Podcasts about Calfee

Craig Calfee is an innovative bike builder and the founder of Calfee Design. Calfee was an early adopter of carbon fiber for bike frames in 1987, and brand's ​​Tetra road bike is said to have been in production longer than any other carbon bike. You might also recognize his work with Bamboo bike frames, which he began in 1995. How did you get your start building bikes? What did people think about the carbon bike frame you debuted at Interbike in 1989? Were there concerns that carbon frames were untested? Are you still doing carbon frame production in the US? How does carbon frame repair work? Your mountain bike, the Cephal, utilizes a system called Quick Tune Steering. What's the idea behind this feature? The Cephal is a hardtail with "leaf spring chain stays."  What are the benefits to having flexible chain stays? Were you surprised about your bamboo bike frame prototype? From a practical standpoint, is bamboo a good material for building bike frames? Why do you offer so many different tandem bikes? What are the challenges associated with building a tandem, particularly a mountain tandem?  How does your electric pedal assist retrofit service work? What kind of work have you done on adaptive bikes?  What's next on the horizon for Calfee Design? Connect with Calfee Design and learn more at calfeedesign.com. Visit singletracks.com for a complete transcript of this episode. --Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/singletracks/support

It's ok to not be ok.Join us as Alison Calfee, a retired U.S. Air Force veteran shares her compelling story of overcoming severe mental health struggles and the pivotal moments that led her to embrace self-care over societal expectations. We'll unpack the challenges she faced, from confronting suicidal ideations to discovering the healing power of therapy and community support through trauma-sensitive yoga. This episode is rich with insights on how to navigate and normalize mental health struggles, offering practical advice on the importance of seeking help and rejecting the facade of being 'okay.' Alison's experiences highlight the necessity of addressing mental health proactively, the cultural shifts within the military, and the critical need for a supportive community.In this episode, we cover:Embracing self-care beyond societal judgmentsThe pivotal role of honesty in mental health recoveryThe journey through different therapy styles and resilience trainingNormalizing mental health conversations within the militaryComeback Yoga and its impact on veterans' well-being ** Trigger warnings: references to sexual assault, suicidal ideations RESOURCES:Comeback YogaWebsite: https://comebackyoga.org/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuvuNTWkrTuniIydOa9Nc0gInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/comeback_yoga/Join the Strong and Resilient Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/336774597179247SHOW NOTES: https://www.christinamattisonyoga.com/blog/episode52Connect with me in the Strong and Resilient Woman Community on Facebook HERE (https://www.facebook.com/groups/yogaformilitarywomen), or on Instagram @themilitaryyogiMore about Christina Mattison and the Leading with Heart PodcastHey there! I'm Christina Mattison, an Air Force Officer, yoga teacher, dedicated wife, and proud mother of two. But most importantly, I'm here as a wellness and leadership coach for women in the military. I want you to know something: It doesn't have to be this way.I've walked in your combat boots, and I understand the chaos that often accompanies military life. But I'm here to share a powerful truth with you: You have the innate ability to transform your own life. I've personally experienced this transformation, and I've witnessed it in the lives of countless clients I've had the privilege to guide.Welcome to the Leading With Heart podcast — your ultimate resource for discovering how to infuse joy, peace, and true success into every facet of military life.**The views and opinions expressed within this podcast episode are those of the individual, and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of Defense or its components.

Burlingtonian Bill Calfee has launched Myti, an online shopping platform that aims to provide local alternatives to Amazon and other large online retailers. Working with local retailers keeps the money local and greatly cuts down on shipping and packaging costs and their effect on our environment.

Bill Calfee and Nick Adair join the show for part two of our round table conversation from grouse camp. Show Highlights: @gundogityourself ‘s camper set-up Hitting mid-season form Woodcock versus grouse cover Developing woodsmanship Hunt logs and journals - Day One Journal App Hand loads and nickel plating CONTRIBUTE | patreon.com/birdshot Follow us | @birdshot.podcast Use Promo Code | BSP20 to save 20% with onX Hunt The Birdshot Podcast is Presented By: onX Hunt, Final Rise and Upland Gun Company Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bill Calfee and Nick Adair join the show from grouse camp to discuss southern grouse hunting, grouse dogs and more. Show Highlights: A grouse hunting mentor “Old Timer Bill” Bill's first grouse Learning the habitat Tennessee ruffed grouse Sliding through Mountain-laurel Bill's thoughts on grouse dogs CONTRIBUTE | patreon.com/birdshot Follow us | @birdshot.podcast Use Promo Code | BSP20 to save 20% with onX Hunt The Birdshot Podcast is Presented By: onX Hunt, Final Rise and Upland Gun Company Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want to learn more about one of the most beautiful place in Northern New Mexico? Would you like even better to stay there in your own semi-private retreat space? Find out why we love The Grand Hacienda Inn at Abiquiu Lake on this episode with Tom and Carolyn Calfee. They are lucky enough to live in paradise and nice enough to want to share it with all of us! Links: Grand Hacienda WebsiteHacienda BlogI Love New Mexico blog pageBunny's websiteI Love New Mexico InstagramI Love New Mexico FacebookOriginal Music by: Kene Terry

Featuring innkeepers Tom & Carolyn Calfee, this episode of Big Blend Radio's 2nd Thursday "New Mexico Bed & Breakfast Association" Show focuses on The Grand Hacienda, a luxurious stay in Abiquiú Lake. Hear about the property's amenities as well as what to experience in the area including art, farmer's markets, and plenty of outdoor adventures.WATCH THIS PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/-FLnSfAnbS8Meticulously designed to frame the extraordinary desert landscape with lake views, The Grand Hacienda Estate of Abiquiú Lake is a boutique bed & breakfast inn with a culinary experience, for guests looking for the most luxurious stay in Abiquiu's Georgia O'Keeffe territory. The property is adults-only, a feast for the senses in a remote and quiet location. Modern luxuries, sophisticated services, green and eco-friendly, blended with authentic architecture and inspired adobe and southwestern design. With only three suites, the Hacienda is a serene escape and a rejuvenating retreat nestled on a mesa top overlooking Abiquiú Lake, Ghost Ranch, the Red Cliffs, Pedernal, and plains of red, yellow, purple and green. More: https://www.thegrandhacienda.com/Stay New Mexico True and Visit: https://www.nmbba.org/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Featuring innkeepers Tom & Carolyn Calfee, this episode of Big Blend Radio's 2nd Thursday "New Mexico Bed & Breakfast Association" Show focuses on The Grand Hacienda, a luxurious stay in Abiquiú Lake. Hear about the property's amenities as well as what to experience in the area including art, farmer's markets, and plenty of outdoor adventures. WATCH THIS PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/-FLnSfAnbS8 Meticulously designed to frame the extraordinary desert landscape with lake views, The Grand Hacienda Estate of Abiquiú Lake is a boutique bed & breakfast inn with a culinary experience, for guests looking for the most luxurious stay in Abiquiu's Georgia O'Keeffe territory. The property is adults-only, a feast for the senses in a remote and quiet location. Modern luxuries, sophisticated services, green and eco-friendly, blended with authentic architecture and inspired adobe and southwestern design. With only three suites, the Hacienda is a serene escape and a rejuvenating retreat nestled on a mesa top overlooking Abiquiú Lake, Ghost Ranch, the Red Cliffs, Pedernal, and plains of red, yellow, purple and green. More: https://www.thegrandhacienda.com/ Stay New Mexico True and Visit: https://www.nmbba.org/ 

In this episode of the Legal Marketing 2.0 Podcast, Guy is joined by Patrick Hayes. Patrick Hayes is a partner and chair of the Investment Management practice at Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP where he supports investment advisers and broker-dealers in the development and administration of their compliance programs, including the creation and implementation of policies and procedures governing all activities of the firm. His clients include wealth managers, private fund advisers, family offices, ERISA investment fiduciaries, dual registrants, broker-dealers, crypto-traders, mutual fund trusts, and institutional asset managers. In 2020, Hayes launched The Securities Compliance Podcast: Compliance in Context™ to serve as a personal master class for the securities industry's legal and compliance professionals, and he's a proud graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

Today our guest is Andrew Alexander, an attorney in the Intellectual Property group at Calfee, Halter and Griswold. We sit down with Andy to investigate copyright law as it relates to social media. When is it ok for a brand to repost someone else's content? What are some of the safeguards brands can put in place? What does the average user need to think about when making and posting UGC?  It turns out that because this media sector has moved far faster than case law or legislation, the answers are far from black and white – instead, they're many shades of gray.

Patricia Calfee Picache says pronouncements of the death of San Francisco are premature.

In this convo we talk with Friendship member Alex Calfee about his journey at Friendship and what it's meant to him! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/friendship/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/friendship/support

Dr. Kerl welcomes Dr. Alison Calfee. Dr. Calfee is a 2022 graduate of the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine and is currently completing a small animal rotating internship at VCA River in Chattanooga, Tennessee.In this episode, Dr. Calfee shares her thoughts on the VCA internship program, at the mid-point of her year-long assignment, as well as academic, career, and self-care advice for future veterinary professionals.Visit us on our website VCAVoice.comProduced and recorded by dādy creative

In the third episode of our new master class series on the SEC Marketing Rule! You’ll hear from host, Patrick Hayes, Calfee along with our industry panelists Genna Garver, Partner, Troutman Pepper, Bree Ward Associate, Akerman LLP, Matt Shepherd, Director, ACA Group. Together, we’ll discuss the general impact of the new Marketing rule to Private Funds. We’ll dive into the requirement to present net performance, the application of related performance to private funds, and considerations around hypothetical performance. We’ll also take a look at other relevant marketing rules and prohibitions that still apply. With just three months until the compliance date for the new rule, this series is the perfect master class to set you and your firm up for success. Listen and enjoy! Show Interview with Genna Garver, Bree Ward, Matt Shepherd 1:50: Introductions 4:12: Impact of the new rule to Private Funds 15:08: Performance 19:15: Extracted Performance 32:18: Related Performance 43:35: Hypothetical Performance 55:10: Endorsements: Replacement of Cash Solicitation Rule, Disclosures, Cap Intro Programs, and Testimonials 1:13:10: New private fund rule proposals Quotes 07:26 –“The big take-away here is that the marketing rule is a merger of the prior cash solicitation rule and the advertising rule... Out of the gate, the combined rule, on its face because of the two-pronged definition to the term advertisement bring in pooled investment vehicle private fund, in particular investors, for compliance generally for both rules and that’s a fundamental shift for how the prior rules both operated.” – Genna 14:11 – “As a practitioner, either on the legal side or the compliance side, you have to presume that written materials or recordings are going to be deemed advertisements. – Genna 18:00 – “Historically, some information has only been presented gross because it’s either mathematically difficult or impossible to come up with a net version of that number. Or is it meaningful to present a net version of that number... The problem is that the rule creates this new definition called extracted performance… The rule explicitly says, if you show extracted performance it must be shown net and that’s a problem. “ - Matt 1:14:37 – “Get your policies and procedures drafted in a way that really tries to catch the ethos of this rule. Which is: Is it fair and balanced? Are you making disclosures? And try to capture your processes in a way that makes sense, that you can justify them, and then follow them.” – Bree Resources ACA Group Marketing Rule Resource Library LinkedIn: ACA Group, Compliance in Context, NSCP Twitter: @acacompliance, @compliancepod Websites: ACA Group,

Welcome to Episode 5 of the Marketing Rule Master Class mini-series. Episode 5 focuses on testimonials, endorsements, and third-party ratings. Moderator, Patrick Hayes, Calfee and panelists Jaqueline Hummel, ACA, Anthony Dillingham, ACA, and Matt Shepherd, ACA, delve into the nuances and traps for the weary when utilizing testimonials, endorsements and third-party ratings. While the new rule is a potential game-changer for firms, actual implementation comes with caveats and compliance burdens. We hope you enjoy this installment of the Master Class mini-series! Show Interview with Jacqueline Hummel, Anthony Dillingham, Matt Shepherd 7:11: Review of the industry (social media, adoption and entanglement, live presentation/speeches, inadvertent endorsements). 45:36: Building the right disclosures (disclosure of compensation and conflicts of interest) 1:01:40: Third Party Ratings 1:08:20: How will this area be reviewed by the Division of Examinations? Quotes 07:33 - “The prior advertising rule contained an outright prohibition against the inclusion of testimonials and over time that was supplemented by a series of no-action letters where essentially the industry was writing to the SCC and saying, ‘If we do this, is this a testimonial?’ And they would say, ‘Well, maybe but not if you do it this way.’” - Matt 10:04 - “The definition of endorsement and testimonial… They’re not the same but they are very, very similar. So, just for the sake of keeping the conversation simple, I’m going to say that they’re basically the same and what’s different between the two is the identity of the person who makes that statement.” - Matt 18:48 - “You still have to remember that no matter what you put out there you are still subject to the fraud provision of the Advisers Act.” - Jacqui 31.52 – “The degree of adoption and entanglement, whether a third-party communication is even going to be deemed an advertisement of the adviser at all, is going to be dependent on the extent the adviser has adopted or entangled itself.” – Patrick 49:57 – “There is still going to be a dichotomy between state registered investment advisers and federally registered investment advisers. So, while many states will follow the SEC’s lead, there are still exceptions.” – Jacqui 1:03:32 - “It is always best practice to disclose whatever the reader, or listener, or the watcher of that marketing material would want to know. What does this rating mean in context and how did you get it?”– Jacqui Resources ACA Group Marketing Rule Resource Library LinkedIn: ACA Group, Compliance in Context, NSCP Twitter: @acacompliance, @compliancepod Websites: ACA Group,

Welcome back to Compliance In Context podcast! We are incredibly pleased to announce the release of our new master class series on the new SEC Marketing Rule! In our first episode of the master class, you’ll hear from our co-hosts, Patrick Hayes, Calfee and Carlo di Florio, ACA Group along with our industry panelists from the SEC, Steven Levine and Chris Mulligan, as we provide background on the new SEC Marketing Rule and why it was developed. We’ll cover key nuances to the rule, the founding principles behind the rule, and feedback that the SEC has received from the industry. We’ll also explore how the Division of Examinations has prepared to examine for the new rule and lessons learned from early adopters. With just three months until the compliance date for the new rule, this series is the perfect master class to set you and your firm up for success. Listen and enjoy! Show Interview with Steven Levine and Chris Mulligan 2:30: Motivation for the new SEC Marketing Rule 8:00: Fundamental principles 10:49: Key Nuances and FAQs 20:00: Feedback from the industry 23:11: Impact of comment letters 28:13: Impact of the new rule on SEC Examinations 32:47: Review of policies and procedures during examinations 48:00: Application to compliance programs Quotes 03:13 – “The existing regulatory regime that we were working with was potentially a bit dated. The advertising rule that was in existence before this most recent rule adoption, was adopted in 1961. So we were dealing with an advertising rule from 1961 and there was a cash solicitation rule that was adopted in 1979. Decades have gone by since those rule adoptions.” – Steven 04:33 – “One of the motivators for this most recent marketing rule was to put everything in one place. Eliminate the system that we currently had where there were a bunch of pieces of relief all over the place and just codify everything at the commission-level into a single rule. The hope there is that everyone would be on the same page in the industry as to what the guideposts are for operating at this space.” – Steven 13:00 – “And that FAQ basically says that an advisor may–but is not required–to comply with the new marketing rule in advance to the new compliance date. However, if an advisor chooses to comply with any part of the new marketing rule, it must shift it’s compliance program over too. Basically, it must comply with all of the rule, not only part of it.” – Steven 18:30 – “In order to demonstrate to the SEC staff that a particular advertisement complies with the rule, pointing to a no-action letter is no longer an acceptable way to do that. There has to be something within the rule itself or be adopting release that justifies the underlying content that is being questioned.” – Steven 32:47 – “I think any tips I could give is, start with your policies and procedures. Start with your policies and procedures. That’s where we’re going to look at first, right? You have to, at least, acknowledge, like, we’re going to want to know that you’ve acknowledged that the world has changed and there’s a new rule, right? And that is kind of expressed through your policies and procedures.” – Chris 49:37 – &ldq

In this episode of CHATTINN CYBER, Marc Schein interviews John Jenkins, Senior Editor and Law Firm Partner at TheCorporateCounsel.net and Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP. During the conversation, John explains his journey to heading one of the most regarded M&A news centres in the US, cybersecurity risk assessment, and effective client management. Discussing the issues to be addressed in the negotiation of M&A agreements, John explains how smart buyers, from the outset, would be already invested in assessing the post-closing issues, integration, operations, handling contacts and the like. Depending on the nature of the transaction and the parties' sophistication, different professionals are assigned to clients to handle the cybersecurity assessment. In addition, when dealing with large firms with data breaches in the past, a separate team of forensic consultants is assigned to better understand the client's needs. Cybersecurity assessment needs to be the front and center for every buyer and seller. To win buyers, sellers need to showcase an infallible track record. To assess a company in a limited period, you would have to perform a risk assessment and then suitably allocate resources. Unless you do a risk assessment at the outset, resource allocation might not be clear. Further in the conversation, John explains the latest trends in sealing deals. As he shares, there's been an increase in deals engaging reps and warranties coverage over the years. Towards the close of the episode, John shares that cybersecurity assessment is part of a dynamic regulatory environment. Over time, it's only going to get more complicated for both parties (buyers and sellers) to scope the issues early on in any potential transaction. Listen in to get a detailed picture of cybersecurity risk assessment with clients. Highlights: “What's the environment we're dealing with here? How sophisticated is the seller, where its risks, what are its compliance environment?” “If you're a cyber person, that's where you look. But you may have competitive situations where your your due diligence opportunities are going to be somewhat limited and targeted, you're to get through to next rounds, you may have some more confirmatory due diligence at the end.” “So you have to do a risk assessment, and you kind of have to allocate resources based on your assessment of the risks, and obviously, the more sophisticated the risk assessor is, the better off that that process can be. So, it is something that needs to be done at the outset. Because unless you do it at the outset, you're not going to be able to engage in a really fully informed risk assessment process to allocate those resources.” Time-Stamps: [01:00] - John's cybersecurity journey [02:15] - Cybersecurity and M&A transactions [09:44] - Front end, Back end, and Due diligence evaluation [11:58] - Is there an increase in deals engaging reps and warranties coverage? Connect with John: Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-jenkins-7449761b3/?trk=public_profile_browsemap                                  

WeDream is a mobile app to help creators to show the art in the reality while the avatar can show with friends and peers. In this episode, we talk about immersive experience, augmented reality and creator economic. About me: Giovanna Sun's art journey https://youtu.be/huSJfGwyCK4 My OpenSea NFT collection: https://opensea.io/dubwoman NFT Home Shop https://nft-home-shop.com Youtube https://www.youtube.com/dubwoman https://www.youtube.com/giovannasun Artbit YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBJDRPpAYybl_xyo4K27F6g Artbit podcast: https://anchor.fm/artbit-club More information: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/dubwoman Contact: giovanna.art.bit@gmail.com

This episode of the ICHE Podcast features two segments. In the first segment, David P. Calfee, interviews Diego Schaps and Deverick J. Anderson about two articles they published in the April issue on medical transport-associated infections. In the second segment, Dr. Calfee interviews Amanda Ullman and Tricia Kleidon to discuss their analysis of 42,562 hospitalized medical patients to determine whether antimicrobial and antithrombogenic PICC materials prevent catheter complications. The full April issue of ICHE is available here: https://www.cambridge.org/iche.

