them. Sure. [00:12:58] Ben Shillington: [00:12:58] Yeah. So the bike pack in Quebec, it's a Walton Quebec, the province of Quebec here in Canada, which is on the Eastern side of the country. [00:13:06]It's a, about a 15 day trip total that's with pre posts and the starting, or the preparation day will happen on August the 14th, which would be a Saturday. So it'd be day one, stage zero. So we have two days of prep that's happening in Ottawa where we can come together. And do a little bit of a equipment check, build up the bikes. [00:13:26]Just an overall shakedown in preparation because we will be [00:13:30] consulting with declines beforehand on, helpi…

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In the Dirt 19: Tire Volume, Vaccinations and Road Trips Apr 13, 2021

Show notes

This week on In the Dirt, we tackle tire volume (courtesy of a Rene Herse discussion in The Ridership), Road Tripping, Group Riding, the AZT 750 and vaccinations. Support the Podcast Rene Herse Tire Volume Discussion Join The Ridership Episode Transcription (please excuse any errors) GRP In The Dirt Ep. 19 [00:00:00] Craig: [00:00:00] Randall welcome to the show [00:00:01] Randall: [00:00:01] Always a pleasure to be with you Craig. How are you my friend? [00:00:04] Craig: [00:00:04] I'm doing good. At this point I think you can almost say Craig welcome to the show [00:00:09] Randall: [00:00:09] Yeah you're still hosting vastly more often than I am so I need to up my game here. [00:00:16] Craig: [00:00:16] Speaking of upping your game you've transported yourself yet again since our last broadcast So you were in Utah [00:00:23] Where are you? [00:00:23]Randall: [00:00:23] So I am back in San Francisco staying in the marina for the month I was very fortunate to have some friends who were out of town and just said here are the keys to the apartment So I have been road tripping and house sitting and otherwise Taking advantage of a very flexible situation over these months which has been great [00:00:41] Craig: [00:00:41] Yeah it was cool on your way back from Utah did see you in Palm desert California was nice for an hour for a coffee and a little conversation [00:00:51] Randall: [00:00:51] Yeah [00:00:52] we had a coffee and a slush tone My Watching your son go down and slip and slide the bunch of other kids in Palm desert [00:00:58]Craig: [00:00:58] That may be interesting to some of our listeners I think where are you headed next even more interesting is that before or after you headed to the grand canyon [00:01:06] Randall: [00:01:06] That [00:01:06] was after So I had been in Southern Utah for a couple of weeks podding with a couple of friends and actually my youngest sister which was great So we hit up Bryce and Zion and a few different Parks in that area a lot of trail running a lot of hiking and a lot of just being outside Brought a fire pit along since sitting around sitting outside around a fire pit making things in the walk really lovely time and [00:01:30] a reminder of what life was like before pandemic two of my friends had been vaccinated and the rest of us got tested And so we did it in his safe away as we could and then being [00:01:40] Craig: [00:01:40] It's so nice to have some of that Normalicy creeping back into our lives I feel the same thing There's just been some casualness to my interactions with people that wasn't present A month ago prior to me getting the first shot of the vaccination Anyway [00:01:55] Randall: [00:01:55] Yeah And I just got my first shot today which I'm very pleased about and it's no panacea the effectiveness with new variants is still being tested and is shown to be a little bit less or potentially quite a bit less effective with new variants and then there's still research to be done on how long it lasts But with boosters and with more people having some degree of immunity does seem like the worst is behind us which is such relief Plus the risk of serious illness is significantly lessened with these vaccines to so strongly encourage everybody to take advantage as it's opening up to the full population [00:02:30]Craig: [00:02:30] And after this is published tomorrow I'm going away for my second shot So I'm excited about that. [00:02:35] Randall: [00:02:35] Very cool Very cool [00:02:37] Craig: [00:02:37] So you actually made it you actually made it into the grand canyon Did you not [00:02:41] Randall: [00:02:41] I did after I left my group of friends and my younger sister there drove down to the south rim and camped out and then woke up the next morning had a lovely breakfast and coffee on the rim and then ran down to the river A really nice way to spend a day got back up at about one o'clock or so one 30 [00:03:00] then, Had a beverage with a friend in Flagstaff and then continued on to Sedona [00:03:05] Craig: [00:03:05] Nice Is that a 3000 foot drop off the edge [00:03:09] Randall: [00:03:09] I think it's 48 [00:03:11] [00:03:11] Craig: [00:03:11] Been a hell of a day of getting back out [00:03:13] Randall: [00:03:13] Yeah I was more beat than I was expecting to be but granted it was a bit brazen of me to do aGrand Canyon run relatively off the couch. I haven't been training much at all I've been using this time to Recover overall And I was definitely hurting towards the end of it but it was something I'd been wanting to do for some time and was really a day well spent [00:03:33] Craig: [00:03:33] Yeah the one time I went down there I remember the way out It was like it was all good until it wasn't and that's like still got another 1500 feet to hike out of here [00:03:42] Randall: [00:03:42] Yeah Yeah It was it was stunning though I just went didn't out and back on the south Kaibab trail for those in the know or who are curious there's also you can do rim to rim I didn't do that People who do that rim to rim in a day that's pretty ambitious and you can also go up the Angel's Landing trail I believe which is a bigger loop which I didn't tackle because it was another