Last week's interview with the Vermont entrepreneur, without interruption this time!

The Vermonter spoke with The Morning Drive Thursday about his start-up business that models somewhat after a local version of Amazon.

In this episode of the ICHE Podcast, Editor-in-Chief, David P. Calfee, MD, MS, interviews Michael Klompas, MD and Dian Baker, PhD on their work on the topic of nonventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia. Drs. Calfee, Klompas, and Baker discuss two papers from the March issue of ICHE, as well as several recent publications. Article list below. Baker DL, Giuliano KK. Prevention practices for nonventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia: A survey of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) Research Network (SRN). ICHE 2022;43(3): Klompas M, Baker DL. Finding the balance between overtreatment versus undertreatment for hospital-acquired pneumonia. ICHE 2022;43(3): Munro SC, Baker DL, Giuliano KK, … Klompas M. Nonventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia. A call to action: recommendations from the National Organization to Prevent Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia (NOHAP) among nonventilated patients. ICHE 2021;42(8-August): 991-996 Lacerna CC, et al. A successful program preventing nonventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia in a large hospital system. ICHE 2020;41:547-552.

293: Getting Featured As A YouTube Creator On The Rise With Todd Calfee From Recollection Road This week we are joined by Todd Calfee from the Recollection Road YouTube channel. We talk about him getting featured as a YouTube Creator on the rise, his love for history, his rapid growth on YouTube, and MUCH more. About Todd: I am a 43-year-old, former teacher who now is full-time working as a YouTube content creator. After watching my Dad succeed on YouTube, I decided to jump in and give it a try... and it worked! In less than a year, I was able to quit my job and work on YouTube full-time. Go here if you want to submit your YouTube Channel to be a potential guest on the podcast. Support the show on Patreon here for day-to-day interaction with myself and the community on discord. Connect With Todd Here: YouTube TubeBuddy – A tool that makes your YouTube Life EASIER and Helps grow your channel. CLICK HERE for a FREE 30 DAY TRIAL. Links Discussed In This Episode Fiverr – Hire the right people for the jobs you need to make your YouTube life and workflow easier! Bluehost – If you need a website use this link to get a Free Domain Name and a great deal on hosting

SPECIAL EPISODE: Diversity Matters in the Middle Market, brought to you by the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) and Connection Builders.Joshua Berggrun joins us today to share his thoughts on how firms can create a more inclusive workplace and why that tends to attract and retain better talent. Josh is an attorney with Calfee, Halter & Griswold, based in Cleveland, Ohio. In this episode, he shares his career experience as a member of the LGBT community and the steps that professional services firms can take to create a more inclusive and diverse culture. Josh talks about the committees in place at Calfee that drew him to the firm and the benefits of making people feel welcome in the workplace. Furthermore, we find out what could be done at a base level in law schools to foster diversity and inclusion and set the industry standard. Tune in to discover why it's so important to have an inclusive workplace, bring different voices to the table, and why allies should take the initiative to effect change. Key Points From This Episode:Why it's important to have an inclusive workplace and bring different voices to the table.How having an inclusive culture fosters better interactions, internally and externally.Josh's experience at Calfee, Halter & Griswold as a member of the LGBT community.How to foster diversity and inclusion by allocating resources and forming committees.How law schools can promote more diversity and inclusion and why it's essential to do so.What organizations can do to make people feel more welcomed.How male-dominated industries can benefit from hiring LGBT candidates.What Calfee, specifically, is doing to foster diversity and inclusion.The importance of taking the initiative to effect change as an ally.Joshua Berggrun on LinkedInCalfee, Halter & GriswoldACG DEI Committee Mission and ResourcesConnection BuildersAlex Drost on LinkedIn