seven miles of flats And I didn't need that. [00:04:05] Craig: [00:04:05] Okay Hey did you know that the Arizona trail race the AZT there's the 350 and the 750 And the 750 involves hiking the grand canyon rim to rim with your bike on your back [00:04:21] your tires are not allowed to touch the ground. You can't ride in that park as you probably saw, so to complete the Arizona trail 750 [00:04:30] you have to hike down and out the other side [00:04:33] Randall: [00:04:33] oh that sounds awful and even if you were allowed to ride your bike down it would probably be a bad idea at least not without a proper dual suspension mountain bike with knobbies And on which case you have that much more bike to carry up all the stuff that is completely unrideable [00:04:50] Craig: [00:04:50] Yeah for the listener There are a few really good documentaries I've seen on Netflix I believe Maybe Amazon prime about the AZT 350 and the 750 Really cool, Definitely not gravel bike terrain It's purportedly a very difficult Rocky route In fact many people find it just too rough to even attempt but it's one of these bike packing races that has a grand de par day And people just go off and it was finished Days and weeks apart from one another [00:05:22] Randall: [00:05:22] Okay So people are stretching it out over a period of time enjoying the scenery It's not like a 24 hour slog or something like that where people are just knocking out 300 400 miles a go. [00:05:33] Craig: [00:05:33] It's longer than that but it's definitely raced So I think every year there's people who are doing it as dare I say tourists but that's probably not the right word but there are definitely people going forward and there's definitely an FK T For the AZT Three 50 and the seven 50 that people are gunning for periodically [00:05:51]Randall: [00:05:51] Beast mode. That's that's a lot of riding or more than I I have the stomach for at the moment [00:05:57] Craig: [00:05:57] Exactly So speaking of riding [00:06:00] and racing I actually had a good time I think both Saturday and Sunday I saw the return of proper gravel racing. And while it may be a little too soon for me to don a number of both physically and really just where I'm at in terms of the pandemic it was really cool to see my buddy Sam Ames' race the rock cobbler go off outside of Bakersfield in California The race has been around a number of years He's been a guest on the podcast I was excited to see they were sponsored by Bianchi this year So getting a little bit more resources behind the event. Sam's known for the quirkiness of his events. The first year I think had riders ride through someone's house part of the course Which is crazy So I was waited with bated breath to see what's was going to be the shenanigan of the year And the one thing I saw Courtesy of our friends at pure gravel who were filming a lot of it Was they had a ball pit can say from the footage I saw unequivocally If you're ever presented with a ball pit in a gravel race do not try to ride it I think 100% of the people I saw crashed and some crashed heavily [00:07:13] Randall: [00:07:13] How deep is this ball pit I suppose there's like a there's a zone where if it's not deep enough it's really bad. But if it's deep enough it's you're still going to crash but it'll be delightful. [00:07:23] Craig: [00:07:23] Yeah I think it was I think it was not deep enough for the way that people were grimacing when they stood up [00:07:30] [00:07:29] Randall: [00:07:29] Oh geez [00:07:31] Craig: [00:07:31] But anyway I mean that the guys again follow pure gravel on Instagram They've got some footage of that race and I think people get a kick out of and then another account on Instagram I started following with Southeast gravel And there was event called the Greenwood gravel grinder which had some hitters out in it Out on the east coast and it was fun they had a motorcycle out there capturing footage So it reminded me of maybe mid south in 2019 where I was just able to sit as an armchair quarterback and watch athletes just rip through these gravel courses fun Again we were as we were talking about a few minutes ago Just the sort of senses of a return to normalcy beginning to be there And so that was a lot of fun to see [00:08:13] Randall: [00:08:13] Excellent Yeah I have a couple of events that I'm looking at for the late spring, early summer on the east coast And It does feel like these things can be pulled off safely Now granted with a lot of good protocol and people adhering to it [00:08:27] Craig: [00:08:27] Yeah I think when you subtract out maybe the food and beverages afterwards or at least alternate how they're delivered you really do have the opportunity If writers are being safe then I think you can pull these things off [00:08:40] Randall: [00:08:40] Yeah I think the biggest thing is out on that I can think of is like you can stagger the starts So people are all grouped together but really having a rule around drafting and things like that Cause it's actually in that draft That is also the sweet spot for any sort of vapor coming out of one's mouth And so it's a good place to get a good dose of [00:09:00] COVID if you're drafting somebody [00:09:02] Craig: [00:09:02] That's the trickiest thing for me because as when I'm dying late in the race if I see a wheel to follow I'm definitely going to hop on [00:09:08] Randall: [00:09:08] Yeah Yeah It definitely needs to be an explicit rule that stated and that everyone agrees to I think so for all you event organizers out there something to consider [00:09:19] Craig: [00:09:19] another event popped onto my radar that I thought the listener might be interested in in Trinidad Colorado lifetime who's the owner of crusher and the Tuscher and Unbound gravel formerly dirty Kanza And started a new event called the rad dirt Fest And it's part running festival part gravel festival [00:09:38]Long time listeners may be familiar with Trinidad Colorado because I had an interview back in 2019 