In this part two of our conversation with bike industry pioneer Craig Calfee, he and Randall do a deep dive into the merits of suspension on gravel and road bikes before jumping into e-bike conversions, variable head angles, regenerative braking, an E-motorcycle project Craig is involved with in Africa, ideas for the ultimate mass-produced frame, and the challenges and opportunities of localized assembly and production. Calfee Designs Website  Join The Ridership Support the Podcast Automated transcription, please excuse the typos: Craig Calfee Part 2  [00:00:00] Randal R. Jacobs: Welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Randall Jacobs. And today I, once again have my friend Craig Calfee, this is part two of our conversation. We'll be having a part three at some point where we get into wood and bamboo bikes, but today we're going to be focusing on mostly on carbon fiber. And so with that first topic where we left off in the last conversation, Craig was, we were getting into suspension, particularly suspension on road bikes, but that would also apply to gravel bikes too. [00:00:28] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that's a great topic. It's one really close to my heart because we kind of stumbled on it through the bamboo bikes actually. And it was about the vibration damping of. We had a triathlete who had a really nice carbon fiber race bike that he used for Ironman distance triathlon. He's also a data junkie. So he had all the, all the, you know, biofeedback stuff, the heart rate monitor, the lactose levels, all kinds of crazy stuff that he measures on his training rides. So he also ordered a bamboo training bike just for fun. Really. He's a wealthy guy who can afford multiple expensive bikes. And we built at exactly the same geometry as his race bike, and the only difference ended up really being the race wheels that he didn't use all the time. Anyway. So he was doing his training runs and found that he was actually faster on the bamboo bike, which was about two pounds heavier than his race bike. So. I asked him, well, let me guess you're feeling fresher towards the end of the, the bike segment and your time advantages in the latter half of that segment, he said, you're right. And why is that? And I said, well, the only clue I have is that the bamboo definitely absorbs vibration better. So you're subjecting your body to less fatiguing vibration. And he said, that's exactly how it feels and has run after the bike is, is generally faster as well. And that backs up what Dave Scott reported when he rode our bike in the Ironman, when it came out of retirement at the age of 40 and came in second to, um, to Greg Welch at the iron man everyone thought Dave was going to be top 20 maybe, but he ended up second place. And he credited that performance to feeling super comfortable on his Tetra custom tri bike that we built for him, which is notoriously smooth riding because of their skinny seat stays. Anyway. Um, so the vibration damping also has been studied by insurance companies for truck drivers and airline pilots. So they do these tests to figure out how fatigued people are based on how much vibration they're subject to, and they've shown you know, hands down that it's, that vibration causes fatigue. And there's some scientific details on that that I could get into, but it's, um, probably better to move on here. So we found that, um, aside from the, the fatigue we've found that it had better traction and that allowed for more efficient client. So for a racing cycling. Yes. Fatigue is important, but actually having better traction for getting a better time on climbing is really where the rubber meets the road, literally. Yeah, but for me that the biggest one was layers less know you're going to crash out of the tour de France less often. So being able to corner faster and do faster descents without crashing is as important, if not more important than having more efficiency climbing so that, you know, those three factors less fatigue, better traction, and more stable at high speed are to me the most important they're all three of them make for a faster bike. And we. [00:04:10] Randal R. Jacobs: Oh, go ahead. Um, well I was going to say like on the flats and on the dissents, it's pretty obvious. And I've actually been thinking a lot about this. You know, our listeners will know that I'm a big proponent of high volume tubeless tires on wide rims, right. Run at lower pressures for bigger contact patch. And I'm coming around to this idea that while that is good, that's that suspension that pneumatic suspension also results in varying tracks. [00:04:38] Craig Calfee: Yeah. [00:04:39] Randal R. Jacobs: yeah. [00:04:40] Craig Calfee: So we, we actually measured that, um, most people are like, well, you're going to lose something on the climb. You know, you're going to activate the suspension and lose a percentage of your input, activating suspension. And we thought, okay, you know, there is some of that, but it seems like that's minimal compared to the advantage in climbing. So we understand about the pneumatic suspension and part of it was to go back to the advantage of less rolling resistance. With a smaller tire, higher pressure you know, tires. And so we did an experiment where with a couple of interns from Germany that were really into the data collection side, and we set up a manta with an electric motor on it an e-bike effectively. So we could do a climb and measure the power required to get from the bottom to the top. And we found that w w we did 20 runs. So 10, 10 runs without the suspension and 10 with the suspension, meaning we would put an aluminum slug in where a spring used to be. And that would be the, the locked out version. And all of the runs with the suspension were about 2% of fat, you know, further up the test run than the ones that were locked out, which was kind of surprising. We w the consistency of it was amazing actually. So we found that, you know, he got up the hill with the same amount of energy further up the hill. So that was, um, you know, a graphic representation of how much more efficient it was. And then we wanted to subtract the loss of the, the losses from pedal induced suspension activation. And so we put up, put a a power meter on the crank sexually. That was the, um, the, the what's the really well known power crank meter the name escapes me, but anyway, we put a hub mounted power meter and a crank mounted power meter on the same bike. And we were able to measure the difference between the two and it ended up being about 1%. So we did have a situation where it was more efficient climbing, about 2%. Minus 1% loss of a pedal induced suspension activation. And so net gain of 1%, and that was noticeable by, by riders. They could feel that 1% but that actually matters more in a race where, you know, you actually win by significant amount expending the same amount of energy. So that, that was really the, the revelation that caused me to predict that at some point every bike in the tour de France will have suspension with at least 12 millimeters of travel. [00:07:27] Randal R. Jacobs: I've been just to repeat, like, I've been a big proponent of non suspended bikes. I actually, we Craig and I just you know, kind of tongue in cheek offered our, our bikes of the year, gravel bikes of the year. And the one that I nominated was an old one, the the open up, because it is not going with some of these new fangled you know, attempts to suspension and so on. And I still I still see a place for that, but. As I'm thinking about like a hypothesis as to why you're getting those improvements in efficiency, even on a climb. The thing that comes to mind is a unsprung mass in the amount of VR. You know, you take those the front and the rear axle, and you look at their path through space. And when you have an active suspension when you have a suspension that is built into say the seat stays or the fork, or what have you, as opposed to the, you know, using the tire, you're going to probably get less vertical deflection as the bike is traveling over the road. And even a smooth road is going to have, you know, meaningful amounts of bumps that are going to result in you know, energy losses as the, not just the bike, the unsprung mass of the bike, but the unsprung mass of the body of the rider on the bike as those are moving up and down is that what you suspect as well? Or do you have any data on, like, what is the actual. [00:08:45] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that is the mechanism that's been studied a fair amount, um, and regular suspension in detail was motorcycle. um, the, the so it's already been proven that suspension is faster because you're not raising and lowering the mass of the bike and rider over these minute bumps, which if you add up all of the miniature bumps that you're getting up and over on a race it's like an additional, you know, 20 feet of, of elevation that you have to climb relative to another bike that has that, that the suspension only has a fraction of the weight going up and over the bump, but your body and the rest of the, of the bike is not needing to be lifted up and over. So that's that's physics 1 0 1 and. Whether you do that with new Maddix or with a steel spring it doesn't matter as much, except that you can gain back the rolling resistance losses that you're getting from the history of rubber, as it has to bend and flex up and over that bump steel Springs are way more efficient than rubber as a spring. [00:09:59] Randal R. Jacobs: The rotational inertia as Well, Those, all those little Micheal micro accelerations that you have with a higher volume tire that is inherently higher mass to a, is that a significant factor as [00:10:12] Craig Calfee: I haven't measured that myself, but, um, I mean, it seems to me that would be an issue. Everyone talks about you know, the rotating weight. So, you know, why are people spending so much money on carbon fiber rims? You know, be nice to have, you know, for sprinting and accelerating. It certainly feels that. [00:10:31] Randal R. Jacobs: Hmm, when it occurs to me too. So last time we spoke about, you know, one bikes or at least I use this term to describe the bike that you had come out with. The, I think he called it the adventure, which I described as, you know, the first, the first true one bike. Cause it was an endurance road type geometry, but with clearance for big six 50 B tires is very much my philosophy. There's been this trend in the industry towards gravel bikes, having higher volume, 700 C, um, and people feeling or believing that it's faster. And that makes sense. From the perspective, that was a part of the marketing of 29 or wheels where the attack angle would be less. And so that vertical deflection is happening over a longer distance and a longer amount of time. Um, but you know, with, with an active suspension, you no longer have to, you, you can get that benefit of reducing the vertical deflection and the losses associated with little bumps in the road. Um, without having to go with that bigger tire, which means you can still maintain an endurance road geometry, or even a proper road bike geometry on a bike, that'll pay take big six 50 BS. So that keeps us back in one bite territory, which I like as well. [00:11:37] Craig Calfee: Yep. Absolutely. That's that's a really good argument for slightly smaller wheels. [00:11:44] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. Would you, so you're doing this with a spring any damping in that system? [00:11:50] Craig Calfee: Well, the carbon fiber stays are kind of self damping. We do too. We basically have a hybrid spring. The carbon chain stays and the steel spring up at the seat up above the brake brake brake bridge. Um, that's so we're getting both and the carbon stays, tend to absorb a lot of the, the resonance of the steel. do have, um, a rubber bottom out a plug, but that's about as much damping as we get. And by the way, we found that elastomers make a pretty bad spring for, for bicycles. And I know that's been been proven years and years ago on the earliest mountain bike suspensions, but a lot of the bike companies are coming up with these rode bikes that have rubber bits in them that try to simulate some level of suspension. But if you ever ride one of those and you hit a pretty rough bump, the rubber stiffens up, and it actually becomes useless on the, where counts the most, the, you know, the more the heavier hits it's it's we measured that. And it was definitely not as good as the steel. [00:13:02] Randal R. Jacobs: And this is true even of like more advanced, a less Americ materials that have come out since the battle days of, you know, 40 millimeter mountain bike forks with. [00:13:11] Craig Calfee: Yeah, there hasn't been a ton of improvement on that. There's been different viscosities used, but, um, the problem is the molecules can't get out of their own way. Fast enough, you know, that's, that's what it boils down to. [00:13:26] Randal R. Jacobs: Well, and then there's the issue of temperature sensitivity to which I believe that there's been some improvement made in that, you know, better than I would. [00:13:33] Craig Calfee: That's probably the one area of improvement. Yup. [00:13:36] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. So just for the audience in cold temperatures, these materials tend to become firmer in hot temperatures. They tend to be more compliance. And so you don't have consistency across temperature ranges, even though your body is, is not changing the terrain isn't changing. So that's another problem with the last tumors as a suspension of. Um, and then there's the issue of certain companies who will remain nameless having technologies where they started off by putting in an elastomer somewhere in, in the the chain, the suspension chain of the frame itself. And then ultimately, because it was all marketing anyways, they just bolted things on and actually compromise the frame in doing so. Yeah. Um, they, they rhymed with a certain minty candy called certs that anyways, we'll, we'll continue on there, but a lot of, a lot of that sort of marketing fortunately I don't know what your opinion is on that one. Do you see more or less of that sort of a marketing who he, these days. [00:14:32] Craig Calfee: Well, that's been going on since day one. I mean, that's, that's, you know, that's part of the business and, you know, it's as much about fashion as it is about technology. So the marketing guys are needing to sell what's popular. You know, suspension starts getting talked about as a possibly good thing, then they're going to, you know, try every trick in the book to, to hype it up by doing actual measurements. And studies is really fun because you can actually see serious gains in in the efficiency of the bike and for races like the tour de France, where three weeks of racing, you know, 1% means you win. You know, it's interesting. I don't brag too much about building bikes for Greg , Greg Lamond, but you know, at one point he was looking at our gussets and thinking, you know, you should really trim those gussets down just a little bit smaller because they're less aerodynamic. And this is the biggest it's at the bottom bracket, which were set kind of sideways to the wind. And I've felt like arguing with him a little bit about, you know, this really not much, it's just, you know, this tiniest little bit, but here's a guy who won the tour by eight seconds. How do you argue with that guy? Oh no. So 1% is huge in that route. [00:15:57] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Um, Hmm. And so you're, you did, um, 12 millimeters of suspension in the rear of the manta. And how did you come up with that number? Is that what you consider the optimum for road and what would you do for gravel? [00:16:13] Craig Calfee: I think it's actually quite good for both. He couldn't go even more for gravel depending on just how rough the terrain is, but your legs end up doing more suspension, work on much rougher terrain than that. On a really efficient, if you want your, to have much less peddling losses. I think that's where the there's a transition at some point you have to minimize the travel to minimize the peddling law. So we found that 12 millimeters with, and there's three spring rates that we like to play with depending on the weight of the rider. So the, the stiffest one with a heavier rider it basically maxes out at 12 millimeters under the most extreme scenarios. Um, the, the, the problem really is matching this front suspension to rear suspension. And there's currently no decent front suspension road forks, or even a road stem that that is available. We did a bunch of testing with, with Ben jock, Maine, where he was trying to, he loved the suspension. He loved the concept. He felt like it was faster, but at the end he was like, you know, I really need the front to match the. So he can just forget about the bike as he's putting in an all out effort. So he's the front wheel behaves differently if it's not suspended, then the rear wheel, and as you're racing hard you have to constantly consider that the front has less ability to track than the rear. In other words, it's, you really need the front as much as you need the rear, particularly for the high-speed descending and, and trying to crash less often. That's that's more on the front wheel than the rear. So, we re we tried a couple of experiments with suspension forks. It became really difficult to, to build one. No, it's just a really hard challenge to build a lightweight carbon for that also has 12 millimeters of travel. We just haven't been able to do it. [00:18:17] Randal R. Jacobs: What's a much more complex structural challenge. You have much higher stresses. The consequences of failure are that much higher. You probably not need a lot more complexity in the design, a lot more mass being added versus, you know, adding something to a mano seat's day. [00:18:32] Craig Calfee: That's right. It's much more difficult. And yeah, the, I, I broke my first bone in my body testing that for just a, the little finger on my, on my, on my right hand. But, you know, I, I was trying to break it and I usually fall, you know, I do, I do my own stunts and I, I used to be able to fall really well, but that one, right. I had, when I fell, I had to, I put my hand out just by mistake, but I literally broke the fork on a speed bump. I stiff arm to speed bump, and I was able to crack the fork and have it fail. And it was it, it kind of set us back, um, because of the. Lack of popularity right now with suspension on forks for road bikes. It's just too difficult in the current market, but there are some suspension stems out there now that are really interesting. And we've been messing around with that. And that's pretty good. That's really close to ideal, but, um, I don't think it's gonna going to be adopted a hundred percent unless someone does some tests with a stem and the rear and shows that it's absolutely the best thing since sliced bread. So we need more, more testing and more pro level riders who, who can vouch for. [00:19:47] Randal R. Jacobs: Hmm. When I got something that I've been working on that I'm okay. Sharing in a public forum. So I I've talked about mullet setups and going with a higher volume fronts than the rear because you have less mass over the front tire when climbing or on a flat. And so the rolling resistance impact is generally lower than if you had that same volume tire in the back. And so that could be one way to give a little bit more compliance at a suspension step. As [00:20:13] Craig Calfee: W does sure. Just the UCI allow, um, different wheel sizes and gravel racing. Is, is there any, I don't know enough about it, but I know in red rain they insist upon the same size wheels, [00:20:27] Randal R. Jacobs: I don't know. I've never heard this come up. I don't know that there are there UCI gravel races at this point. [00:20:34] Craig Calfee: you know? [00:20:35] Randal R. Jacobs: so out of the loop, when it comes to elite racing, I couldn't care less. I care much more about, you know, people were just out to have a good time. [00:20:42] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So for our purposes on the, you know, sticking with the road bike suspension thing, um, yeah, you can't do that because of UCI rules. So [00:20:52] Randal R. Jacobs: interesting. I thought that, um, I thought that for a time, like the specialized had their TT bikes running a narrower tire up front and a wider one in the rear aerodynamics. [00:21:04] Craig Calfee: sizes, for sure, but not, not wool diameters, [00:21:07] Randal R. Jacobs: Oh, I see. Yeah, I'm talking same rim, same rim. size, actually the same exact rims, but say in a, um, in a more cross-country oriented gravel setup, running a, you know, a 2.25 in the front in a 2.0, you know, semi slicker file trade in the rear, and then having the rear with that 10 or 12 mil of suspension that you described in upfront combining that higher volume, lower pressure tire with a suspension stem. The one that we talk about a lot is the one from Redshift. I don't know if you have others that you recommend as well. And then I have a, a concept for a handlebar that I'm going to run by you at some point that would have some adjustable suspension component built into that as well. [00:21:47] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. I think that could work. I mean, that would be worth trying and doing some tests on. Um, and we do like the suspension stems. We, we put a steel spring and one of the redshifts stems a couple of years ago and it, it actually was a significant improvement because it took out the, the elastomer junk they have in there. And it really helped on the heavier hits. But the Redshift stem is compared to a stiff stem is great, but the Cirrus stem with the body float Cirrus cycles stem with steel Springs is really my favorite. It's a little clunky looking, but it's not as aesthetically pleasing to look at, but, um, it performs really. [00:22:35] Randal R. Jacobs: And that's a linkage stem, right? A more complex linkage stem versus a single pivot. Like the red shift. [00:22:40] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. And it keeps your, your handlebars at the same orientation where the Redshift causes the bars to tilt down when it, when it activates. [00:22:50] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah, you have to, you have to account for that in the bar rotation in the most outright position. [00:22:55] Craig Calfee: it'd be nice to avoid that. So, back to the fork, you know, that the fork is really the place to do it. And the Lao forks are really kind of like their concept, but if they could do a road version, that would be really great. [00:23:10] Randal R. Jacobs: The challenge I see with love, I see kind of two primary challenges. One is damping, right? Cause it kind of is what it is. And I could imagine a design where you actually put elastomers between those leaps that, in that fork. And so when, you know, when it is compressing, it's actually compressing that elastomer and that, you know, it's not, it's not really adjusted. Well, I guess you could swap different, you know, different numbers of elastomers or different durometers of elastomers in there to adjust that. But then the other thing. To my understanding is the bigger issue is like we'll flop like lateral flop because you don't have a telescoping section like you do, um, say on a traditional mountain bike suspension forks. So the tire at a hard angle in a corner can actually deflect to one side or the other materially in a way that can be unsettling. I don't know how much experience you have with those forks. I, I haven't written them myself to any significant extent. [00:24:05] Craig Calfee: Yeah, they're not, they're not perfect for road bikes. Certainly. They're they're okay. They, and they do need damping on their higher travel forks, but the, the fork that I built, um, I noticed that the vibrate, the. Um, damping, wasn't really an important issue. Such a little small amount of travel. It, it didn't oscillate at all. It just, you know, gave, it, gave it to you right when you needed it and didn't oscillate or BA or Bob at all. So for me, that short amount of travel doesn't really require damping. Um, it might be a nice thing to tune as you, as this whole idea evolves, but, um, initially I don't think it's something that should prevent it from happening. [00:24:52] Randal R. Jacobs: Well, at some point I have a, a, an idea for a real time adjustable suspension built into the layup of the frame that run by you. And we can see if that's an experiment. We might run at some point, but I'm pretty sold on this concept. My big concerns would be weight and complexity, which in turn adds costs. But from a, you know, what does the future look like? We have the technology, it seems like an it's an engineering problem, not a, a an issue of proving the physics at this point, from what you've described. [00:25:20] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. It's a marketing problem too, though. So it's, I think the way I wanted to approach it was to get a pro racer on it who could see that it was definitely faster. And then they go back to the team and say, look, we need suspension because we'll win. And the team generally pushes for that. And if a large bike sponsor wants to win, then they'll develop the suspension. So until that happens, it's going to be an uphill battle for, for us smaller guys. [00:25:56] Randal R. Jacobs: Well, let's have a sidebar conversation after this about whether that can be made economic in the, in the near term. All right. So everybody you've heard it. I am now sold on the idea of, bikes as well. So more on this topic as we go, but Bravo Craig, it's taken, it's taken a while to get me convinced, but I'm definitely in your camp now. All right. So next step other fun things to talk about that you've been involved in. So in 2019 you started doing a retrofit, like, e-bike system retrofits. So you want to talk about that program. [00:26:27] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that's been really fun to see all the bikes coming through that that have been hanging on people's in people's garages, a great high-quality bike often from, you know, 10 to even 20 years ago. Like a good titanium bike that just, you know, never corroded. And they moved on to a nicer carbon bike or something and, but these beautiful bikes are still, you know, there and people want to ride them. So it's a perfect opportunity to electrify some of them to try out you know, what, what an electric assist will do for you. For those of us you know, a little bit older, um, it's nice to ride with you young punks and keep up, you know, and you know, still have fun as a group. I mean, we still have the bike handling skills, but maybe we can't get up the hill as fast as you, but we can certainly, you know, hold our line, coming down the hill and being able to do it without being utterly exhausted is, is really helpful in a lot of. [00:27:29] Randal R. Jacobs: And what are the e-bike systems that you're using? Are these kind of. off the shelf or is it a you're you're buying separate components and integrating them in some special ways or any software involved at the level that you're implementing? [00:27:41] Craig Calfee: Yeah, we're, we're doing a grin kit. It's basically a hub motor, fairly small hub motors, unless you're on tandems. We use a bigger one and we try to really simplify the user interface. So it's, it just feels more like a bike than an e-bike. So we have a little circuit board that we programmed for the lights that are just little led lights that go into your handlebar tape or on your, on your bars. And it just shows how much batteries left and how much of an assist level you have. So it's really super simple. We basically over oversimplified it to make it. As much like a bike ride as, and not an e-bike, so it's more bike than e-bike. [00:28:29] Randal R. Jacobs: And you're doing, um, not just Calfee bikes, but any bike that somebody would want to retrofit [00:28:34] Craig Calfee: Yeah, yeah. [00:28:35] Randal R. Jacobs: way for you to make that work. [00:28:36] Craig Calfee: That's right. So we were able to do pretty much anything at this point. And it's been really fun seeing these older bikes come through and, and having them get written again now, and they end up, some of them may end up becoming their favorite bike and they sell the newer bike and, and they're back on their older, older, trustworthy bike that they've spent so much time on and, you know, keep keeping bikes from getting sold and used for cheap and keeping them out of the landfill. [00:29:06] Randal R. Jacobs: It'd be interesting to see if we see more e-bikes in the ridership. We see quite a few folks. Who've posted pictures of the know 20, 30 year old Bridgestone 26 inch mountain bikes that have been converted to gravel bikes for winter duty here in the Northeast. So definitely seeing new life and bikes that were good in their time and still have a lot of life in them. [00:29:26] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. That's that's, I love to see that, you know, so many great bikes that are kind of old and forgotten and get a lot of dust on them. And then they get brought out. I mean, it's similar to our carbon repair business, you know, just, no, you don't have to throw it away. Let's let's repair that. And some of our carbon repair customers are sending their repaired bikes to be converted to e-bikes. Cause it's not the latest greatest, and it's, it had been crashed and we repaired it and, and it's sort of the second bike, you know, they've already bought a nice new. But they kept the old bike. And now, now it's got an electric hub motor on it. So it's, it's great. [00:30:07] Randal R. Jacobs: That makes a ton of sense. Do you ever, um, do you ever integrate the batteries into one of those broken carbon frames, like to get into the down two or is it usually an external Mount. [00:30:16] Craig Calfee: It's, it's external Mount. I mean, it's, it doesn't really help to try to integrate it. Um, you know, you pretty much have to design the bike from, from the beginning to be an e-bike, if you want to do that. And that's what all the new e-bikes are or most of them, but we use a carbon fiber bag that Velcros to the top to basically it looks nice. It's, it's very useful bag that you can carry as little or as many batteries as you want. We use the little a hundred watt hour LIGO batteries, so you can choose to bring a smaller amount of battery or bring all of them and you can travel on an airplane with them as well. So it's become a default for the touring by. Particularly the coupler bikes, you know, SNS, couplers, bikes, or traveling, you know, bring the AR kit with the Lego batteries and you can have an eBike in, in Europe or south America, wherever you're going. You can bring your eBikes stuff with you. [00:31:11] Randal R. Jacobs: On in turn, if you're running a smaller power pack, you're probably running a lower output motor keeping the whole system lighter and more efficient. And you know, it's, it's not, it's not a moped it's you plus a, which is a philosophy that I think, um, makes a tremendous amount of sense for enthusiast oriented bikes, where you want to maintain the handling characteristics and so on. And you want to maintain the range without ending up with a, a 40, 50 pound behemoth. [00:31:36] Craig Calfee: That's right. That's a big, that's a big deal for a lot of our customers. [00:31:40] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. So then that brings us up to last year and you came out with your assesful hard tail. When you tell us about this. [00:31:46] Craig Calfee: Yeah. The circles also have really exciting project because we're able to. Um, address the questions that are popping up, you know, over the past couple of years around head tube angle, and what's the best head tube angle for a given type of ride. And the other issue that it solves is, um, all these different categories of bike, you know, Enduro by cross-country bike, even a gravel bike, it's sort of, you know, all these niches of utilities, which imply that you need six bikes to, to have, you know, the right bike for all conditions. You know, where, you know, I'm kind of more minimalist. I like to have the N minus one concept where this is a bike that, that does pretty much everything kind of like your one bike concept. So it, it has an adjustable head tube angle using flip plates, and we're able to adjust the head angle enough so that you can swap out different fork travels. So we're able to go up to with like a one 60 travel for. On this hard tail and you can also do a one 20 travel or 100 millimeter travel by changing the head tube angle. We have an eccentric bottom bracket, so you can raise and lower your bottom bracket all with an Allen wrench on the trail if you want. So it's, it's really fun to climb a good, good solid climb with a head angle. That's a bit steeper mix of very efficient pedaling feels great. And then at the top of the climb, you whip out your Allen wrench, flipped the head, the flip plates around, and now do the descent with a two degree slacker head angle. That's a really big difference and it's super fun, you know, to do that right on. [00:33:37] Randal R. Jacobs: Well, I think for, I mean, I maybe simply because I haven't tried it yet for gravel bikes, I think. The future is also this, you know, adjustable geometry, again, keeping the ones, the one by concept of having a bike that has the snappy you know, performance road, geometry on one end of the spectrum. But then, you know, you get a more upright position. That's a little bit more slacked out, but slower steering for your, you know, borderline cross-country setup when you're running a, you know, as I was saying, like a two to five or even a two, four upfront and like a 2.0 or a two to five in the back. So I do, I do think adjustable suspension is something that we're seeing in the gravel space, quite a bit with bikes, like the the allied. Was it the allied able, no, the allied echo. I'm curious, what is the percentage change in head tube and axle and the amount of axle the crown change? Because obviously those are changing in tandem depending on the forks. So maybe we keep the fork constant, you know, you have a one 40 millimeter fork on that bike on a size, medium, or a size large. How much does the head tube angle changing without changing the axle? The crown. [00:34:41] Craig Calfee: Well, as much as you want, I mean, you can bring our flip plates go from plus zero, zero plus four and zero to minus four. So it's an eight degree range. [00:34:53] Randal R. Jacobs: Oh, wow. Okay. [00:34:54] Craig Calfee: Which is ridiculous, you know, but when you change the fork travel, when you do change that actual crown things change radically. So you're compensating for the tilting of the bike forward as you go to a shorter travel for. So you wouldn't normally change your head angle by eight degrees. Two is plenty, you know, [00:35:14] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. [00:35:14] Craig Calfee: you have the option, you know, with that, to, to do it as much as you want. [00:35:19] Randal R. Jacobs: And the, I remember that Fox had their talus fork at one point where you could change the travel on the flight. Is there anything that's well implemented out there right now? Or is it all throwing a new spacer in [00:35:30] Craig Calfee: I need that. Yeah. I haven't, I haven't looked into that. I, I haven't seen changing of actual travel on the fly, but you know, all I'm really seeing is lockout mechanisms. [00:35:41] Randal R. Jacobs: So then let's get into some, some fun side topics. So, I've been to your workshop a few times at this point. Um, and I've described it as what a 10 year old bike nerd would, would create if they had like all the resources to, to do whatever they want in terms of fun projects and so on. And some of the things that I recall seeing in your workshop, one was a a, um, somewhat stripped down zero electric motorcycle. I remember an electric little race cart of some sort. So when you share some of the, the weird wild and wonderful projects that you've had going on in that workshop of yours, maybe describe the workshop itself. [00:36:18] Craig Calfee: Yeah, we have a pretty big shop that, um, that we basically pay under market rates for that, which is why we can afford to have a bigger shop it's on a school campus. And part of the deal is we're supposed to provide a on the job training or job experience to some of the students at the school. So, which is easy to do. And they don't, you know, send us a ton of kids. We have to chase after it's usually one or maybe two at a time, and we keep them busy with all kinds of stuff, but the projects, um, we're allowed to basically spread out and have projects going that can go at their own pace. And some of the projects go at a very fast pace, especially when there's real money involved and some take longer to develop. So for example, the zero motorcycle stuff has been, has been very diverse in that we're dealing with SWAT changing the batteries out for a zero, had us do a battery upgrade project for a fleet of motorcycles. So we did that for them. We did another. Project where we changed the change the motor out of the whole model year of bikes went on 2012. They had to upgrade their motors. So we came up with a Mo a different way to Mount a new motor in the old bike. And now we're involved with an aerodynamic body kit for the bikes. This is kind of a speculative project where we're making carbon fiber bodywork designed for the zero motorcycles. And it should give you better, um, range. The, on the freeway in particular, the another project we're really excited about is a, um, a regenerative brake lever. So that's where you have variable region and a brake lever on the left side. Cause you don't need a clutch on these bikes. And by using that, you can increase your range by about 10%, which is again, a pretty significant number on the freeway because at 60, 70, 80 miles an hour, you, you really slow. You, you really get a lot of drag and every time you touch the brakes, you're effectively wasting energy. So if you can hit the region lever as your regular brake lever, um, it will save a lot of that energy. So that's that doesn't exist. I'm really shocked that it still doesn't exist as a stock offering because it's not that difficult to do. So we're, we're going to be offering that as an aftermarket item for the zeros. And I think we can set it up on other electric motorcycle brands as well, but for now we're focused on the, the largest one. [00:39:08] Randal R. Jacobs: I've looked at electric motorcycles and I've always been surprised at, um, how poor the rain, the peak range tends to be given how much heavier they are than a standard bike. And it's, you know, aerodynamics at speed, the aerodynamics of a motorcycle with a rider on it. There's so many variables, there's so much vortices shedding happening off of the rider. And like that fairing kit makes a ton of sense for extending range. And then it's a region is a, another level of complexity versus a car because your weight distribution is one. opposite what you would want. So it's your rear with it. You have power going, and if you're going to use the motor to go send it into region mode, well, when you're braking, it's shifting weight onto the front wheel. So that's a challenge. And then there's control issues that you don't have with a, with a four wheeled vehicle that you do have with a motorcycle that has any sort of input that isn't completely controlled by the rider. So like being able to feather that Regene brake makes a ton of sense. [00:40:04] Craig Calfee: it's super helpful. I mean, it's it's night and day difference. The stock offering is a fairly low region level that's on or off. When, when you're released the throttle, you can set your settings can be, can be set up to have heavy region or light region. And it's just the heavy region just feels real jerky and you don't really use it as you're just decelerating in normal traffic. It's just, you know, it's eco mode basically where variable region lever, it gives you. You know, region all the time and exactly the amount you want for two, and then you use it all the time and you only use the real break for emergency braking where you do need that front wheel to get loaded up and slowing you down right now where the region it's more for deceleration than real breaking. [00:41:00] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah, I've thought about that on e-bikes as well, where, you know, having the rear brake, essentially the first portion of its travel, go add some regenerative elements and then go into actually engaging the disc brake rotors. [00:41:16] Craig Calfee: Yeah [00:41:16] Randal R. Jacobs: so then we get, [00:41:17] Craig Calfee: good. [00:41:17] Randal R. Jacobs: How about this race car that you had in there? Is that allowed to be spoken about. [00:41:20] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Well, the, the race car was, was a special project of a friend of mine. And we did some carbon repair work on it, and I think there was some battery swapping going on. Um, so we have, we have friends in the, in, in the racing electric race car circuit that loves the fact that we can fix a broken carbon. So, you know, they, they tend to get wild out there in the racetrack. And so, and we're not far from Laguna Seca, so they, they come by here and we do some work on their cars. [00:41:55] Randal R. Jacobs: really a, it's really a special space that you have down there and you get the air, you get that local airport right behind you. It's a very kind of quiet, tranquil sort of area generally now. Not far from the coast. [00:42:07] Craig Calfee: Yeah, we're right on the coast. And the airstrip is a fun place to do tests. Um, yeah. And other companies that come combine to do tests on our airstrip Polaris has a new electric, um, off-road quad vehicle that they're doing in partnership with zero motorcycles. And they came down and did their range test on our airstrip. So that was, that was fun to see the first one. So we kind of got a sneak preview of that product. [00:42:36] Randal R. Jacobs: I'll come pay you a visit next time. I'm in California. It's been a, it's been a while. It's been a few years. All right. So then let's see a few last things to finish up with. So, um, you mentioned last, we spoke about in an electric motorcycle project that you've been working on in Africa. [00:42:53] Craig Calfee: Yeah. That's really fun. It's, it's basically a an ambitious plan to replace all of the nasty polluting, low displacement gas burning motorbikes that are, that represent about three quarters of the number of motorcycles sold in the world. You know, all the motorbikes you see in the streets, in the U S you know, most of them, the higher, the bigger bikes. There that represents a very small portion of the market. So these are the 1 25 CC bikes that are used for pretty much everything in developing countries, they're taxi bikes, their cargo bikes, they move more stuff than almost anything else in, in most of the world. So they're not very well-regulated for their pollution. And they're expensive to maintain. And gas prices in developing countries are subject to unstable conditions and in both supply and demand and, and corrupt practices that cause prices to fluctuate so that you can have your business model of being a motorcycle taxi. But your cost of doing business varies too much, and it makes it really hard to make a living. So we found now that an electric motorcycle where you have a battery swap a business model, Which means you don't have to buy the battery. You just rent the battery that reduces the cost of ownership significantly. And then you can have these battery swap stations that are solar powered. So very low costs, not reliant on an unstable grid and provide steady power for critical transport infrastructure. That is also not only economically feasible, but allows for the same entrepreneurs to still make money more steadily with with a cleaner energy. So it's it. Every time you turn around on this thing, you're saving money to no maintenance. Um, you know, these, these bikes they're constantly breaking down. They're spending money on spare parts. Sometimes the bike sits for months while they wait for spare parts. Just the, that whole infrastructure is a disaster, but, um, the electric side is much easier to manage. And if the batteries are managed centrally by a company, so they're managing the charging and discharging of the batteries more strictly would they're maintaining the batteries properly. And we're in into the modular battery concept, similar to the LIGO batteries. In fact, our prototype was built with LIGO bricks, where if any, one of those went bad, we could just open the battery up and swap out one of the bricks. And the brick is 10, 10 cells. So usually electric motorcycles have these monolithic giant batteries. And if one cell goes bad in that pack, then that's a, that's a thousand dollar. You know, replacement part and that's just too expensive. So I'll all my battery engineer, friends are big fans of modular batteries where you can go in and replace either one cell or one, one pack of a cell. So that's, that's really, um, you know, exciting and cutting edge technology right now. [00:46:16] Randal R. Jacobs: It's a lot of, um, a lot of like multi-variate optimization looking at, say like a remote village that may not have good infrastructure for transporting gas, but then also has abundant sunlight and maybe the grid infrastructure, as you said, isn't stable, or maybe it hasn't even reached in a lot of places, but put up some solar panels you could literally like, you know, have a 20 foot container built out as a little repair and. Surging station with wings at fold up and just drop it in there. And all of a sudden you have a hub for generating power and maintaining an entire fleet. You can even have financing for people who want to get a motorcycle can have access to these batteries, because everything is so much more predictable because you've controlled so many of the cost variables and so on. So this is, this is quite interesting. [00:47:00] Craig Calfee: it's huge. I mean, back to the financing side. So getting funding for projects like this is difficult because it involves investors throwing money down on to expensive stuff, you know, inventory or assets that get distributed into a, into a region that is notoriously unstable in terms of security of assets, things get stolen, things get, you know, broken and not tracked well. So we put trackers on these batteries. So the tracker follows the battery, not the bike, and it just, we're just tracking these thousand dollar battery packs and the investors feel very confident about. And if somebody ends up with a battery and doesn't either doesn't return it or tries to charge it up on their own and they don't re you know, we can track where the location of that battery is and go get it if necessary. So that discourages people from trying to cheat the system, cause they don't want to deal with the police which are much more severe than they are here. It's not like they'll just come in and you know, these are like repo squads and they will, it's the wild west, you know, you just don't want to deal with that. So people don't, they just, they cooperate, they pay their bill, they return the battery, they get a fresh one and every everything's good and it's cheap enough that there isn't that much incentive to try to gain the system. So back to the investors, they love that. And therefore a lot of money becomes available to, to throw at this incredibly huge market. there's all of these development projects. People say, oh, well, why don't you just, you know, donate that stuff or, you know, get a nonprofit started up psych. Well, actually we've been trying that for hundreds of years and it generally doesn't work. So you really need economically sustainable businesses to, to get supported and continue running profitably so that they can, can, you know, just run without the need for donors to constantly give them free. [00:49:14] Randal R. Jacobs: It's something that, that actually resonates a lot with. Kind of how my thinking has evolved on such matters. Like you can have a population of people that may, at some point in history have been victimized, but continuing to treat them like victims versus giving them the tools of empowerment and being like, okay, we're going to create a viable economic model. And ideally as the organization kind of kick-starting things you're not, it's not an exploitative model. It's not an extractive model. It's a, like, we're going to make this thing. So it funds itself, um, versus a, a more charity oriented model that, um, does not have the inherent self-sustaining dynamics that something that's built from an economic perspective may have, you know, from, from the get-go. Yeah. This is great, Craig. So I'm going to pick your brain. Now we're coming to the end of our conversation for some free. Advice on a project that a friend of a friend of a friend may possibly be working on wink, wink, nudge, nudge if you were to make The ultimate mass production, carbon fiber frame how would you construct it? So we've talked about already how bikes went, you know, you, you created the what was your ultra light? Two, two pound frame. [00:50:29] Craig Calfee: The dragon. [00:50:30] Randal R. Jacobs: The dragon fly and that bike was made very tough. And you talked about how your, your repair business really, um, you know, got legs when these, these, you know, monocot wide, a big tube thin wall framed, started coming to market. So if you wanted to build the ultimate high-performing, but really bomb-proof frame and make it you know, perform at a very high level keeping weights in check and so on. How would you construct it and what would you expect some of the specs to look like. [00:50:59] Craig Calfee: Well, are you, if you're just choosing a manufacturing method, um, you know, bladder molding is as suitable. If you don't need to change the geometry much. So, you know, if you have the investment, you are going mass production. Sure. Bladder molding is current favorite and. It works great. You just have to design the layup properly so that you have enough robustness for the bike to handle a minor spill that doesn't cause you to have to stop riding and wait for a replacement bike if you're racing. Um, so you know, it, it comes down to just smart, um, orientation of the fiber. And then there's lots of little details around the metal parts and choosing how the dropouts integrate with the frame. Making sure the way the dropout attaches, if it's a metal dropout, which I prefer metal dropouts to to carbon dropouts. So how that interface goes, it's really critical. Um, you know, head tubes and bottom brackets and seat seat binder areas are also really important. And for robustness, I tend to go with metal interfaces there. A lot of people are molding them in. We've we've done a lot of repairs on, on cracked head tube areas, cracked seed, binder areas. So all that stuff, you know, the way we build them with metal parts, instead of trying to mold them everything out of carbon. Um, as, as my recommendation, the some of the shortcuts that are taken to reduce costs on manufacturing, aren't really shortcuts. Unless you're, you have a very profitable crash replacement program where, when something breaks and is actually more of a warranty issue, but you can't prove it. You ended up getting offered a crash replacement deal. So when things break you you just offer the crash replacement, you still make profit on those. And therefore you can, you can get away with building bikes that, that don't really hold up and just keep people happy with, by offering this year's latest model year crash replacement bike. [00:53:18] Randal R. Jacobs: Get half off this already overpriced thing. [00:53:20] Craig Calfee: Yeah. And, and it's, and you feel okay about it? Cause it's like, oh, it's brand new. It's it's I'm getting a deal on it. You know, it's like, well, not really because that bike you bought two years ago should last at least five years, you know? [00:53:37] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. And ideally, um, stays in circulation for a very long time. Not just because of the quality of its construction, but because of the foresight of its design and its, you know, forward compatibility with, you know, future standards and things like this. [00:53:51] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'm not I like bladder molding for mass production. I think it's fine. The labor contents and issue though. So, you know, the, you've got to think about where you're having them made and how motivated the workers are. Um, and the cost of that price pressures with, with some of the artificial barriers import duties and stuff make that supply chain thing really complicated. So. Um, bladder molding in the United States is incredibly difficult and expensive. Um, [00:54:23] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah, [00:54:23] Craig Calfee: so maybe you have to consider that part of the equation. And if you, if labor is an issue, then you might look at some other more automated ways or lower labor content, ways of building bikes. The way we put bikes could be cheaper than bladder molding. If we had some robotics, you know, robotic trimming going on, you know, with prefab tubes and just molding the loves that just reduces the amount of surface area needed to be laid up. And there's some really interesting techniques for making lugs that would be almost purely automated. So if you're looking at a high volume, but needs to have very low labor content there's other alternate techniques that might be worth. [00:55:11] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. And you're starting to see that greater automation. We discussed previously with rims in particular and rims are getting to a place where the, the, um, the autumn, the, the automated ones, the ones that have made it through an automated process are having you know, better quality, lower weight, higher strength, floor Boyd, um, characteristics relative to the hand-laid one, which has been the standard for a long time. And which in the early days of automation, um, we're still superior. You know, you were compromising in order to get these kind of low resolution woven rims of like say five or 10 years ago. [00:55:47] Craig Calfee: yeah. Yeah. That's it's happening. I mean, developing robotic stuff in automated processes for composites is difficult because it hasn't been done very much. It's been done at the very highest levels of aerospace. For consumer product, I, I struggled to think of a single consumer product. That's that's at that level, there is one, um, I think it's a part of a lawnmower that it turned out that carbon fiber ended up being the best material. And it was a thermoplastic injection semi injection molded carbon fiber part for a lawnmower that was featured at one of the composite shows I went to, and it was like, they were touting it as the first consumer product that uses advanced techniques. And it hadn't volume that it justified the tooling and expensive development. But, you know, I, I don't know if they did it at a loss or what, but it was a very impressive part. Um, but it, you needed, you know, a million of them to justify the development. So [00:56:52] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. And with, [00:56:53] Craig Calfee: are planning to be pretty good. [00:56:55] Randal R. Jacobs: um, with, with bicycles, there's so much variety. Every company wants to have its own spin on it. And even if, you know, the vast majority of bikes are almost identical in a lot of ways it's still, it has to be differentiated in some way in order to spin some sort of marketing story. So getting to those volumes and then you have five or six sizes, or maybe even seven or eight, depending on how granular you go. Yeah. It's coming, but, but probably five or 10 years out, would you guess? [00:57:22] Craig Calfee: Well, yeah, it, it's hard to say. Um, I, I also look at, um, you know, the handmade side where and the bike shop owners are going to be pissed off at me for saying this, but, um, the whole model of buying a bike through a bike shop is, is difficult. I mean, the, the world is trending towards this direct sale model and bike shops are becoming more of a service center rather than. Bike sales outlet. I think, you know, the fitting studio and the servicing of the bikes is, is really where the bike shops are going to at least the high end ones and selling expensive bikes could be done through direct interactions with people who make these bikes by hand guys like myself, of course, and all the metal frame builders and people who were the labor content is kind of high, but it's specialized in terms of it's it's not industrial type of labor. It's very much high skill labor. And if you, if you cut out the middleman, so to speak, that allows the fabricator to get paid, what they should be getting paid in terms of the labor. So that's pretty much the only way you're going to get you know, made in USA locally made products at reasonable prices. You have to basically let the builder collect the retail margin. [00:58:48] Randal R. Jacobs: Well, this is actually something that I've, um, had some fun diving into, again, with Russ over it, pathless pedals going into, like, what did, what did China's industrialization model look like to get them to a place where they have such deep supply chains and it actually Taiwan in particular, in the bike industry and you know, how would you slowly recreate that? You're not gonna, you know, this, I don't know that there's anyone making hydraulic disc brakes in the U S there's nobody making integrated Grifters with hydraulic disc brakes. There's a lot of things that just aren't, you know, you can't get made here. Um, and so you need to be able to take, like the one thing that can be made here in a reasonably economically viable way like a frame, and then, you know, bring in containers of parts from other places. And then slowly pick off those parts. Maybe do wheel assembly here. Maybe you do, you know, you do the final assembly here, bring more of that value and local. And over time, a cottage industry built around at least that's my hypothesis hypothesis as to how we relocate flies. A lot of bike industry production and assembly processes. [00:59:49] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's, there's lots of room for that. I liked that last point about the bike assembly. That's where a huge amount of savings is had in the mass produced bikes. I've been to these factories with these assembly lines. I mean, it's just, it's literally Henry Henry Ford, you know, the bike girls down a moving platform and people do the same job hour after hour bolting on the left brake lever and the next person bolts on the right brake lever. And, you know, it's, it's a very boring job actually. So the, and here by the good bike shops effectively reassemble these bikes to their, their standards. Well, why can't that happen from the game? And save some money in the process. [01:00:37] Randal R. Jacobs: So we actually early on with thesis we actually did, um, distributed assembly. So we had what we called our LBP or local bicycle professional program in any professional mechanic or fitter or shop. And usually it was, you know, small service oriented shops that worked with us could sign up and we would, um, if they sold a bike, they got a commission. It was less than the market, but they weren't, they were already not selling bikes. Right. So they get a commission for the sale. Um, and then they would get a paid by us to do the final assembly. The challenge we had was consistency. Yeah, everyone has their own way of doing things. Sometimes the cables wouldn't be routed in, in the way we wanted, or they wouldn't have a particular tool for a particular process. So being able to control is something that's centralized assembly allows for to a much greater degree. But then on the other extreme, when you're describing the assembly line process also results in an inferior product. So what we went to was, um, a team of carefully trained mechanics who have a very detailed standard operating procedure for assembling our bikes in any tiny little change has to be approved. And that's how we're able to get, um, you know, the quality of assembly that we get on our bikes and it costs more than that assembly line, but actually not that much. Cost us like 50, 60 bucks a bike. Um, but then you're shipping something that's much bigger and your ship and you're paying duty on a greater value. And so having, you know, having that sort of semi centralized process where you have little hubs of assembly of assemblers who are doing kind of the same handful of bikes, and they are able to do it at a very high degree and not on an assembly line process. but like one mechanic, one bikes, there's that intimacy with the machine, making sure it's all dialed. Um, that is what I believe will be the future, at least on the on the high end and is the direction we're going in. [01:02:27] Craig Calfee: Yeah, I would push for that pretty hard. I mean, that's, that's how we do it at our shop. And you know, we ended up shipping, complete bikes out rather than bikes and parts kits to assemblers. But, um, you know, it's, I think that's the, that is the future. The customer ends up being really satisfied with it. We have, um, two, two full-time mechanics that have relationships with our customers. They are buddies, you know, and if they have an issue with their bike, they send them a note or a, you know, it's almost like fans, they're not just Cathy fans. They're, they're Ryan and Patrick fans. And, you know, they, they love Ivan's wheels, Ireland's a great wheel builder. So they just continue to promote the brand on personal relationships, not just a brand loyalty. So I think that part of it is really cool. [01:03:22] Randal R. Jacobs: It's something I've noticed in meeting your riders in various places. There's a deep affinity, not just for the bike, but for the people behind it. So I appreciate you bringing that to the podcast here today. And I look forward to having a follow on conversation where we go deep nerd on bamboo and wood and alternative bicycle materials and how those may or are being made economically viable going forward. So, Craig Calfee thank you for your time and we'll talk to you again in a few months. [01:03:50] Craig Calfee: Okay. Thanks, Randy. [01:03:52] Randall: And that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. If you'd like to engage further on this topic or connect directly with our friend, Craig Calfee. I encourage you to join The Ridership. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, you can visit www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride. And finally to use craig dalton's words here's the finding some dirt onto your wheels.  