With Ron Della Rocha reached out to me and said I really want to make this region of Colorado which is in the The very Southern tip very close to New Mexico A gravel destination because we've got phenomenal roads We've got some nice mountain passes just a perfect place for gravel racing So it was interesting And I reached out to Juan and asked him if he had been in contact with the lifetime team And he said he had interesting that they're picking another kind of mountain community To impact and hopefully in a very positive way for a region that doesn't have going on Now that certain industries have left the region [00:10:25]Randall: [00:10:25] Very cool it's springtime in the gravel events world [00:10:29] Craig: [00:10:29] Yes [00:10:30] the blossoming of gravel again once again hopefully this tail end of the year is were hoping 2020 would be where gravel events were plentiful The investment and organization levels were continued to increase and improve And people were just out there having a blast [00:10:47]Randall: [00:10:47] And it ties into the other end of the gravel event spectrum now that we are going to chat about today which is impromptu gatherings of people and being able to facilitate that more effectively [00:11:00] Craig: [00:11:00] Yeah Yeah [00:11:01] exactly Speaking of impromptu gatherings you had a bit of an adventure last weekend right [00:11:07] Randall: [00:11:07] I had a great adventure so talk about quirky events.PanocheSo there's the the super pro series here in California which my good friend Isaac has done in the past and has volunteered for And so he had all the beta on the route that we did in the Panoche Hills which is not a very well known area of California but it is stunningly beautiful And we got there it's halfway between LA and San Francisco off the five So off the five kind of and then if you go west of there on the other side is Hollister and there's Panoche road That goes through and it's a pockmarked paved road but lots of potholes but I was fine barnstorming it in my Prius So a really stunning area And we got there before everything had dried out So you had these beautiful hues of different greens and wild flowers out and then some brown Hills in the distance and a good amount of [00:12:00] elevation I think the highest point is 3000 plus hella steep like brutally steep in sections both at the end down so we definitely got worked and it was a just a really delightful time weather couldn't have been better And we stayed at the Mercey Hot Springs which is a stunning little sanctuary in the middle of this desert area Where there's the only Grove of trees for some distance and it's just filled with birds that wake you up in the morning and you wake up to a beautiful sunrise really fantastic [00:12:29] Craig: [00:12:29] That's awesome How would you characterize the dirt as compared to Marin county [00:12:33]Randall: [00:12:33] Marin county the actual trails themselves are way more fun to ride I would say what's unique about being out there is the vistas and the beauty of the terrain and the fact that you can be so remote So close to a major metropolitan area it was just gorgeous for that And being able to do a monster loop and just see the whole ridge line that you're going to tackle as you're riding [00:12:56] Craig: [00:12:56] Was it a sort of double track slash fire road Or were you on single track [00:13:00]Randall: [00:13:00] Mostly Doubletrack And some of it was properly fun and technical I tend to like the faster flowy mixed Doubletrack single track stuff that we have here in the bay but this was rewarding in a different way This was a cover lots of ground slog your way up a big hill Get a beautiful view rewarding ride [00:13:19] Craig: [00:13:19] So out of intellectual curiosity if you were living in that area you think your wheel set would be different than it normally is And for normal I always have in my mind that you're [00:13:30] a 650x47 guy [00:13:32] Randall: [00:13:32] Yeah actually no I wouldn't run any more and I wouldn't run any less in Marine I would run more and in fact in when we'll keep that mostly under wraps but I do have some plans for something that would allow for a little bit more in the future [00:13:47] Craig: [00:13:47] Yeah I was find it interesting as everybody knows I'm usually in that 650x47 although I…

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ENVE Custom Road: Neil Shirley Apr 06, 2021

Show notes

This week we sit down with Neil Shirley to discuss the new ENVE custom road bike. Yes, that is not a typo, we are talking about a road bike. :). ENVE Custom Road Website Join The Ridership Support the podcast Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos): Enve Custom Road Interview Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the show, we have Neil Shirley from envy on to talk about the ENVE custom road. You heard me correct custom road. [00:00:17]Not to worry. We're not renaming the show, the road ride, but I thought this project was so interesting. And how they're manufacturing in the United States. That was worth highlighting. [00:00:27]In last week's in the dirt episode, we had so many questions about how envy was pulling off this custom road. . That I thought it was worth talking to the team at ENVE and who better? Than to talk to our old friend, Neil, Shirley. [00:00:39]The gravel ride podcast is supported by a limited number of sponsors as well as listeners. Like you. If you're interested in supporting the show please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride [00:00:52]And now let's jump right into my conversation. Neil Welcome to the show [00:00:57]Neil Shirley: [00:00:57] Thanks for having me on Craig I'm excited to talk bikes [00:01:01] Craig Dalton: [00:01:01] You're back again You're in a rare breed of second time guests on the gravel ride podcast [00:01:07] Neil Shirley: [00:01:07] Really Wow It's been a how long has it been two and a half three years since I was on the