Calfee gives a life update!

Calfee does a mini life update and how she's been using positive reinforcement again to help her get back into a positive space where she could be consistent again towards reaching her goals!

This week Randall sits down with bicycle industry pioneer, Craig Calfee. Craig has been an industry leader for decades with his work on the Calfee brand and many other collaborations throughout the industry. You cannot find someone more knowledgable about carbon (or bamboo) as a material.  Calfee Designs Website Join The Ridership Support the Podcast Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Craig Calfee Randall [00:00:00]  [00:00:04] Randall: Welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Randall Jacobs and our guest today is Craig Calfee. Craig is the founder of Calfee Design, the innovator behind the first full carbon frames to race in the tour de France, the originator of numerous technologies adopted throughout the cycling industry, and on a personal note has been a generous and consistent supporter of my own entrepreneurial journey. I am grateful to have him as a friend, and I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time. So with that, Craig, Calfee welcome to the podcast. [00:00:32] Craig Calfee: Oh, thank you. Nice to be here. [00:00:34] Randall: So, let's start with, what's your background, give your own story in your own words. [00:00:40] Craig Calfee: Well, I've always written bikes. I mean, as a kid, that's how I got around. And that's, as you become an older child, you, uh, find your independence with moving about the world. And a bicycle of course, is the most efficient way to do that. And later on, I was a bike messenger in New York when I went to college and that kind of got me into bike design as much for the, uh, desire to make a bike that can withstand a lot of abuse. And later on, I used a bike for commuting to work at a job, building carbon fiber racing boats. And during that time I crashed my bike and needed a new frame. So I thought I'd make a frame at a carbon fiber, uh, tubing that I had been making at my.  [00:01:29] Randall: my job  [00:01:30] Craig Calfee: So this is back in 1987, by the way. So there wasn't a, there were no YouTube videos on how to make your own carbon bike. So I pretty much had to invent a way to build the bike out of this tubing. And at the time there were aluminum lugged bikes, and I just, I knew already aluminum and carbon fiber don't get along very well. So you have to really do a lot of things to, to accommodate that. And the existing bikes at the time were, uh, I would say experimental in the fact that they were just trying to glue aluminum to carbon and it really wasn't working. [00:02:05] So I came up with my own way and built my first bike and it turned out really well. And a lot of friends and, and bike racers who checked out the bikes that I I really should keep going with it. So I felt like I discovered carbon fiber as a, as the perfect bicycle material before anyone else. Uh, and actually, uh, right at that time, Kestrel came out with their first bike, uh, the K 1000 or something. Um, anyway that was uh, that was in 87, 88. And, uh, I felt like I should really, you know give it a go. So I moved out to California and started a bike company. [00:02:48] Randall: So just to be clear, you were actually making the tubes, you weren't buying tubes. So you're making the tubes out of the raw carbon or some pre-printed carbon. then you came up with your own way of, uh, joining those tubes. [00:03:01] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I worked on a braiding machine, so it was actually a a hundred year old, uh, shoelace braider, uh, from back in Massachusetts. There's a lot of old textile machinery braiding is, uh, you know, your braided socks and, you know, nylon rope is braided. So this is a 72 carrier braider, which means 72 spools of carbon fiber. [00:03:25] Are winding in and out braiding this tube and you just run it back and forth through this braider a few times. And now you have a thick enough wall to, uh, I developed a and tape wrapping method at that job and came up with a pretty decent way to make a bicycle tube. So that was kind of the beginning of that. [00:03:47] Uh, and since then I've explored all kinds of methods for making tubing, mainly through subcontractors who specialize in things like filament winding and roll wrapping. And, uh, pultrusion, you know, all kinds of ways to make tubing. And that does relate to kind of an inspiration for me, where I realized that, uh, carbon fiber, you know, high performance composites are relatively young and new in the world of technology where metals are, you know, the metals have been around since the bronze age. [00:04:21] I mean, literally 5,000 years of development happened with metals, carbon fiber, uh, high-performance composites have only really been around since world war two. So that's a huge gap in development that hasn't happened with composites. So that to me felt like, oh, there's some job security for a guy who likes to invent things. So that was my, a kind of full force to get me to really focus on composite materials. [00:04:51] Randall: Were you that insightful in terms of the historical context at the time, or is that kind of a retro or retrospective reflection? [00:04:58] Craig Calfee: I think, I don't know. I think I may have read about that. Um, I a friend who had a library card at MIT and I pretty much lived there for a few weeks every, uh, master's thesis and PhD thesis on bicycles that they had in their library. And I think somewhere in there was a, uh, a topic on composites and comparing the technology of composites. [00:05:23] So. I probably that from some reading I did, or maybe I did invent that out of thin air. I don't remember, uh, nonetheless, uh, the fact of it is, you know, not, not a whole lot of mental energy has been put into coming up with ways of processing fiber and resin compared to metal. So to me that just opens up a wide world of, of innovation. [00:05:49] Randall: Um, and so the first frame was that, um, you're creating essentially uniform tubes and then mitering them, joining them, wrapping them as you do with your current bamboo frames or what was happening there. [00:06:02] Craig Calfee: Uh, it's more like the, uh, our, our carbon fiber frames were laminating carbon fabric in metal dyes, and those are not mitered tubes fitting into the dyes. And that's, that's a process. I got my first patent on. And it, uh, so in the process of compressing the carbon fabric against the tubes, you're you end up with these gussets in what is traditionally the parting line of a mold and rather than trim them off completely. [00:06:31] I, I use them as reinforcing ribs. [00:06:35] Randall: Yep. Okay. So that explains the, the, that distinctive element that continues with your, um, some of your, uh, to tube, uh, currently  [00:06:48] Craig Calfee: them  [00:06:49] the hand wrapping technique from that you currently see on the bamboo bikes came from developing a tandem frame, or basically a frame whose production numbers don't justify the tooling costs. Um, so that's hand wrapped. That's just literally lashed to. Yeah. And a point of note, there is I was a boy scout growing up and, uh, there's this merit badge called pioneering merit badge. [00:07:16] And I really enjoyed pioneering merit badge because it involved lashing row, uh, poles together with rope and the pro you had to do with this one project. And I did a tower and it was this enormous structure that went just straight up like a flagpole, but it was it involved a bunch of tetrahedrons, uh, stacked on top of each other and lashed together. [00:07:41] you know, culminating in a pole that went up. I don't remember how tall it was, but it was, it was really impressive. And everybody, you know, thought, wow, this is incredible of poles and some rope. And here we have this massive tower. So anyway, I was into things together since a young age. [00:08:00] And so I immediately came up with the, uh, the last tube concept. Which is where the, now the bamboo bikes are. course there's a specific pattern to the wrapping, but, um, the concept is basically using fiber to lash stuff together, [00:08:16] Randall: When it immediately brings to mind, what's possible with current generation of additive production techniques. Uh, whereas before you could make small components and then lash them together to create structures that otherwise aren't manufacturable. [00:08:31] Now you'd be able to say, print it out though. Those, you know, those printed out materials don't have the performance characteristics of a, you know, a uni directional carbon of the sword that you're working with currently. [00:08:42] Craig Calfee: right? [00:08:43] Randall: Um, so we've gone deep nerd here. We're going to, I'm going to pull us out and say, okay, uh, lots of time for this. [00:08:49] This is going to be a double episode. Uh, so next up, let's talk about those frames, uh, saw their big debut. [00:08:59] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So, um, we started making custom geometry for a. In 1989 and selling them and so big and tall, and that the idea of custom geometry frames was, uh, you know, pretty esoteric. And the pro racers were, we're using a lot of custom frames. So Greg Lamond, uh, was in search of a carbon fiber, uh, custom frame builder in, uh, 1990. [00:09:31] And, uh, no one really was doing it. We were literally the only company making custom carbon frame bikes. So he, uh, found out about us, uh, effectively discovered us, shall we say? And, uh, it didn't take long for him to order up 18 of them for his, his, uh, team Z, uh, teammates. He was sponsoring his own team with a Lamont brand. [00:09:56] So we didn't have to sponsor him. He basically paid for the frame. Put his name on them. And, and, uh, now we're now we're on the defending champions, a tour de France team. So that was a huge break obviously. And it was really a pleasure working with Greg and getting to know the demands of the pro Peloton, uh, you know, that really launched us. [00:10:21] So that was, uh, quite a splash. And, you know, it always is a great answer to the question. Oh, so who rides your bike kind of thing. you know, you have the, the full-on best one in the world at the time. So, so that was a fun thing. [00:10:39] Randall: And the name of the company at the time was, [00:10:41] Craig Calfee: Uh, carbon frames. [00:10:42] Randall: yeah. So anyone wanting [00:10:45] dig up the historical record, [00:10:47] Craig Calfee: is this too generic? You know, the other to what you're talking about, the adventure bikes. Yeah, we had to stop. I mean, carbon frames is a terrible name because everyone started talking about all carbon fiber frames as carbon frames. So we thought that was cool, you know, like Kleenex, you know, uh, and then we came up with the adventure bike, you know, with very early, uh, adventure bike. [00:11:11] And it was just, we called it the adventure bike. And now there's a classification called adventure bikes that, you know, so, um, I think we, we, we went too generic on how we named our models. [00:11:26] Randall: I've drawn from the rich tradition, a tradition of Greek, you know, uh, philosophy for naming my own companies in the like, [00:11:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah. [00:11:36] Randall: uh, um, and then next up, uh, so you've worked with Greg Lamond on those frames. Carbon frames is up and running and you're, you're producing custom geo frames and you're starting to get at some scale at this point and some notoriety. [00:11:52] next up you were working on your bamboo bikes. When we talk about that [00:11:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that was say, I'm kind of at the, at the time, it was just a way to get publicity. So at the Interbike trade show, you'd have a few creative people making some wacky bikes out of beer cans or, or other just weird things just to get attention, just, just to send the media over to your booth, to take a picture of some wacky thing that you're doing. [00:12:20] yeah, we got to do something like that to get, get some attention. And the, uh, so I was looking around for some PVC pipe. Maybe I was going to do a PVC pipe bike, and I wasn't really sure, but I knew that we could just wrap any tube. Make a bike out of literally anything. So, um, my dog was playing with some bamboo behind the shop. [00:12:42] Uh, she was a stick dog, so she loved to clamp onto a stick and you could swing her around by the, by the sticks. She's a pit bull and lab mix. Anyway, we ran out of sticks. Uh, cause we only had one little tree in the back, but we did have some bamboos. So she came up with a piece of bamboo and I was her around by it, expecting it to break off in her mouth because I just wasn't aware of how strong bamboo was, but it turned out it was really quite strong. [00:13:12] And I said, oh, let's make a bike out of this stuff. And sure enough, uh, the bike was, uh, quite a attention getter. It got the quarter page and bicycling magazine so that, you know mission accomplished on that front. And, but the bike itself rode really well.  [00:13:29] Randall: well  [00:13:30] Craig Calfee: Um, when I wrote my first carbon bike, uh, the very first ride on my very first carbon bike, I was struck by how smooth it was. [00:13:38] It had this vibration damping that was, you know, just super noticeable and, and that really kind of lit a fire under my butt thinking, wow, this is really cool. When I built my first bamboo bike, I had that same feeling again, how smooth It was It was amazing for its vibration damping. So, uh, I knew I was onto something at that point. [00:14:02] Uh, that first bike was a little too flexy, but, uh, the second bike I built was significantly stiffer and was an actual, real rideable bike. So, uh, from that point, uh, we just started building a few here and there and it was still a novelty item until about, uh, 1999, 2000. When a few people who had been riding them, or like, I want another one, I I want to know mountain bike this time. [00:14:29] So as it was just starting to get known and, uh, we started selling them through dealers. And I mean there's a lot of stories I can tell on how that evolved and how people started actually believing that a bamboo bike could actually exist in the world. So it took a while though. [00:14:49] Randall: I think there's a whole thread that we could tug on maybe in a subsequent episode where we focus just on the bamboo bike revolution. [00:14:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. That's um, there's a lot of, lot of stuff going on there. I'm actually writing my second book on history of the bamboo bike, because there's so many interesting angles to it, particularly in the. [00:15:10] Randall: in Africa [00:15:12] I'm struck by the juxtaposition of this bleeding edge. Uh, you know, high-tech material that you pioneered and then this going back to one of the most basic building materials, uh, that we have building bikes out of that. And in fact, um, on the one hand, there's this, this extreme, know, difference in terms of the technology ization of each material. [00:15:34] But on the other hand, there's a parallel the sense that like carbon, in tubes is best, uh, you know, generally, uh, when it's you need to write. Yeah, with maybe some cross fibers in order to prevent, prevent it from separating. And bamboo also has that characteristic of having, you know, you need directional fibers that are bonded together by some, uh, you know, some other material in, in the, in the bamboo [00:15:58] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah, it's very, there's a lot of similarities. I mean, bamboo is amazing just because it grows out of the ground and tubular for. And it grows a new, huge variety of diameters and wealth thicknesses. So if you're looking for tubing, I mean, you don't have to go much further. It's amazing that it literally grows out of the ground that way.  [00:16:20] Randall: paint [00:16:21] a picture for folks to, um, most of our listeners I'm guessing are in north America or, you know, other, uh, English-speaking parts of the world. I lived in China and as you've been, you see huge scaffolding, multi-story, you know, big buildings and the scaffolding isn't made out of metal. [00:16:37] It's made out of bamboo lashed together with zip ties and pieces of wire. So it really speaks to the, the structural, uh, strength of the material and reliability of the material. and you know, should instill confidence when descending down a mountain. [00:16:54] Craig Calfee: Oh yeah. No, it's, I, I remember seeing bamboo and scaffolding many, many years. And I thought, well, of course, and the other reason they use it in scaffolding is when a typhoon hits and it, it kind of messes up the scaffolding of a construction site. Um, it's, they're back to work on the bamboo construction sites, much faster than the metal scaffolding sites, they have to deal with bent and distorted metal scaffolding, um, to replace those and fix that takes a lot longer where bamboo, they just bend it back and lash it back together. [00:17:32] It's it's so much easier. [00:17:35] Randall: there's one more thing on this theme that I want to, uh, pull out before we move on, which is talk to me about the, the sustainability components of it. Um, starting with how it was done initially. [00:17:47] And then now with say like, uh, biodegradable resins or, or other materials I can, this frame can be current. [00:17:55] Craig Calfee: Uh, the short answer is yes, the frame can be composted. And the other cool thing is if you take care of it, it it'll never compost, meaning you can prevent it from being composted naturally. if you really want to, you know, uh, dispose of the frame, um, it will biodegrade much faster than any other material that bicycle frames are made of. [00:18:22] So yeah, the, the renewable aspect, the low energy content of it, it's, it's utterly the best you can imagine. And we're kind of waiting for the world to finally get serious about global warming and start to have some economic incentives for buying products that are in fact, uh, good for the environment. Uh, we haven't seen that yet, but we're kind of holding out and hoping that happens. [00:18:49] And then we'll see probably some significant growth in the bamboo adoption in the bicycling world. [00:18:57] Randall: I want to plant a seed that, that, uh, to germinate in my head, which is this idea of bamboos being the ideal material for kind of more mainstream, uh, utility bicycles and recreational bicycles. really it's a matter of the unit economics in economies of scale and consistency of material, which you could make uniform by having, uh, having controlled grow conditions and things like that. [00:19:23] Um, but it could be a very localized industry to anywhere where bamboo grows. this could be produced, which reduces transportation costs reduces, you know, issues of inventory carrying and all these things. Um, so let's, let's park that I want to ask you more about those, about the economics of bamboo in a side conversation to see if there's, you know, explore there. [00:19:45] Craig Calfee: well, there is. I mean, that's, that's what we did in Africa. Same concept is as why, why would bamboo work in Africa better than the imported bikes from China? So that was, that was the whole thing around that. [00:19:59] Randall: Ah, I love it. All right. So though, there will be a bamboo episode folks. Uh, we're going to, going to continue cause there's a lot of ground to cover here. so next steps you've done done the first carbon frame and the tour de France, uh, carbon frames is up and running. You've started getting into bamboo, what was next, [00:20:18] Craig Calfee: Um, then lots of smaller developments, which become really important to us from a business perspective, uh, fiber tandem, we built the first one of those. And then we went to a lateral list, tandem design, and it's pretty optimized at this point. So we're, I would say we are the leader in the tandem world in terms of the highest performance, tandem bikes, uh, and then re repairing of carbon frames. [00:20:47] That was a big one, uh, which we were kind of pushed into by customers. And other folks who heard that we could repair the Cathy frames and they would set a call up. And literally we had a, an in one inquiry per week, if not more, more often about like a colonoscopy that this guy wanted to repair and he heard we could do it on ours. [00:21:10] And we're like, well, by a Calfee don't, you know, I'm sorry, but we can't repair somebody else's frame. You'll have to buy one of ours. And then you'll know that you crash it, we can repair it for, he was trying to make that a, a a advantage for our brand, but we couldn't really, you know, do that. So, uh, we said, well, if we can't beat them, we'll repair them. [00:21:32] And we repaired a first and then some specialized, I think, after that. So we, we accepted repair jobs and pretty soon it became about a third of our, our business. And it's, uh, of course now lots of other people repair frames, but, uh, we started doing that in 2001 or something and, and we've been doing it ever since. [00:21:58] And it's, that part has been really interesting to see, because we get to literally see the inside of everyone else's frames and look at the weak points. You know, they often show up on, on people's frames and get asked to fix them or even redesign them at that point. So that's been really interesting to, to me as a technician, [00:22:21] Randall: and want to come back to this in a second, but before we lose it, what is a lateralis tandem design? [00:22:27] Craig Calfee: uh, that, so traditional tandems had a, a tube that went the head tube, usually straight back down towards the dropouts or or bottom bottom bracket. And it's, it's a way to stiffen up a frame. That's inherently not very stiffened torsion. But, uh, with composites, you can orient the fiber, uh, in torsion to make a tube significantly stiffer and torsion than say a metal tube of similar weight. [00:22:57] So we were able to go a little bit bigger diameter and more fiber in the helical angled orientation and make a tandem, uh, stiff enough and torsion and get rid of that tube. And for a carbon fiber frame, that it was really important because number of times you have to join the tube, the more expensive it is or the more labor content there is. So we were able to reduce our labor content, make the frame lighter and make it stiffer all at, in one design change. So that was a big, a big revelation. And now I most of them have copied that design. So it's, uh, it's, that's another time where we, we did something that, that, uh, now became the standard. [00:23:43] Randall: Yeah. One of many from what I've observed in a written the history. Uh, so around this time, or shortly after you started the repair business, you started doing some pretty, pretty wild frames in terms of pushing the limits of what was possible when we talk about that. [00:24:01] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah, we did. We've done a lot of different types of frames, uh, mostly for show, but, um, like the north American handmade bike show is a great venue for just doing something way out of left field. Um, we did, uh, a bamboo bike made all out of small diameter, bamboo. Um, it's I only made one because it was a total pain in the ass to make. [00:24:26] Uh, and it was also kind of inspired by the, a request from a guy who was not only a fan of bamboo, but he was a fan of molten style bikes. Those are the trust style frames with small wheels. So we built one of those and. With the only small diameter bamboo, and we built another one that was, uh, a real art piece. [00:24:49] So just having fun with that from a, you know, completely artistic direction is a lot of fun for me because that's my formal training. I went to art school and learned about different materials and, and art and composition. Uh, and I was into the structure of materials and how they, they relate to each other. [00:25:12] And my art was more of a forum file form follows function, kind of inspiration. And, uh, so some bikes that I've made were, are not terribly practical, but just explore the, the limits of structure. So another bike I made, uh, we call it the spider web bike, which was literally a, a bike made of just carbon fiber strands. [00:25:36] No tubes. And it, it was kind of wild looking and a collector ended up buying it, which is really cool. But you look at this thing and you just couldn't imagine that it, it, you could actually ride it, but, uh, it actually does ride fairly well. It's a bit fragile if you crash it, it would be kind of dangerous, but you know, stuff like that. [00:25:55] I like to do that occasionally. [00:25:59] Randall: I think of, uh, like biomorphic design or like hyper optimized design that maybe doesn't have the resiliency, but very strict parameters will perform higher than anything else that you could, you could create. [00:26:12] Craig Calfee: absolutely. Yeah. Those are really fun. I'm really inspired by natural forms and, uh, you know, the, the, some of the new computer aided techniques we're designing are, uh, rattled in those lines. so, yeah, I follow that pretty closely. [00:26:28] Randall: a little sidebar. Um, I don't know if you've, uh, no of, uh, Nick Taylor, the guy who created the, Ibis Maximus in front of the mountain bike hall of fame. [00:26:40] Craig Calfee: Um, no, I don't think so. [00:26:43] Randall: I'll introduce you to his work at some point, but he's another one of these people who, very avid cyclist is not in the bike industry, but is. There's a lot of trail building and alike and isn't is a sculptor really focused on, the form of, uh, you know, biological shapes and materials and, and things of this sort. [00:27:02] Uh, I think that there's a lot, uh, I'm actually curious more into your, your non bike artistic work for a moment. Uh, and, and how that got infused into your work with the bike. [00:27:18] Craig Calfee: yeah, so I haven't done a lot of, you know, just pure, fine art sculpture in a long time. But when I was doing that, it was. a lot of things that would fool the eye or, um, some material and, and push it to its limit. So I was doing stuff that was, um, uh, you know, trying to create a, almost like a physical illusion, not just an optical illusion, but a, but a physical illusion or like, how could you possibly do that kind of thing? [00:27:54] And that was a theme of my sculpture shortly after Pratt. So for example, just take one example of a sculpture that I got a lot of credit for in classes at Pratt, it was a, a big block of Oak. It was a cutoff from a woodworking shop. It's about a foot in, let's say a foot cube of Oak. And I would, um, so I, I, uh, raised the grain on it with a wire brush and then I blocked printed on Oak tag page. [00:28:26] Um, some black ink on rolled onto the Oak block and made a river, basically a print off of each face of the, of the block. And then I carefully taped that paper together to simulate a paper block of the Oak chunk that I I had. now I had a super light paper version of the Oak block. And then I hung them on a balance beam, which I forged at a steel, but the hanging point was way close to the piece. [00:28:57] And if you looked at it from three feet away, just, your brain would, just hurting because you couldn't figure out how is this even possible? And because it really looked amazing, super hyper real. Anyway, it just looked amazing and it was fun to get the effect of how the hell did that. Did he do that? [00:29:18] What's what's the trick here. There's something going on. That's not real. Or it's. Uh it's not physically possible. And I kind of got that feeling with the carbon fiber bike. When we, when we built the first bike, everyone would pick it up and go, oh, that's just too light. It's not even a bike. It's a plastic bike it's going to break instantly. [00:29:39] So that was sort of a relation from, from those days to the, to the bike. [00:29:44] Randall: You ever come across Douglas Hofstadter's book, Godel, Escher Bach. [00:29:49] Craig Calfee: No, but I'd be interested to read it. [00:29:51] Randall: Definite short Lister. Um, uh, you've come across MC Escher, of Yeah. And are there any parallels or any inspiration there? [00:30:01] Craig Calfee: Um, not very direct, I'd say. Um, [00:30:08] Who  [00:30:08] Randall: your, who your inspirations or what, what would you say your creative energy is most similar to? [00:30:14] Craig Calfee: I'd probably, I'd say say Buckminster fuller. [00:30:17] Randall: Mm, [00:30:17] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I mean, I studied his work in depth, you know, not only the geodesic dome stuff, but also his vehicles, the dime on vehicle the, yeah. So there's, there's a bunch of stuff that he was involved with that I'd say, I'm parallel with as far as my interest goes, [00:30:37] Randall: what books should I read? [00:30:39] Craig Calfee: all of them. [00:30:42] Randall: Where do I start? If I have limited [00:30:44] time  [00:30:45] Craig Calfee: Yeah. It's a tough one. He's actually really difficult to read too. His writing is not that great. I pretty much look at his, uh, his design work more than His writing [00:30:56] Randall: Okay. So who's book whose book about Buckminster fuller. Should I read? [00:31:01] Craig Calfee: good question. I'll, I'll catch up with you on that later because there's few of them that they're worth. It's worth a look. [00:31:07] Randall: awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Um, let's talk about 2001. you're a dragon fly. [00:31:15] Craig Calfee: Yeah, the dragon fly was an interesting project. It was so Greg Lamanda had asked me, like, I want an even lighter bike. He was constantly pushing on the technology. And I said, well, there are some really expensive fibers that are starting to become available, but, um, you know, this would be a $10,000 bike frame and, you know, it's only going to be a half a pound lighter. [00:31:40] And he said, well, I don't care. I just, you know, I w I need it for racing. I mean, um, you know, when, when I'm climbing Alpe d'Huez with Miguel Indurain and if he's got a lighter bike than I do, then I'm just going to give up, you know, in terms of the effort. So he needs to have that technical advantage, or at least be on the same plane. [00:32:02] So the reason why he'd spend, you know, $5,000 for a half a pound, a weight savings was pretty, pretty real. So, but it took until about 2000, 2001 after he had long retired to, um, really make that happen. So the fibers I was talking about are really high modulus fiber that was very fragile, too brittle, really for any use. [00:32:29] So we came up with a way to integrate it with, um, boron fiber. Uh, it actually was a material we found, uh, special specialty composites out of, uh, out of Rhode Island. Uh, they, uh, do this co-mingled boron and carbon fiber, uh, hybrid material, which was, um, they were looking for a use cases for it and the bicycle was one of them. [00:32:58] So, uh, we built a prototype with their material and it turned out. To be not only really light and really strong, the, the boron made it really tough. So carbon fiber has, uh, the highest stiffness to weight ratio, intention of any material you can use. boron is the highest stiffness to weight ratio in compression as a, as a fibrous material that you can integrate into a composite. So when you mix them, you now have a combination of materials, that are unbeatable. [00:33:35] Randall: Like a concrete and rebar almost, or, quite. [00:33:40] Craig Calfee: I'd say that's a good, um, for composites in general, but now we're talking about the extreme edge of, of performance, where, um, looking at the, most high performance material certain conditions, versus tension. These, these are conditions that are existing in a bicycle tube all the time. [00:34:07] So one side of the tube is compressing while the other side is intention as you twist the bike, uh, and then it reverses on the, on the pedal stroke. So it has to do both now. Carbon fiber is quite good at that, but compression it suffers. And that's why you can't go very thin wall and make it, um, withstand any kind of impact because it's, it's got a weakness in it's, um, compressive. So, uh, it's, uh, it doesn't take a break very well either. So boron on, the other hand does take a break very well, and it's incredibly high compressive strength to weight ratio and compressive stiffness to weight ratio. are two different things by the way. So when you combine those into a tube, it's pretty amazing. [00:34:57] Uh, they're just really quite expensive. So we came up with the dragon fly, um, in 2001 and it was at the time the lightest production bike yet it also had the toughness of a normal frame. And that's that's right around when the Scott came out, which was a super thin wall, large diameter, uh, carbon frame that was really fragile. [00:35:23] Um, so that was sort of a similar weight, but not nearly as tough as, uh, the dragon fly. [00:35:34] Randall: For well, to go a little bit deeper on this. So what is the nature like? What is the nature of the boron? Is it a, like, is it a molecule? Is it a filament? So you have, you have carbon filaments is the boron, um, you know, is that, are you putting it into the resin? How is it? Co-mingled. [00:35:51] Craig Calfee: It's a, it's a filament, basically a super thin wire. [00:35:56] Randall: You're essentially co-mingling it in when you're creating the tubes and then using the same resin to bond the entire structure together. [00:36:04] Craig Calfee: That's right. [00:36:05] Randall: Got it. And this, so then this is, uh, if you were to add then say like to the resin separately, it would be a compounding effect. Um, I don't know if you have, uh, mean, I assume you've done some stuff with graphene. [00:36:19] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Graphing graphing is a really great material. It does improve the toughness of composites. Uh, it's again, also very expensive to use, uh, in a whole two. Usually it's used in smaller components, uh, not so much on the whole frame, uh, and it, and it's, um, it's best, uh, uses in preventing the of cracking. [00:36:46] So it stops the micro cracking that starts with a failure mode. And that that's a great, thing. But if your laminate is too thin to begin with that, all the graphing in the world, isn't going to help you. So for really minor wax it'll help, but for anything substantial, it's going to break anyway. [00:37:08] So you have to start out with a thick enough laminate get the toughness that you're looking for. Uh, graphene is really great for highly stressed areas, which might start cracking from, uh, fatigue or just the design flaw of a stress concentration. So it's got a number of purposes. Uh, it's great for, uh, like pinch clamp areas, you know, places where the mechanical, uh, stress is so high on a, on a very localized area. [00:37:37] Um, so yeah, graphene is wonderful. We didn't get into it too much because, um, it's just, it would just, wasn't practical for our applications and how we make the frames, but, uh, some companies have started using graphene and it's, it's pretty interesting stuff. [00:37:52] Randall: We did some experimentation with it early on in our looking at it for the future. my understanding is. You know, I haven't gone too deep into like the intermolecular physics, but it's essentially like you have a piece of paper and if you start tearing the paper that tear will propagate very easily. [00:38:09] then the graphene is almost like little tiny pieces of tape. Randomly distributed, evenly distributed across the material that makes it so that that fracture can no longer propagate in that direction. And it has to change direction where it bumps into another graphene molecule and the graphing, essentially when we tested it was doubling the bond strength of the resin. [00:38:30] So in terms of pulling apart different layers of laminate, then, um, increasing the toughness of say, uh, a rim made with the exact same laminate in the exact same resin with, 1% graphene per mass of resin increasing the toughness of that rim structure by 20%. [00:38:50] Which is pretty [00:38:50] Craig Calfee: That's correct. [00:38:51] Randall: The challenges that is that it lowers the temperature, uh, the, the glass suffocation points resin. so, you know, a rim is like, you know, there are, if you're gonna put it on the back of your car, you know, that's not a normal use case when you're riding, but, you know, it's, it's something that just makes it less resilient to those towards sorts of, you know, people put on the back of the car too close to the exhaust and they melt the rim. [00:39:17] So we're having to experiment with some high temperature residents that have other issues. [00:39:22] Craig Calfee: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's rims are a great place for graphing, just cause they're in a a place where you'll have some impacts, but yeah. Temperature management is an issue. Um, yeah, that's the high temperature residents are, are another area that, that, uh, we're experimenting in, uh, wrapping electric motor, uh, rotors with, with a high temperature resonant carbon wrap. [00:39:46] that's a whole nother area, but I'm familiar with that stuff. [00:39:49] Randall: Which we'll get into in a second, park park, that one. Cause that's a fun theme. yeah. And I'm just thinking about a rim structure. It seems like boron on the inside graphing on the outside, um, deal with high compressive forces between the spokes and then the high impact forces on the external, will  [00:40:07] Craig Calfee: the material we use is called high bore. You can look that up. H Y B O R and there they're actually coming back with new marketing efforts there. They, I think the company got sold and then, um, the new buyers are, are re revisiting how to, to spread the use of it. So might be real interested in supporting a rim project. [00:40:30] Randall: mm. Uh, to be continued offline. Um, all right. So then we've got your carbon fiber repair surface. We talked about the dragon fly. Um, it's a great segue into engineering and design philosophy. let's talk about that [00:40:47] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Um, well it's, to me, it's all about form follows function and, uh, when something works so well, functionally, it's gonna look good. That's uh, that's why trees look great just by themselves, uh, that that's, you know, coming back to the natural world, you know, that's why we have a Nautilus shell for, uh, for our logo. [00:41:12] It's the form follows function. Aspect of that just makes it look beautiful. For some reason, you look at something from nature, you don't really know why is it beautiful? Well, the reason is the way it's structured, the way it's evolved over millions of years. Has resulted in the optimum structure. So for me, as a, as a human being artificially trying to recreate stuff, that's been evolved in nature. [00:41:39] Um, I look closely at how nature does it first and then I'll apply it to whatever I'm dealing with at the moment. And so that's how I, that's how I design stuff. [00:41:50] Randall: there's a, the Nautilus shell example, like, you know, the golden ratio and the way that, really complex systems tend to evolve towards very simple, fundamental, primitives of all design [00:42:04] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. There's some basic stuff that, that seemed to apply everywhere. [00:42:10] Randall: So with your carbon fiber repair service, so you started to see some of the problems with that were emerging with these, um, large tube thin wall designs that were being used to achieve a high strength or sorry, a high stiffness to weight, but then compromising in other areas. [00:42:28] So let's talk about that. [00:42:30] Craig Calfee: Yeah, it's um, you know, designing a carbon fiber bike is actually really quite difficult. There's so much going on. There's so many, uh, things you have to deal with high stress areas that you can't really get around. there's a lot of constraints to designing a good bicycle frame. Um, and then you're dealing with the tradition of, of how people clamp things on bikes, you know, stem, clamps, and seed post clamps, and, uh, you know, th that type of mentality. [00:43:04] It's still with us with the carbon, which is carbon doesn't do well with. So a lot of companies struggle with that and they'll come up with something on paper or in their CAD model. And their finite element analysis sort of works, but, and then they go into the real world and they have to deal with real situations that they couldn't predict in the, the computer. [00:43:29] And they get a problem with, uh, you know, a minor handlebar whacking, the top tube situation, which shouldn't really cause your bike to become dangerous. But in fact, that's what happens. So you've got, um, you know, uh, weak points or vulnerabilities in these really light frame. And if you're not expected to know what the vulnerability is as an end-user and you don't know that if you wack part of the bike and in a minor way that you normally wouldn't expect to cause the frame to become a weak, then the whole design is a question. So you have to consider all these things when you decide to bike. And a lot of companies have just depended on the computer and they are finite element analysis too, to come up with shapes and designs that, uh, are inherently weak. And, um, people get pretty disappointed when they're, when the minor is to of incidents causes a crack in the frame. [00:44:37] And if they keep riding the bike, the crack gets bigger. And then one day, you know, I mean, most people decide to have it fixed before it gets to be a catastrophic but, uh, you know, it gets expensive and, uh, You know, it's, sad. Actually, another motivation for getting into the repair business was to save the reputation of carbon fiber as a frame material. [00:45:03] You know, these types of things don't happen to thin wall titanium frames. You know, a thin wall titanium frame will actually withstand a whole lot more abuse than a thin wall carbon frame. So it's just hard to make diameter thin wall titanium frames that are stiff enough and not without problems of welding, you know, the heat affected zones. [00:45:26] So carbon fiber is, is a better material because it's so much easier to join and to, to mold. But if you, you have to design it properly to, to withstand normal abuse. And if you're not going to do that, then there should at least be a repair service available to keep those bikes from going to the landfill. [00:45:45] So frequent. And so that's what we do we, we offer that and we even train people how to carbon repair service. So that's, um, that's something we've done in order to keep bikes from just getting thrown away. [00:46:01] Randall: uh, I think I've shared with you, I'm in the midst of, uh, doing, uh, uh, a pretty radical ground up design, which is way off in the future. So I'll be picking your brain on that, but it immediately makes me think of the inherent. Compromises of current frame design and manufacturing techniques, including on our frame. [00:46:20] And in our case, the way we've addressed that is through not going with lower modulates carbon, you know, S T 700, maybe some T 800 in the frame, then overbuilding it order to have resiliency against impacts. But then also these sorts of, um, micro voids in other imperfections that are in inherent process of any, uh, manufacturing, uh, system that involves handling of materials in a complex, you know, eight, uh, sorry, 250 a piece, you know, layup like there's, this there's even that like human elements that you have to design a whole bunch of fudge factor into to make sure that when mistakes are made, not if, but when mistakes are made, that there's so much, uh, overbuilding that they don't end up in a catastrophic failure. [00:47:10] Craig Calfee: that's right. Yeah. Yeah. You have to have some safety margin. [00:47:15] Randall: And the Manderal spinning process that you were describing essentially eliminates a lot of that in you're starting to see, I mean, with rims, that's the direction that rims are going in, everything is going to be automated, is going to be knit like a sock and frames are a much more complex shape. Um, but you're starting to see, uh, actually probably know a lot more about the, the automation of frame design than I do. [00:47:35] Um, what do you see? Like as the, as the end point, at least with regards to the, um, like filament based carbon fiber material and frames, like where could it go with technology? [00:47:50] Craig Calfee: the, the, um, robotics are getting super advanced now and there's this technique called, um, uh, they just call it fiber placements or automated fiber placement, which is a fancy word for a robot arm, winding fiber, you know, on a mandrel or shape, uh, and then compressing that and, uh, know, molding that. [00:48:14] So it's, it's where your, a robot will orient a single filament of carbon fiber. Uh, continuously all around the, uh, the shape that you're trying to make. They do that in aerospace now for a really expensive rockets and satellite parts, but the technology is getting more accessible and, uh, so robotic trimmers are another one. [00:48:42] So we're, in fact, we're getting ready to build our own robotic arm tremor for a resin transfer, molded parts. That's where the edge of the part that you mold gets trimmed very carefully with a router. And, but imagine instead of just a router trimming an edge, you've got a robot arm with a spool of fiber on it, wrapping the fiber individually around the whole structure of the frame. [00:49:10] Uh, no, no people involved just, you know, someone to turn the machine on and then turn it off again. So that's kind of coming that that is a future. Uh, it hasn't arrived yet, certainly, maybe for simpler parts, but a frame is a very complex shape. So it'll take a while before they can get to that point. [00:49:30] Randall: It having to, yeah. Being able to Uh, spin a frame in one piece is, seems to be the ultimate end game. [00:49:43] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I think we need to, I think the, the, uh, genetically modified spiders would be a better way to [00:49:50] go  [00:49:50] Randall: Yeah, they might, they might help us the design process. [00:49:56] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. Just give them some good incentives and they'll, they'll make you set a really incredibly strong, you know, spider wound. [00:50:05] Randall: Well, it does. It speaks to the, the, the biggest challenge I see with that, which is you have to go around shape. so if you're going through a frame, like it's essentially the triangle. And so you need some way to like hand off the, the S the filament carrier from one side to the other constantly. [00:50:27] you'd just be able to spin it. You know, it would be pretty straightforward. So maybe the frame comes in a couple of different sections that get bonded, but then those don't form a ring. And so you can, you know, you can move them around instead of the machine order [00:50:41] Craig Calfee: Well, there's these things called grippers. So the robot grip sit and then another arm grip know let's go and the other arm picks it up. And then there's like in weaving, there's this thing called the flying shuttle, which invented. That's where the shuttle that, the war [00:50:59] Randall: Your ancestors were involved with flying shuttle. [00:51:02] Craig Calfee: Yeah. [00:51:02] Randall: That's one of the, uh, all right. That's, that's a whole other conversation. [00:51:07] Craig Calfee: Yeah, a really interesting, I mean, it's the Draper corporation. If you want to look it up, [00:51:13] um  [00:51:13] Randall: I  [00:51:13] Craig Calfee: know [00:51:14] they were the manufacturing made the looms back in the industrial revolution in the Northeast [00:51:21] Randall: I'm sitting currently in Waltham, which was one of the first mill cities, um, not from Lowell. [00:51:28] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So all those mills were where our customers and they would buy the Draper looms. Um, and they were automated looms with a flying shuttle was a big deal Uh back then. And so they, they made a lot of, of those looms and, and that's basically what sent me to college with a trust fund. So [00:51:49] Randall: You're a trust fund, baby. [00:51:51] Craig Calfee: Yep. [00:51:51] Yep [00:51:53] From vendors. [00:51:55] Uh [00:51:56] but that's yeah, that's the world I, I came out of. And, so the, the idea of taking a spool of material and handing it off as you wrap around something is really not that difficult. [00:52:08] Randall: Okay. So then you can do it in a way that is resilient to probably 10,000 handoffs over the course of weaving a frame and you can expect that it's not going to fail once. [00:52:19] Craig Calfee: That's right Yeah [00:52:20] It  [00:52:20] Randall: All then that, that's [00:52:22] Craig Calfee: the hard part, the hard part is dealing with the resin and the, and the, uh, forming and the getting a nice surface finish. That was where the harder. [00:52:31] Randall: Yeah. And, uh, uh, I'm thinking about, uh, space X's attempts to create a giant, uh, carbon fiber, uh, fuel tank. And they actually had to do the, um, the heating the resin at the point of, uh, depositing of the filaments. [00:52:52] And [00:52:52] you know, that's a really challenging process because you can't build an autoclave big enough to contain a fuel tank for a giant rocket bicycles don't have that issue, but [00:53:01] Craig Calfee: right. Yeah. The filament winding technique, which is how all those tanks are made is, is pretty amazing in the large scale of those, those big rockets is phenomenal. I mean, a couple of places in Utah that make those, and it's just seeing such a large things spinning and, uh, wrapping around it rapidly is quite inspiring. [00:53:26] Randall: Yeah. It's very, very cool stuff. And that's, again, a whole another thread about the, uh, the Utah based, uh, composites industry that got its start in aerospace, you know, advanced aerospace applications, which NV and others came out of. They used to be edge which you worked with. NBU designed their tubes early on. [00:53:43] Right. [00:53:44] Craig Calfee: W well, yeah, the poles history behind envy and quality composites back in late eighties, literally, uh, when I first came out to, uh, actually I was still, think I ordered them in Massachusetts and took delivery in California, but it was a quality composites and out of Utah, uh, Nancy Polish was the owner of that. [00:54:06] Also an MIT graduate who, um, who started a roll wrapping carbon fiber in tubular forum. And I'm pretty sure we were the first roll wrapped carbon tubes, uh, for bicycles that she made. And, um Uh, evolved to, uh, edge composites. So they, so quality composites became McClain quality composites, and then McLean, the guys who broke away from that went to start envy or edge, I guess, which became envy. [00:54:40] So yeah, those same guys brought that technology and we've been the customer ever since. And now there's yet another spinoff. The guys who were making the tubes at envy spun off and started their own company, uh, in a cooperative venture with envy. So let them go basically. And, uh, we're working with those guys. [00:55:01] So it's just following the, the top level of expertise. [00:55:06] Randall: very interesting stuff. Um, so, so where else do we go in terms of the, I mean, this is about as deep a composite deep nerdery, as we can get in, into composites and so on. And, uh, given that we're already here, we might as just, you know, dig ourselves deeper. [00:55:25] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Um, sir, just on the roll wrapping, the thing that, um, I remember one of the cool innovations that Nancy came up with was the double D section, um, tube where she would roll wrap two D shaped tubes, stick them together and do an outer wrap on the outside. So it was a efficient way to do a ribbed tube or a single ribs through the middle. She pretty much invented.  [00:55:53] Uh, we started doing something with that, um, change days, uh, to get more stiffness out of a change day. But, um, I just, some reason that image flashed in my mind about some of the innovative stuff that been going on that people don't really see it's. And that's what I'm saying before where the, uh, technology of composites has, um it's got a long way to go and it's, there's all kinds of stuff going on that are, are, is brand new. [00:56:23] Uh, most people people don't see it cause it's all process oriented more than product oriented. But for guys like me, it's really fast. [00:56:34] Randall: Yeah, it reminds me of, um, a technology owned by a Taiwanese carbon frame manufacturing, pretty large-scale tier one that I'd spoken to where they're doing, uh, that bracing inside of the forks. don't think they're doing anything especially advanced in terms of how it's manufactured. [00:56:54] I think they just have a, uh, the, the inner, um, you know, whether it's a bag or it's a, you know, EPS insert. And then they're just bridging, uh, between the two walls of the, uh, of the tube of the, the fork leg, uh, with another piece of carbon that gives it more lateral structure zero, uh, impact on the, um, for AFT compliance, which is a really technique. [00:57:21] Craig Calfee: that sounds like Steve Lee at [00:57:24] Randall: Uh, this was YMA. [00:57:27] Craig Calfee: Oh, okay. [00:57:28] Randall: Yeah, the gigantic folks. I haven't, I don't know if I've interacted with them yet, but, um, but yeah, well, [00:57:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah, some amazing innovation coming out of Taiwan. They're there. They're so deep into it. It's, it's a fun place to go and, and see what they're up to. [00:57:47] Randall: this actually brings me back to, um, I, I did had a conversation with over with Russ at path, less pedaled, and was asking like, you know, tell me about the quality of stuff made, made over in Asia. And I was like, well, you know, it's generally best to work with their production engineers because they're so close to the actual manufacturing techniques and they're the ones innovating on those techniques. [00:58:10] And in fact, um, you know, even specialized up until recently did not do carbon fiber in. outsource that, you know, they, they do some of the work in house, but then the actual design for manufacture and all that is being done by the factories and rightfully so the factories know it better, being close to the ground though, dealing with someone with yourself, you're someone who could go into a factory and be like, okay, let's, let's innovate on this. [00:58:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah.  [00:58:36] Yeah.  [00:58:37] Randall: so then 2011, um, first production, gravel bike. [00:58:45] Craig Calfee: Uh, yeah. Yeah. We came up with the, uh, adventure bike, we call it, um, it was also the first one that did the, uh, six 50 B uh, tire size that can be used with a 700 by 42 or So mixing, know, going bigger tire on a slightly smaller rim on the same bike as you'd run a 700 C and, uh, 35 or 40 millimeter tire. Um, yeah, so the adventure bike has been. Uh, a real fun area for us as far as, uh, just developing a, do everything. Be everything, bike [00:59:24] Randall: it's. And the geometry of that was kind of an endurance road geometry, right [00:59:28] Craig Calfee: that's [00:59:29] right. It's a road bike effectively, but with a few, a few, uh, tweaks for riding off road. [00:59:36] Randall: So then this, this word, gravel bike is kind of muddled. [00:59:39] Um, I never liked it, frankly. Uh, it's a marketing term. I remember it specialized when we were doing the, the diverse, um, you know, it was still kind of honing in on what these bikes were. Uh, but you could argue that like, you know, you know, everyone's road bike was a gravel bike. When you just put the biggest tires that would fit and write it on dirt. [00:59:57] But this concept of a one bike, it seems to be what you've planted. But you can have a single bike that will be your road, bike, perform handle, give you that, that experience when you put road wheels on, but then you can put these big six fifties on there and have a, you know, an off-road crit machine that is highly competent in, in rough terrain. [01:00:16] And so, so yeah, that, and that's very much my design philosophy as you know, as well, you know, fewer bikes that do more things. [01:00:24] Craig Calfee: Yeah. We have this. Kind of a marketing phrase for, you know, how the end plus one concept where, you know, how many bikes do you even need? Well, one more than what you've got. Well, we do the N minus one concept with our mountain bike, which can also be a gravel by ache or a bike, but it's, uh, it allows you to change the head tube angle and, and use different, uh, fork travel suspension forks on, on the same frame. [01:00:55] Uh, and of course, swapping wheels out is, is always a thing. So yeah, the end minus one concept where we just need less stuff, you know, [01:01:04] Randall: So I reinvented that when I started thesis, he used to say like, and, minus three, it replaces road, bike, your gravel bike, your road, bike, your cross bike, your, um, light duty cross country bike, uh, your adventure bike actually as well, you know, load these things up. yeah, very much a philosophy that, uh, I think it's so good that the, its efforts to come up with new, subcategories, for example, by having gravel bikes now run oversize 700 wheels and extending the geo and going with these really slack head angles in order to accommodate that wheel size. [01:01:40] I actually think that the form, the form that things want to evolve towards is actually what you created in the first place, which is the one bike that does all the things and does them well. And depending on the wheels you put on them, um, we'll do we'll, we'll transform. Uh, and you know, we've, we've talked a little bit about geo changing, um, You know, and things like this, which you have a bike that, that does that. [01:02:03] And why don't we talk a bit about that in the technology behind it? [01:02:08] Craig Calfee: The SFL, you mean we use the geometry of the head tube and the bottom bracket to, uh, to accommodate what you're using it for? Yeah, the concept there is to, if you're on a long ride to be able to change the geometry of your bike mid ride. So with an Allen wrench, you, uh, basically swap these flip plates out on your head to varia. [01:02:32] And so you climb, you can climb with one geometry with another. And to me, that's, that's really fun because the climbing, you, if you're climbing up a a long steep climb on a bike that you're going to descend back down on, uh, you really don't want the same geometry it's, you're compromising and one or the other, either climate. [01:02:55] Or it descends great. It's rarely both, or really can't possibly be both. Cause they're just doing two different things. So if you can swap out these flip plates and change the head tube angle, which is really all you need at that point, um, you have a bike that climbs great and descends. Great. So for me, that was the goal of, uh, just making a better mountain bike. Um, you know, the fact that it can be converted into other bikes for different disciplines is a whole nother angle. Uh, and you can even do that perhaps you wouldn't do it the trail, but let's say you show up, say you're on a trip, an adventure, uh, maybe out to Utah, for example, where you're riding slick rock, but you're also going to go up, you know, into the mountains. [01:03:45] Um, you'll have you, you might want to have. Different fork travels or different for, uh, options. So you can bring a couple of different forks and swap out a fork, change your flip plates and have a bike. That's awesome for slick rock. And then another one that's awesome for, for the bike parks. So, you know, to me it would, but it's only one bike and you know, you don't need, you know, three bikes. So that, that just, uh, that's the design result of a bike where you can change the head tube angle on, [01:04:21] Randall: and the, in really how much head tube angle adjustment is there on there. [01:04:25] Craig Calfee: uh, it's a or minus four degrees [01:04:28] Randall: that's, that's substantial. [01:04:30] Craig Calfee: that's a lot. [01:04:31] Randall: Yeah. [01:04:31] I mean, that's transformative really. I work in increments of, you know, half a degree.  [01:04:36] Craig Calfee: Yeah. These are half degree increments, um, right now, uh, one degree, but we can easily do half degree increments. find that one degree is, is really. Um, especially when you have the option of, of tweaking the same bike. So reason we focus on these half degree increments on a production bike is to dial in the best compromise between two, two ways that it's going to be used when you don't need to compromise, you can go a full degree in the other direction and not worry about fact that it's not going to perform as well, know, in super steep terrain because that flipped chip is not, uh, the right one for the super steep scenario. [01:05:22] Just change it out or flip it over a T when you approach the really steep stuff. So yeah. [01:05:29] Randall: applicable for mountain bikes, particularly because the, I mean, the slack, the long slack that, that have emerged in recent years make a ton of sense for mountain biking, especially descending, but when you're ascending, it ends up being so slack that you get wheel flop, you get the front end, lifting the bike naturally wants to tilt back. [01:05:49] You don't have that on a gravel bike currently. And if you don't, if you're not adding a huge suspension fork, you're never going to be descending terrain that is so technical that you need those slacked out angles. So it sounds like something that's very much could be applied to gravel bikes, but that, you know, for the mountain bike application is actually pretty game-changing. [01:06:06] Craig Calfee: Yeah, well on gravel bikes or adventure bikes, um, uh, it's actually helpful if you're, if you're, let's say you're a roadie and you're starting to go off road. And so you're driving these gravel trails and then you're starting to get into more interesting off-road excursions with that same bike, but your experience on steep terrain is limited because you're, you know, you're a roadie, you've your, all your muscle memory and all your bike handling memory comes from the road and a little bit of dirt road stuff. [01:06:39] Now you're kind of getting into serious off-road stuff and you want to try. a Uh, shortcut dissent, uh, you know, down something kind of crazy. Uh, let's say, uh, you're not very good at it in the beginning and you take your time and you, you don't have a bike that can go that fast down, such a trail, then you change it out. [01:07:00] As you get better at it, as you increase your skill level and your confidence level, might want to go a little faster. So you a bike that can go a little faster safely and go for that slack head angle, which is designed to get higher speed. So it's great for evolving skills and evolving terrain as you start exploring more radical stuff. [01:07:27] So that's the other reason to do it. [01:07:29] Randall: Yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And in fact, any, you know, what I'm working on going forward very much as a, uh, one of the core, you know, is, uh, being able to tailor the geometry, um, as close to on the fly as possible. Uh, you know, if you want it to be on the fly, you're going to add a huge amount of added structure and complexity and weight, but having it be when you swap the wheels, there's very little to do, you know, this sort of thing. [01:07:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So yeah, the whole idea is to, is to be able to go and have really fun adventures after all I wrote the book on adventures, see, here's, uh, this is a, this is the commercial part of our, our, uh, [01:08:10] plug [01:08:12] is, uh, this book I wrote about a trip. I took back in the, in the mid early eighties. Uh it's it's a kind of a. [01:08:20] Randall: of a  [01:08:21] Craig Calfee: It has nothing to do with bikes, except that there is a section in there where I made a canteen out of bamboo in the Congo, but it's a pretty crazy trip. And, uh, and I just called it adventures. It's on amp. anyone wants to buy it. [01:08:37] Randall: I will get a coffee. [01:08:39] Craig Calfee: Yeah. [01:08:42] Randall: Um, very, very cool. Um, we skipped over one, which is the manta, which is another interesting innovation [01:08:51] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Suspension on a road bike. I mean, that's a, I keep saying that's going to be the future and it hasn't happened yet, but I, I still believe that road bikes will be the main type of bike being written in the highest levels of racing. [01:09:08] interesting  [01:09:08] Randall: So you think suspension versus say. Um, wide tubeless, aerodynamic, the optimized rims with a 30 mil tire run at lower pressures. You think the suspension has a sufficient benefit relative to that, to offset say the structural complexity or weight? [01:09:25] Craig Calfee: Yes. So, uh, the big tire thing, trend towards bigger tires is really a trend towards suspension. It's pneumatic suspension rather than mechanical suspension. [01:09:39] Randall: Well, as our regular listeners know, this is a topic that's very much near and dear to my heart. I talk often about the benefits of pneumatic suspension, so this will be an interesting place for us to st