show last time [00:01:12] Craig Dalton: [00:01:12] Yeah cause I think it was just before you moved out to Utah joined the team at ENVE [00:01:18] Neil Shirley: [00:01:18] Yeah I'm a Yeah happy to be back thanks for letting that making it happen [00:01:22]Craig Dalton: [00:01:22] When you work for a company like envy and you drop a project like envy custom road Despite being called the gravel ride [00:01:30] podcast I was instantly drawn To having this conversation with you [00:01:34]Neil Shirley: [00:01:34] It's an exciting exciting bike but the whole project itself is really cool because as I'm sure You're thinking like a couple little tweaks to some of the molds and all of a sudden it's a gravel bike too Right [00:01:48] Craig Dalton: [00:01:48] Yeah absolutely Why don't we start off Neil I'm going to refer everybody to our earlier conversation to learn a little bit about your background but for the listener Neil's a long time road mountain gravel athlete And it's really put in a lot of effort into the gravel community As has envy it's been a company that has been just thinking a lot about gravel and putting very thoughtful products in products that are used by a lot of custom builders Your handlebars are super well popular in the gravel cycling community But why don't you talk a little bit about envy as a company And where it got its start And then we'll get into this new project [00:02:27] Neil Shirley: [00:02:27] Yeah so envy we're located in Ogden Utah So just about 40 minutes North of salt Lake and we have a large military base just just South of a vog Din And so the area for a small area it has a lot of kind of has a long history of composites and some good engineers come from the area Envy was founded in Ogden 15 years ago And It's founded by a group of four people that really wanted they had the carbon expertise Had an idea around [00:03:00] manufacturing in the U S and We're all avid cyclists and decided there's a room there's room in the market in a need for some of the products that they really wanted to ride and experience themselves that just really didn't exist or at least not at the level because they wanted them out that's where envy started with mountain rims and then moved into road rims and just as the company progressed was able to dial in aerodynamics and the road side of the business really continued to take off three years ago We moved into a new facility still here in Ogden but really what makes envy special It isn't inherently that us manufacturing is superior to manufacturing anywhere else It's I think really what makes envy special is the fact that everything all of our rims are engineering this new bike that will jump into everything is done in house So we have [00:04:01]Design engineering Prototyping manufacturing shipping marketing everything under one roof and sit the collaboration between the different teams that actually get a product to market is all done Cohesively and efficiently there isn't shipping stuff back and forth Asia to iterate on and test it It's all done [00:04:25]In the same building here in Austin And so that's I think that's really what makes us [00:04:30] special as a brand [00:04:31] Craig Dalton: [00:04:31] is a really special thing to highlight I think oftentimes the layman doesn't realize how long it takes to develop an iterate on products Having had a little experience as a manufacturer myself knowing that you can go to the factory floor Make a tweak test it very quickly It's just so much more efficient than shipping a product back to Asia with notes scribbled on it and having a Skype conversation then getting a factory overseas to ship it back to you Each one of these cycles takes two or three months to sort itself out So you can imagine that just how long it takes to get a product to market [00:05:09] Neil Shirley: [00:05:09] Yeah you're right It's the time and the expense honestly to have shipping back and forth oftentimes having an engineer that's having to spend A considerable amount of time in Asia and coming back and forth And so just to be able to do it To do it right here And honestly lunch ride and I mean we have so many of the people within envy We have 200 employees here at envy and quite a few of us are avid cyclist some of the engineers are elite level cyclist on the line the daily run lunch ride typically some prototype or sample product is getting tested and A day or two later maybe that rim that someone's riding is going to be iterated on a new prototype is made and a day or two later we're out test riding it on the lunch right Again So that's [00:06:00] a spring through fall is what you can expect [00:06:03] Craig Dalton: [00:06:03] Super interesting as you the components gain steam presumably at some point you moved into manufacturing tube sets for other builders Can you talk about that process and what that's been like [00:06:17] Neil Shirley: [00:06:17] Yeah the tube sets so early on with envy we really And still what we're doing now We looked at the market and w we could carve out a spot for ourselves And not that really came at the time was serving the custom handmade builders that were predominantly Using steel or titanium We We were able to roll tubes and do carbon tubes them And we still do it's a very that part of the business shrunk as more bikes are molded now molded carbon now but we've think we still work with Calfee doing some of their tubes we worked with Parley in the past independent fabrication So of the more notable handmade builders we've been able to service them and still to this day I mean a lot of those builders are using the forks Forks is a large part of our business Yeah the builders have been really They've been a huge part of our success [00:07:18] Craig Dalton: [00:07:18] I have to say that That [00:07:19] Neil Shirley: [00:07:19] where we're at today [00:07:20] Craig Dalton: [00:07:20] the envy builder Roundup is one of my favorite events of the year [00:07:25] Neil Shirley: [00:07:25] Yeah [00:07:26] Craig Dalton: [00:07:26] so [00:07:27] great Just looking at all those bikes there They all [00:07:30] everybody comes out It's like the handmade bike show [00:07:33] Neil Shirley: [00:07:33] Yeah I'm excited unfortunately The North American handmade by Cho is not happening this year And so this will be year three for us for the builder Roundup it's June 25th This year and [00:07:48]Fingers crossed we'll be able to last year it was just a virtual show which was great It challenged us in new ways and it allowed us to really take that content and serve it to a bigger audience not just doing the open house this year we'll do the same but we'll also have an open house so hopefully we can have Have people out here we'll have a number of the builders here inside envy visiting us And of course the bikes on display So yeah it's It's really cool to see every each of these builders their own idea of what their ideal bike is and the custom builders they're ahead of the curve in what trends are because can make a bike so quickly If you have to if you're waiting on Cannondale or specialized or some of these brands like they're doing great stuff but there there are two years behind what the custom builders are doing so you can look and see what going on with these builders and see what How people are riding bikes how much tire clearance they want I mean there was a lot of were a number of gravel bikes at the show last year with 700 by 50 tires on it It's Whoa this is a trend I mean Mo bigger and bigger tires Anyway it's really cool see what each builder has [00:09:00] in mind and how their bikes are being used [00:09:02] Craig Dalton: [00:09:02] I remember seeing that last year And I think it coincided with the introduction of your adventure fork If I'm not mistaken but just seeing that trend which is aligned with where I'm going personally I think bigger and bigger tires just fits where I want to go and what I want to do on the gravel bike Which is interesting And I think a lot of the conversation on the podcast this year Has been around Bike packing and adventure rides As the events got taken off the calendar More and more riders were looking to just create their own adventures [00:09:34]Neil Shirley: [00:09:34] Yeah I mean that's Everyone was some of the rides I saw on Strava People I was following were doing it It was like almost without the racing They had were no limits or boundaries 200 plus mile rides on a Saturday and multi-day bike packing rides So people got really creative I was I was jealous Some of the rides that people were doing because I mean that's really That's the spirit of want to say just gravel because there's you can do it on the road too but I think truly gravel brings that out more and Allows people just to have More of that adventure that they're looking for And that usually leads to just some over the top rides [00:10:22] Craig Dalton: [00:10:22] Yeah And as I've been talking about a lot lately just the idea for me about calm combining road and off-road [00:10:30] riding In creating these loops that are just atypical from what I would normally do is really inspiring me for 2021 to frankly set my bike up a little differently and definitely think about where I'm going to go differently [00:10:45] Neil Shirley: [00:10:45] Yeah [00:10:47] Yeah I agree I [00:10:48] Craig Dalton: [00:10:48] Yeah I've personally been on a little bit of a road kick which I'd never thought I'd say I think I've just it's I had a friend come into town who had only had a road bike and I just I remit started to remember all the things I used to love about road riding So when this new project got publicized the NV custom road bike it was like it couldn't have been more perfect timing Let's sit down and talk about it So let's it sounds like the bike was a long time coming So do you want to talk about The history behind the bike and then we'll get into some of the details [00:11:21] Neil Shirley: [00:11:21] Sure So the bike [00:11:23] The [00:11:23] bike was much the original product that envy it was when envy was found that it was actually called the edge And then after about a year and a half two years The name was changed to envy but it was one of the very original products and it kept kidding Getting pushed back because there was a greater the management team felt that there was Greater potential with expanding the wheel line and then components from there And frame just get caught in a got kicked down the road a bit and then It was two and a half years ago that the project started in earnest [00:12:00] and it was That was when the engineers actually started really looking at what is the spike and a B In 2016 envy released the 4.5 AR wheels which is one of our still to this day One of our best-selling wheel set The problem with that wheel set is that at the time in 2016 there were very few frames that wheel work in so it's a 25 millimeter internal which and it's made for 28 plus millimeter tire So it was the wheel design for Dimension data the world tour team that we're working with to race at Perry Ruby so they could still have aerodynamics that they would want on a race wheel set with a high volume tire and they're just very few frames that had the clearance to a few race frames performance bikes [00:12:54] were that [00:12:55] would allow that size wheel entire That's when the engineers were like okay what would what would this modern road bike look like so that kind of was the catalyst of okay let's put together some ideas So then finally two and a half years ago They actually started drawing it out and then it's been about a year and a half that we've been riding prototype frames The first I got on the version one prototype The last would have been a year ago in January and then That was looking [00:13:30] at okay what are some of the geometries and then from there what does [00:13:33]What is the laminate The layup look like how steep is it Stiff enough as a two-step just understanding the