Reaching your goals is done when no ones looking. So when you announce your 2022 goals, and someone clocks you (asks about your goals/ asks for an update) will you be defensive and stumbling on your words, or will you be providing an update because you've been doing the work? Calfee had a candid conversation about being un-clockable while ranting about being an influencer in Louisiana. Hope you enjoy!

Having the desire to win doesn't make you a bad person. Calfee talks about what it's like to have the desire to be the best, and inspires those who have the want to be successful to never fear the crown that they desire to wear for the effort they demonstrated.

Overview: In this podcast, Dr. James Cutrell, Chair of the SHEA Journal Club, interviews both Dr. David Calfee, Editor-in-Chief of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology (ICHE) and Dr. Gonzalo Bearman, Editor-in-Chief of Antimicrobial Stewardship and Healthcare Epidemiology (ASHE). Learn more about Dr. Calfee and Dr. Bearman and their visions for SHEA Publications in 2022! Visit ICHE at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/infection-control-and-hospital-epidemiology and ASHE at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antimicrobial-stewardship-and-healthcare-epidemiology/information/instructions-contributors. Speakers: James Cutrell, MD (moderator) David Calfee, MD, MPH Gonzalo Bearman, MD, MPH

Calfee talks about the problem that comes with achieving a healthy lifestyle and then back sliding into your “old lifestyles” unhealthy ways. She speaks on how what you you eat can affect your mental health journey (that always coincides the physical health journey that many people go on.) This rant talks about multiple points within Calfee‘s own personal weight loss journey (losing 75 lbs) and describes how she balances her fun and her health in ways that are most conducive to her reaching her potential!

Calfee returns to the podcast scene with guns a blazing with a live stream dedicated to comprehending what it takes to lose weight and get results as she did! She shares the keys on how to lose weight and get results like she did!Calfee started her journey at 210 pounds, at 5 foot three at the age of 19 and has been able to keep the weight off, build muscle, and leave other women to do the same for the last six years. As a certified personal trainer, with the personality and energy that'll make anybody smile, and her blunt down to earth method of manifesting your dream life, healthy help women get out of auto pilot and into the life that I've always wanted.

Learn about romance editing with specialist editor Sarah Calfee. Listen to find out more aboutWhat's special about romance editing The size of the market Tropes, challenges and styles in romance editing HEAs: Happy ever afters Romancelandia Understanding the romance writing and editing via Pride and Prejudice https://www.threelittlewordsediting.com/ (How to get in touch with Sarah Calfee) Get a free sample of Sarah's book, https://www.threelittlewordsediting.com/book (How To Pride and Prejudice) Denise and LouiseDenise Cowle: denisecowleeditorial.com Louise Harnby: harnby.co/fiction-editing Music credit‘Vivacity' Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Steve Calfee has rarely gone on record about his time at Atari. His managerial role at the company's Coin-Op division saw him channel the work of well-known programmers such as Rich Adam, Dennis Koble, Dave Theurer and Howard Delman into Video Arcade smash hits such as Canyon Bomber, Space Duel and Missile Command.

Calfee reintroduces a small life update after moving from miami back to Louisiana and her new businesses as she pursues the world of social media!

Brad and Gus welcome Adam Calfee and Jordan Held to the podcast. Adam, Jordan, and Gus are the managing partners of MoreFrames animation studio in Erie, and the three of them did the animated segments and a lot of other artwork for director David Robert Mitchell's 2018 cult black comedy/detective yarn. They discuss their involvement, and the four of us go on a deep dive into the film's many mysteries, ciphers, and Easter eggs.