ride quality and then I've for about the last three and a half four months I've been on the final version which is the bike that we just launched last week It seems To us around here It's been a really fast project and stuff happening quickly but now stepping back and thinking like wow two and a half years that's a really long time [00:13:55]Craig Dalton: [00:13:55] So the bike that was launched is available One of the couple of points I wanted to clarify because I was a little bit confused when I first read it it's available with two different geometries of the race and the all road And then from there there's additional amounts of customization that are available on a rider by rider basis [00:14:15]Neil Shirley: [00:14:15] It is it [00:14:16] is custom geometry When What that means though What we're customizing is the fit Basically the stack and the reach is what we're allowing customers to customize And so want to make sure that each rider gets exactly where they need to be and we're not fitting them on the bike with a stock Top two blanks [00:14:43] A stock [00:14:44] head to blanks and then just using STEM length to try and dial them in All of those are customizable not allowing people to do which is why we have a race in an all road We have [00:15:00] geometry To determine basically the ride that we want each of these bikes to deliver so we're not allowing customers to say make a gravel bike out of our road bike we're not allowing them to adjust chainstay length Those Those numbers We are We have determined what those are with our fit calculator then when a customer reserves the bike And they walked through geometry with our customer service rep that is dedicated to the bike we look at currently riding if they've had a bike fit A number of different things to determine the best fit for them And so what we can do If someone is writing say a specialize…

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In the Dirt 18: Things are starting to move Mar 30, 2021

Show notes

This week Randall and Craig discuss the new ENVE Custom Road Project, SPD Power Meter Pedals from Garmin and what vaccinations are going to mean for our own group riding. Links: ENVE Custom Road Garmin Rally SPD Power Pedal DynaPlug Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Full Transcription: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast i'm your host craig dalton i'll be joined shortly by my co-host randall jacobs. [00:00:10]Every two weeks Randall and I discuss how gravel cycling is fitting into our lives in that particular week. And also look at recent product drops and events being announced in the industry. It's been quite quiet over the last few months, but I feel like with vaccinations coming, we're starting to see new product launches and a lot more talk about events. In person later this year. [00:00:35] [00:00:35]If you're a first time listener. Welcome. In the alternating weeks, I have long form interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. With a goal of shedding light on the ever nuance sport of gravel cycling. [00:00:50]We've got quite an extensive back catalog of episodes with about a hundred already recorded. So if there's an event or product or an athlete that you're curious [00:01:00]About just scroll back in your podcast feed. I think you'll find we've covered a lot of territory over the last two and a half years. The podcast is sponsored by a small number of supporters, but mainly by listeners, like you. Simply visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. [00:01:19]And choose how you'd like to support the show. Your support is greatly appreciated. With that said let's dive right in to this week show. [00:01:30] [00:01:30] Randall. Good to see ya. [00:01:33] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:01:33] Good to see you as well. Craig, how have you been? [00:01:35] Craig Dalton: [00:01:35] I've been well , for some reason it feels like I haven't talked to you in a long time this week. [00:01:40]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:01:40] I have been largely off grid. So, I on a road trip was in death Valley with my colleague, Sam, and then now I'm in Southern Utah and where I've been for the past couple of weeks. [00:01:50] So it's been a good amount of time since we, [00:01:53] Craig Dalton: [00:01:53] yeah, that makes sense. That's awesome. I forgot that you were intending on meeting up with Sam. Did you guys end up camping and doing some riding together? [00:02:00]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:02:00] So we left bikes at home and I've actually left my bike at home entirely for this roughly four week trip intentionally. [00:02:06] So a lot of trail running and hiking and long walks and so on. Just because of. Yeah, I figured it's one. I have a Prius camper and so I can fit the bike, but it's a lot more work to pull it out and then put in, pull it out, lock it up, outside the car to camp and then, throw it back in and so on. [00:02:21] But then also I just wanted some time away from the bike to, so I could fall back in love with it. And I've been really enjoying trail running and going up a little bit of light mountaineering and things like that on this trip. And so. So yeah, time away. So they do [00:02:34] Craig Dalton: [00:02:34] not take away your gravel cyclist membership card if you cycle for a month. [00:02:40]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:02:40] I think I think I got a lifetime membership for the amount that I've put into this particular space. Hopefully people will forgive me for being off the bike for a bit. Yeah. It [00:02:48] Craig Dalton: [00:02:48] often feels that way. I think, I growing up in the eighties as a cyclist, more primarily in the nineties, obviously. [00:02:56] There was this going sort of vision as a [00:03:00] cyclist that you just have to ride all the time in order to be a cyclist. So it's, I'm stuck in that mentality. I sort of start to get itchy. If I take a prolonged amount of time off the bike. [00:03:12] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:03:12] Yeah, I'll be honest. Like I, my relationship to the bike is very different than it used to be. [00:03:16] I used to have that kind of compulsive need to put the miles in, but I'm really enjoying both the change of scenery, change of lifestyle, still working on the road, of course, but just a completely different Headspace and out of my usual routines and the bike being one of those. When I get back to the Bay area, I'll definitely be doing plenty of riding. [00:03:34] And then again in Boston when I'm out that way, starting probably in may. [00:03:38]Craig Dalton: [00:03:38] Yeah. I mean, the thing is, and the truth is, and everybody listening knows it. Like the bike is always there for you. And that's the beautiful thing about it. Certainly when my son was born that first year, I was pretty light on the bike and that predated my interest in gravel cycling. [00:03:53] And when I came back and discovered gravel cycling, I just sort of grabbed hold of it and was all in again. [00:04:00] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:04:00] Well, one thing I will say that I'm quite excited about is vaccination. So you got vaccinated. [00:04:05] Craig Dalton: [00:04:05] Yeah. So I'm one shot in. [00:04:07] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:04:07] Yeah. So you have the next [00:04:09] Craig Dalton: [00:04:09] one coming up. Yeah. The next one's coming up, I think April 15th. [00:04:12] And it was quite a powerful experience actually. I took the time to talk to a lot of the people who were volunteering at the vaccination site and they were like, you wouldn't believe it. Like we have people burst into tears of relief. Just to have started that process. And I definitely felt [00:04:30] that, I mean, by no means am I being cavalier in my life and my protection at this point, one shot in, and obviously my family is not vaccinated yet, but I have a sense of hope. [00:04:40] I'm really excited about more of my friends getting vaccinated and just slowly returning back. [00:04:48] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:04:48] I definitely feel that the combination of the, having the pandemic and then having the long, cold winter and both of those lifting and having the thing really excited about as well. [00:04:59] I'm here potting with friends who are themselves vaccinated met up with a couple other friends who were in the medical field and are vaccinated. And we took precautions, but we could relax a little bit and. By the time I get to Boston, I hope that group rides can be a thing again, granted with appropriate precautions and so on and trying to not have too many people out and keep some distancing and so on. [00:05:18] But with some responsible protocol, that being a thing. Yeah. [00:05:23] Craig Dalton: [00:05:23] Curious to learn sort of how we all have appropriate protocols. I know that the ridership forum, one of the members posted an article originated from USA cycling, but also offered and layered in a lot of his. Personal precautions and experiences and riding throughout the pandemic. [00:05:41] It's just going to be strange. I went on a ride over the weekend of my largest group ride in, 14 months, six people, three people vaccinated. So obviously we were massed up and trying to stay distanced, but it's weird. It's awkward to sort of be half in half out. And I think we're all going to go [00:06:00] through with this. [00:06:01]The next four or five months potentially, and it's just important that we stay strong and conservative so that we can go into the winter as a country in a good, in good position. [00:06:14] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:06:14] I think the other thing that we need to be mindful of is that these vaccines are very effective, but are not 100% effective and with new variants and so on, we might need boosters. [00:06:25] And, some degree of precaution protocol will be necessary for awhile, but to be able to know that the worst of it is over or hopefully over is an immense relief. So yeah, absolutely. With you there. I think we get mine in April when I'm back in the Bay. I think California is going to. Offer them to everybody starting either on the first or the 15th of April. [00:06:44] Craig Dalton: [00:06:44] Yeah. This is the 15th of April. It's open to everybody. And I do think, the it was like an assembly line where I went, it was in a high school gymnasium and they were just pumping people through, which is great to see. So I do think if you're motivated, you're going to be able to get in there. [00:06:59] And I, I hope my wife has sort of similarly is just going to get in on the earlier side of April yeah. To get our household vaccinated. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. But this is not a pandemic COVID medical podcast. We're here to talk about gravel bikes as usual. I feel like a few companies are starting to put new things out there, which is exciting because a few more products coming to our desks. [00:07:22] I know you sort of, one of them caught your eye and a couple of caught my eye that we should talk about. [00:07:28] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:07:28] Yeah. So mine would [00:07:30] be the Donna plugger from Dyna plug. And not that it's anything radically new, it's just a much less expensive solution to their already great Dyna plug set up. And I've been using the bacon strips just because I found the dyno plugs cheap, even though the dyno plugs are. [00:07:45] Arguably more effective or less, less fussy with this, I really have no excuse and I think neither does this will be something that I'm recommending to pretty much all of our right well, to all of our riders from here on in 25 bucks comes with four of the plugs. You can get the replacement plugs as well. [00:07:59] It's super lightweight and it just works. And it's way better than having to pull off your wheel and pop a bead and dump out your ceilings and pull a valve or pull a valve STEM out and so on and throw a tube in. So. Yeah, good job, Donna plug in making this more accessible. [00:08:15] Craig Dalton: [00:08:15] Yeah, I think that's cool. Just to drive that point home. [00:08:17] I mean, they brought the price down from 50 or 60 plus dollars in their original kits that I'd been using previously down to what is it? 29 95. So that's awesome. [00:08:28] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:08:28] 24 99, I think with these. And I believe that they're made domestically as well domestic to the U S so that's cool. [00:08:34] Craig Dalton: [00:08:34] Yeah, that's awesome. [00:08:36] It was funny. I was out Riding Laurel Del maybe three weeks ago. And I had just. I had gotten the GoPro max camera. So I've been playing around with my three 60 photography and my buddy, Jason, shout out to Jason. If he's listening, he is bombing down. There's no tomorrow through Laurel Dell having the time of his life. [00:08:55] I think he was thinking I was going to catch him, but his speed and velocity was [00:09:00] so intense. Like I kept getting close to them, him, and then losing him again. And he blasted through the rock garden at the bottom before the Creek crossing and the tire just explodes upon crossing the river. [00:09:17] So we were he was like, that was just the greatest five minutes of my cycling career. And we're like, now it's going to be the worst four hours of your life. As we hike up to the Ridge and try to find your way home, et cetera. But we had it, we had a couple of plugs which is why I'm mentioning it. [00:09:35] We plugged the tire, but it was too far gone. He'd actually dented the rim and we did have to pull it out. We put a 700 by 30 inner tube for a six 50 by 43 tire. So it was sort of overinflated on the inner tube in, and quite a bit wonky on the way out. But, we were able to ride all the way home, which I considered a victory. [00:10:02] He finally reflated again, right when we got to mill Valley. So someone was able to come back and pick them up. [00:10:09] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:10:09] Now it makes me think. He might want to add another solution, which is we have a few riders mentioned my friend Isaac before who's in the ridership and he uses the foam inserts. I can't recall which ones he's using. [00:10:20] It's the air force or one of the others, but these detonating tires and denting rooms in the process, maybe that's something to add into the package. [00:10:28] Craig Dalton: [00:10:28] Yeah. I think if you're a larger [00:10:30] rider, That seems to make a lot of sense. I didn't really think about it in that context, Jason's definitely well, over six foot tall, a bigger guy, so he's hitting things hard. [00:10:39] Those crushed core or other types of foam inserts might be something of interest. [00:10:44] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:10:44] Yeah. I actually just recommended it to one of our riders who wanted to start exploring lower pressures with our carbon rims. And it's well, they're very robustly made. And when you run them too low and you hit a rock, it's going to be a very expensive repair. [00:10:58] So, yeah. Yeah, the people I know who ride them really like them adds a little bit of weight, but if you're riding that aggressively, who cares, you're already on a very efficient machine. Yeah. [00:11:07] Craig Dalton: [00:11:07] Particularly if you're a bigger guy or gal, like why not? Right. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I have here, yeah. [00:11:14] I was going to say the thing that I've picked up over the transom was these new power meter pedals from Garmin, they're called the rally power meters. And they're built on an SPD chassis, which to my knowledge is the first sort of SPD style, power meter pedal that's existed. [00:11:36] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:11:36] I feel like there may have been another one made by Expedo or some, one of the other Taiwanese pedal makers. [00:11:44]Don't quote me on that, but these definitely look really well-made SPDs, as I ride them. I'm a big fan. They're ubiquitous. They're a little bit heavy. It adds like relative to an XD. I'm seeing XDS at 170 grams a piece. These are 220 grams. So an extra 50 grams per [00:12:00] pedal. But dual-sided power meters. [00:12:02] You can transfer them to any bike. They install really easily and you don't have to buy a set of pedals because these are your pedals. So, in all those regards, it makes sense. They're a bit pricey. I think there a thousand [00:12:13] Craig Dalton: [00:12:13] bucks. Yeah. Over a thousand bucks. So definitely pricey. I mean, I think, yeah. Well, you would know better than I, what can you get into a crank ARM-based power meter for, [00:12:23]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:12:23] so if you have crank arms that have a flat inner surface there's a good chance that four I's power meters will work for you. And this is what we recommend to our riders. Cause we have our cranks are hollow, forged aluminum, so it's a smooth surface on the back. [00:12:37] And so this is like a nine grand power meter that you can get either with a coin cell or rechargeable. They both have their upsides and downsides. I like the coin sell myself cause it lasts a really long time and you replace it really easily. And there's no port to get contaminated, but different strokes for different folks. [00:12:54]And it's 300 bucks. Now the downside is that you have to remove your crank set and ship your crank out and be without your bike for two weeks. So that's a bummer, but it works really well. It's single sided. So it's not giving you. You an average of the two sides. It's not giving you a sense of any sort of imbalance, but most people are pretty balanced and frankly, like it's accur…

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