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 specialized tarmac SL [00:15:52] in [00:15:53] 56 centimeter with a one 20 STEM and they really love they fit on it really well but they have say 25 millimeters of spacers under that STEM we can match them exactly to that fit but w what we can do  head to blank that brings it so that they don't have to have any spacers or they can have five millimeters of spacer So you get really that clean pro look [00:16:20]That [00:16:20] perfect fit that you're looking for [00:16:22] Craig Dalton: [00:16:22] Right Yeah [00:16:23] Neil Shirley: [00:16:23] does that make [00:16:23] sense [00:16:24] Craig Dalton: [00:16:24] and it totally translates into the visuals I've seen of the bike There's no [00:16:30] spacers Underneath the STEM on any of those bikes they look super clean And I imagine in talking to some custom frame builders there's always a bit of back and forth That the frame builder will say Hey that's your we can do that but you're going to make a sloppy bike and all you guys have done and said This is the way this part is but there's plenty of ways in which we can really customize it to you Your unique fit needs [00:16:55] Neil Shirley: [00:16:55] Yeah [00:16:55] exactly I mean I think if you look if you think about it it's basically the best way to describe what's possible is One millimeter size increments between say a 47 to 63 Send me your bikes So 47 48 49 50 then with within those sizes we can [00:17:15] We [00:17:15] can go lower with the head tube We can go higher with the head tube Obviously STEM length within five millimeter increments we can change the stim link so what we do When we come up with the geometry we have comes up We have a thing called the bet fit calculator that Kevin Nelson Arlie lead bike engineer developed [00:17:36] And [00:17:37] When we it calculates and spits out Geometries or the best fit So three or four best fit recommendations for the person So that could be top tube Of X centimeters with a with a STEM length of one 10 or could go slightly [00:18:00] shorter top tube and a STEM length of one 15 And then we walk the customer through okay this is We [00:18:06] allow them to say okay this is what I'd like this is the style I like ultimately though We're finding a few ways to get the the customer in the exact spot They need to be [00:18:17] Craig Dalton: [00:18:17] That makes sense And speaking of integrations you've got an integrated bar STEM as well as at a seat mask situation going can you talk about the decisions to go that down those routes [00:18:28] Neil Shirley: [00:18:28] Yeah when [00:18:29] we looked at the bike and what we could deliver That Being able to do it in house here And the fact that it was custom made for each customer there [00:18:40] was there was no reason to do this integration and some of the biggest complaints and complaints I personally have had with a one-piece bar STEM Is that if you're buying a stock [00:18:53] bike oftentimes like that bar STEM is probably not going to fit you Because 56 centimeter Frame that you're buying is probably going to with between a one 10 or a one 20 STEM So unless the bike brand is allowing you to really trade out the bar STEM Stock to something that is it was gonna fit you it's a huge hassle we're taking that factor out We're making we're ensuring that this bike is designed your fit needs And What you achieve without one piece bar STEM one it looks Looks so good Two Eric it's more arrow [00:19:30] Three I personally think it just adds A higher performance field like in the drops you're out of the saddle Like it stiff it feels incredibly fast then one of the one of the last things is and it's not necessarily achieved one-piece bar STEM but it's our internal it's our internal wire and hose routing you don't see any wires or hoses It's a special Integrated front end that we developed we we worked with Chris to develop the headset for it So all the All the wires and hoses go through in through the STEM through a hole in the back of the handlebar And then the hoses and wires are routed special headset and down into the frame and through the forks So it's incredibly clean we will We will This summer we'll be introducing the same system but in a two-piece design so it's our standard a R S C S a R road handlebar with a N V STEM is dedicated to that the front end system [00:20:34] Craig Dalton: [00:20:34] Okay And going with the seat mass did that allow you some additional ride tuning capabilities [00:20:40] Neil Shirley: [00:20:40] Exactly one It allowed us to reduce take a little bit of weight out of the frame but also yeah you nailed it You can think about if you had a seat post that goes slides into the frame It's a lot harder to tailor And dial in that ride quality Compared to an [00:21:00] integrated seat mast and what we can achieve with that And again since each bike is made each customer the length of the seat mask and having to trim it and all that stuff wasn't a factor [00:21:10] So [00:21:11] there was no reason not to And then the seat mass Topper It's a nice carbon topper That's also made here here in our facility it has 35 millimeters of adjustability There's never going to be an issue where if you change shoes or pedals and your saddle height changes by a centimeter and a half you're going to have plenty of adjustability So that's not going to be an issue only issue could be is [00:21:36] you [00:21:37] happen to sell your bike down the road to someone else and there's a Decent height difference So that would be the only issue [00:21:45] Craig Dalton: [00:21:45] Yeah When I first looked at the bike I always do get a little bit sensitive around seat mass and integrated bar stems for the reasons you've talked about but it is important And you made this point twice to say this is a bike that's being uniquely made for the purchaser And it would almost be a disservice to them to not give them The ultimate bike that fits like a glove [00:22:09] Neil Shirley: [00:22:09] Yeah Yeah And do you know and that's what we set out with this project Like what is the ultimate bike What are the coolest things that we can do because we're making it here and we're making it for each customer And so that's what the custom road represents like the no hold No holds barred coolest thing that we could design [00:22:30] and manufacturer and then I'd say the lastly kind of along the same point topic is integration can be a point of frustration especially for people that are traveling I travel with my bike a lot and so I want something that's easy to pack And we all know that internal routing and integration is a huge pain when having a pack of bikes So that's why we made the decision [00:22:57] To [00:22:57] work with Saigon and we have high end bike bags at $800 retail bike bag That comes with every chassis rolling chassis or complete bike So each one is shipped in this bag And with this bag you don't have to take off [00:23:13] the ham [00:23:14] You don't have to take off the bar STEM combo seat topper all you remove or the wheels it's literally a five minute pack job And in most cases unless you're packing this case full of extra stuff going to come in well below the 50 pound weight limit to fly free on Delta and American airlines So really cool solution get around any hassles of traveling with your bike [00:23:40] Craig Dalton: [00:23:40] That's awesome Early on in the conversation you talked about with your support for builders Providing rolled tubes is that the type of tube set that is integrated into the custom road [00:23:53] Neil Shirley: [00:23:53] No these are all these are all molded Molded tube sets and how this frame is constructed in the [00:24:00] our ability to do sizes with it So it's nine different pieces that create the frame So you have the top tube with [00:24:08] the [00:24:09] Top half of the head tube is one piece down tube with the bottom half of the head tube is another piece And then from there we have a fixture that we created that cuts when we have all the customer's [00:24:25] exact fit there is program where this tube cutter cuts tubes for the bike at the same time And that's also what Sure For the head tube we determined the head tube length and all that gets cut all these then all these pieces we have a frame jig they go into the frame jig the pieces slide together I don't want to say Like tracks not it's not a lug [00:24:52] Craig Dalton: [00:24:52] Okay [00:24:53] Neil Shirley: [00:24:53] But It is like male female fit And then there's a there's an overwrap that that goes on them [00:25:01] Craig Dalton: [00:25:01] Gotcha in the mold is the mold one size And then that cutting technology cuts them down to the custom dimensions of the purchaser [00:25:10] Neil Shirley: [00:25:10] Essentially And we do have multiple molds dependent for between the extremes of the biggest size and the smallest size But yes essentially what you're saying [00:25:19] Craig Dalton: [00:25:19] Fascinating And is that something to your knowledge is that a unique process at envy or have other companies been doing a similar type approach [00:25:26]Neil Shirley: [00:25:26] I believe it is unique for us because we there's plenty that [00:25:30] have the process that not really showing I think what's really special is how we're able to do it while achieving some of the arrow shapes frame Which is as far as I know hasn't really been done yet [00:25:43] Craig Dalton: [00:25:43] Yeah that was one of the big questions when Randall and I were talking in the last episode of in the dirt about it we just weren't quite sure how you were pulling off custom dimensions on the tubes [00:25:54] Neil Shirley: [00:25:54] Yeah so really it's a remarkable process we've already had we've had a couple of media out here seeing it prelaunch we have a couple more that have expressed interest in visiting post-launch so it's It's Yeah I think our engineering team that we have here in house Some really brilliant people And Kevin who was is behind the bike key Even though this is 10 Clinically the first bite for envy as we've been talking about we've worked [00:26:21]With bike [00:26:22] builders a lot in the past and we also worked with And designed and manufactured the front end of their Ex triathlon time trial bike And then Kevin before he came over to envy he worked I mean he worked in G T back in their heyday when you know the lotto bikes and building some of the bikes and going over to Perry Bay with the team So he's got great stories and then some time specialized developing the first rebate Even though it's a new it's a new category for us There's definitely a lot of know-how within the building in And how to put together A road [00:27:00] bike [00:27:00] Craig Dalton: [00:27:00] Yeah exactly And then much like a lot of the other custom offerings out there in the world at the end of the day you get to choose from Looks like a pretty vast selection of paint schemes [00:27:13] Neil Shirley: [00:27:13] Yeah we brought in a painter a year ago we already had a paint shop here where we paint mountain stems that are made here in our disc rear time-travel wheels And so we brought in this painter and for the last year he's been painting we all have custom painted forks and handlebars Now just trying to keep him busy until we had till we had frames to be feeding through there [00:27:36] But he [00:27:36] put together basically his paint shop And so with the help of our design team And they created four different four different paint templates for the frame and then 38 color options and Matt versus gloss as options as well There's mean you can about having a unique bike without even having to spend extra on on extra custom paint or anything which which is an option but anyone that has seen the coverage on our site and some of the different paints that are painted bikes that are coming out like there's man you can do some really cool stuff I was just down in the paint shop this afternoon And seeing like we were doing a bike for Chris King now That's just unbelievable so it's really cool to be able to offer something like that I know aesthetics the paint is not something that [00:28:30] [00:28:30] That [00:28:30] doesn't make you any faster but I it's these bikes as we know like have a relationship with your bike and I don't just look at my bikes as a tool and so to be able to have something a little more individual and show some personality I had a storm trooper My bike is mostly all white but I had a storm trooper logo put on the hammer bar STEM because it just reminded me of that All that stuff is really cool When you're talking about a bike that you're going to have for years and years [00:28:58] Craig Dalton: [00:28:58] Yeah absolutely I mean you're preaching to the choir here I ride a pink bicycle so I know it I know what it means to make your yeah Choose a paint color that makes you happy when you're out there on the roads and trails [00:29:08] Neil Shirley: [00:29:08] Yep [00:29:09] Craig Dalton: [00:29:09] That's awesome Neil So how long would one have to wait at this point to get one of these bikes [00:29:14]Neil Shirley: [00:29:14] So as we as of last Friday we launched As we expected we had a con A considerable number of orders came in So I think we're looking at if someone went on in Went to nv.com today You're probably looking at Fall late fall [00:29:37] Craig Dalton: [00:29:37] Gotcha [00:29:37] Neil Shirley: [00:29:37] for delivery of a bike seems under normal circumstances that would be a really long time [00:29:43] But [00:29:43]In COVID reality right now it might not seem that far off when a lot of the a lot of the big bike brands are not able to deliver until 20 22 in a lot of cases it's it is a long time Some of the first people that were able to get in line No [00:30:00] they're going to have bikes delivered to them next to as soon as April [00:30:03] Craig Dalton: [00:30:03] Nice as you mentioned with COVID It might take you just as long to get a group of these days [00:30:09] Neil Shirley: [00:30:09] No and that's that's a big factor for us as as well there's If people those that are choosing the chassis are rolling chassis only option they're likely to get the bike a lot quicker And source their own Shimano or saran parts elsewhere [00:30:25] Craig Dalton: [00:30:25] Yeah exactly I've talked to a lot of builders who have a lot of frustration in the current state of affairs because they just can't move full bikes out the door which is quite a shame [00:30:34]Neil Shirley: [00:30:34] It isn't and it's I really feel for a lot of the a lot of the brands out there because the business we're in a really interesting situation where there is Is much business the taking it's really up to you how well you do and many of them have their hands tied right now because they literally their order books are so full they don't have parts or they don't have frame sets from their vendors or any of that we in the bike industry we have our ups and downs So when when the business is there you want to be able to capitalize it on it and not to be able to do that is really really sad [00:31:13] Craig Dalton: [00:31:13] Yeah no doubt about that Good news is I think we are looking forward We're trending towards people getting vaccinated We're trending towards some of these events happening hopefully by the time like a BWR San Diego runs around rolls around We'll start to see some of these envy custom [00:31:30] road with the all road geometry racing those types of events [00:31:34] Neil Shirley: [00:31:34] know I'll be out there with mine We're going to have They'll there'll be a handful of them out there I sure hope I'll Yeah I can't wait to go test mine in the some of the single track the lemon twist in Bergen Some of those fun sections [00:31:49] Craig Dalton: [00:31:49] Yeah that's awesome As we were talking about offline I think for me the gravel world has this spectrum from Road plus which is this 35 millimeter kind of size tire all the way on the other extreme to the bike packing side So it's thrilling to see brands continue to push the limits on both sides because I think depending on where you live in the country Yeah either or is going to make sense for you depending on your local terrain [00:32:14] Neil Shirley: [00:32:14] Yeah [00:32:14]That's totally true I Wasatch mountains here just out our back door here in Utah so Rocky and rugged like I would never Even a 700 by 40 is you're under biking most of the time like at six 50 B and 47 to 50 Mill tires way to go But know like we were talking about in Lincoln Nebraska when I did gravel worlds out there I raced a 32 C tire And so it really Jew is geographically dependent on terrain is definitely for BWR San Diego I'll happily run a 32 C and in my custom road and it's going to be a It's going to be an awesome bike And then my as a gravel guy here and a [00:33:00] number of us hearing Envy that that ride gravel consistently we're [00:33:04] pushing for that next That next version that can fit some big tires in there I think we need to really just understand The demand that's that we have for for the custom road and then understand how we can scale up and be able to Keep up with the demand and then add hopefully add a gravel version as well [00:33:24] Craig Dalton: [00:33:24] That makes a ton of sense I mean envy has been such a great supporter of the gravel community as I said before So I'm sure that Mike will come which is why it was important to have this conversation today [00:33:34] Neil Shirley: [00:33:34] Yeah [00:33:35] Craig Dalton: [00:33:35] Cool Neil thank you so much for making time today I really appreciate it [00:33:39] Neil Shirley: [00:33:39] Yeah Thank you Craig And so it's fun to talk about It's it's something that we've been living the last two and a half years, so to be able to launch the bike and start telling people about it has been so exciting. [00:33:51] [00:33:51]Craig Dalton: [00:33:51] That's it for this week's episode of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Neil for coming on and talking about the NV custom road project. It's really exciting to see both sides of the sport. Continue to innovate. I tell you, it looks like one fast machine. I'll put a link in the show notes to where you can find out more information about the NV custom road bike. [00:34:13]Definitely check out some of the custom paint jobs that neil was mentioning truly beautiful bikes. [00:34:18] If you've made it this far on the show, I hope that you're already a subscriber, but if not, make sure to hit that subscribe button. We put out episodes just about every week and we've got about a [00:34:30] hundred in the back catalog for you to peruse. [00:34:32]Until next time here's the finding some dirt onto your wheels.  

Last month we gave you Greg LeMond. Today, the man who made his bikes, Mr Craig Calfee.The first bike builder to have a full carbon fibre bike raced at the Tour de France, Calfee has always been a man who is ahead of the curve. Listen as Joe and James delve into Calfee's intriguing life of building bikes, missing out on pro contracts, where the big performance gains are to be had in race bikes and how bikes can make a more sustainable world.If you liked this episode, please remember to leave us a review, comment and make sure to share with your cycling friends!In association with Sportful and Jaybird.Cyclist Podcast sponsor Jaybird Sport is offering listeners 15% off its VISTA wireless headphones with the code 'cyclist15'. Visit jaybirdsport.com for moreFor more on the Cyclist Magazine Podcast - https://www.cyclist.co.uk/cyclistmagazinepodcastSubscribe to Cyclist Magazine now - https://cyclistmag.co.uk/cyclistmagazinepodcast

Sarah is an influential and strategic Human Resources professional with the ability to develop strong partnerships at all organizational levels. She believes that thoughtful and intentional strategic communication is at the core of all healthy organizations and relationships. With this in mind, she helps small to mid-sized companies develop and hone their HR plan to foster an inclusive culture while meeting the business demands. Website: http://www.calfeehr.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahcalfee/

A podcast favorite, Daryl Calfee, joins us again to talk about his new business venture into the world of home restoration. Join us to hear about how to exit well,  making your first investment, and finding peace in the "muddy middle". 

In Part 2, Dr. Matthay provides the rationale behind treating ARDS patients with MSC. Initial studies in a mouse model of ARDS, showed that treatment with MSCs increased levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines and antimicrobial peptides in the lung, and increased phagocytosis of bacteria by monocytes. Further studies in ex vivo perfused human lungs and in sheep with severe lung injury showed that treatment with MSCs improved oxygenation and reduced pulmonary edema. An NIH/NHLBI supported phase 1 clinical trial for safety has been completed and a randomized, blinded phase 2 trial has now been initiated to test the safety and efficacy of MSC treatment in human patients with ARDS.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome is a life threatening condition with few effective treatment options. Preliminary studies using mesenchymal stem cells, or stromal cells, to treat ARDS have shown promise with decreased levels of bacteria in the lungs, reduced pulmonary edema and improved oxygenation. In Part 1, Dr. Calfee begins by explaining that acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is pulmonary edema, or fluid in the lungs, not due to heart failure. It is a condition that affects 200,000 people/year in the USA with a 30-40% mortality rate. During ARDS, there are many cellular changes with complex pathophysiology making it extremely difficult to treat. Currently, patients are treated by ventilation with low tidal volume and fluid conservative therapy as many pharmacological interventions have failed. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), however, may hold promise as a treatment.

Mr. Calfee, a teacher, coach, and club sponsor at James River High School, talks about his journey with running, finding confidence in being his unique self, and the JRHS Community. To reach him: christopher_calfee@ccpsnet.net

Local lover of Lynchburg and leather, Daryl Calfee, sits down with Jarad in the first episode of a multi-part miniseries.  

Dr. Carolyn Calfee, Professor of Medicine and Anesthesia at the University of California, San Francisco, presents on molecular phenotyping of ARDS and the implications for precision medicine.

This week's episode of Borne the Battle features Marine Recon Veteran Alex Calfree, the co-founder of OpLign, a website that uses artificial intelligence to connect veterans to employers.

Sean Small of Ruckus Composites is our guest for this episode. This is going to be a great interview for any listener who has spent any amount of time on a carbon bike. Sean is going to reveal a frame’s strong spots and the areas where it is most vulnerable. We also talk about the importance of torque, which company is making the best product and at the very end of the interview, Sean has some great tips on how to spot a problem before it happens. Ruckus is considered the premier composite repair company in the country and next to Calfee, one of the first one of the first to launch a business devoted to fixing Carbon frames.

YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/jfIwASNwfeo the song: https://open.spotify.com/track/5JDOKQ9CfImcGkjdfYTvOV?si=I2R5GMD5S0Wdgt-HlQaUUA - Get my HIIT Tarot Deck: https://hiittarot.com/collections/frontpage/products/hiit-tarot-exercise-card-game  -  ★Join the Calfee Brew★:  ⋆ My Tarot Deck: https://hiittarot.com  ⋆ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hicalfee/  ⋆ Podcast: https://anchor.fm/kristen-calfee  ⋆ Twitter: https://twitter.com/kristencalfee?lang=en  ⋆ Get some merch: https://www.calfee.shop or HIIT Tarot Deck: https://www.hiittarot.com   ★Email for Business Inquiries★ : kristencalfee@gmail.com

YOUTUBE LINK: https://youtu.be/YtmEjvjV9gs I'm talking about how my move to Miami affirmed that I was listening to my gut, nit my fears. I know a lot of us tend to operate out of the real of fear and that vibration is SO LOW. You will defiantly know if you are coming from a place of fear or a place of divine intuition because when it's divine intubation, you actually feel, dare I say: scared. It feels CRAZY. It feels so out of your reach, so far from what you are capable of or something you might be able to handle because it's coming from a BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF. Yeah! You will LEVEL UP when you make those choices. You know deep down in your heart that this form of action, the vibe that you get that say, mmmm idk about this, yeah, the second you feel that, DO IT/DON'T DO IT (but stay safe and be smart). It feels like the right answer. It feels like the best choice for YOU. And that is actually REALLY important. As young 20 something ladies and gents, we live for OTHERS waaay more that we live for ourselves. No. Stop. This is YOU time. Your high school buddies don't matter. Your crush from the 2nd grade doesn't affect you. Your past is your past. That feeling inside, you wanting to move/ask for a raise/start that business, DO IT PLEASE. START FINDING OUT THE WAYS YOU CAN START. GOOGLE IT. I belive in you, but who cares, do you believe in you?? - (literally bc your intuition is you....ya'll) lol See you in the next video :) ★Join the Calfee Brew★: ⋆ My Tarot Deck: https://hiittarot.com ⋆ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hicalfee/ ⋆ Podcast: https://anchor.fm/kristen-calfee ⋆ Twitter: https://twitter.com/kristencalfee?lang=en ⋆ Get some merch: https://www.calfee.shop or HIIT Tarot Deck: https://www.hiittarot.com ★Email for Business Inquiries★ : kristencalfee@gmail.com

Very unscripted mind dump about what it means to have enough, what enough is for me, contentment, goal setting, all that jazz. Leave a rating if you enjoyed it and share it if you know anyone who needs to hear this! Thank you for listening :)  - Calfee  ☕️JOIN OUR BREW☕️:  Cup of Calfee Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cupofcalfee/  FOLLOW ME:  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/kristencalfee  Personal Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/hicalfee/

The first week of October, 1981, Aida Marie Calfee was traveling with her boyfriend and coworker, James Pruitt. Pruitt would tell authorities that they argued and she left his car, announcing she would "hitch a ride" back to her home. Calfee would never be seen again. Oddly enough, her disappearance happened days before she was set to testify against Pruitt for a July 12, 1981 assault against her. If you have information on her case, please contact The Lumpkin County Sheriff. Phone: 706-864-0414 Check out Missing in Georgia Cold Cases on Facebook  #Missing #unsolved #Georgia #ColdCase  Support the show.

Daryl Calfee (host & VP of Marketing) sits with Whitney Tinsley, our former Director of Education at Moore & Giles and now Vice President of Product Development at LAW Tanning, to discuss how we see sustainability throughout the leather industry. Whitney’s extensive resume with leather, from being on the floor in a tannery to certifying our employees in “Leather 101”, proves that she is a true expert. Throughout this podcast, you will hear answers our frequently asked controversial questions regarding the leather industry and how our company proves its environmental sustainability in making the world’s finest leather. To learn more on sustainability at Moore & Giles visit: www.mooreandgiles.com/leather/sustainability/

Rodney Calfee, content director for the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, talks with Word&Way Editor & President Brian Kaylor about the work of telling stories for the IMB. He also discusses the importance of storytelling and his own faith journey.  (This episode is sponsored in part by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.)

Meet Daryl Calfee, VP of Marketing at Moore & Giles here in Lynchburg, Virginia. In our conversation, Daryl and I discuss his work, his real estate projects, his mentors, and our shared search for old wisdom. Find him online here. If you enjoyed this episode, want to connect, or have a good story to share, reach out to me on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram @billyhansenmai. Billy Hansen is a commercial real estate broker, appraiser, writer, and teacher living in Lynchburg, Virginia. Thank you for listening to the Lynchburg Neighborhood podcast. If you enjoy listening to this podcast, please leave a review and share with friends. Visit us at the Lynchburg Neighborhood Podcast Music by: Ryan Andersen. Song: Coming Home. Ryan Andersen is an American composer and producer currently making music in Paris, France. Visit him here.

Tune in to Episode 38 with the CEO of GoFire Inc., Peter Calfee to learn more about the innovative Gofire dosed inhaler created to provide consumers with accurately dosed and trackable consumption. GoFire also has created an app that allows consumers to scan, track, and provide feedback on the products they are consuming. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lit-and-lucid/support

Craig Calfee is one of the pioneers of carbon bicycles in the 80’s and 90’s. He designed a bike for Greg LeMond. Who is Greg LeMond? He was the first American to win the Tour de France.

Interview with Peter Calfee CEO of GoFire a cannabis company that through its interactive delivery method is aggregating users experiences to improve the communities cannabis experience.Produced By MJBulls Media | Cannabis Podcast Network

Critical Perspective: ARDS Sub-phenotypes with Dr. Carolyn Calfee

Industry: Phyllis Harbinger and Daryl Calfee This Friday in the Lounge Nick is joined by Daryl Calfee, Vice President of Marketing for leather manufacturer and Chaise Lounge sponsor Moore & Giles, for a fascinating conversation on the history and art of luxury leather production. Plus, Moore & Giles will be giving away a FREE luxury bag for listeners who follow The Chaise Lounge podcast on social media. Details coming soon! Next, Nick chats with monthly speaker Phyllis Harbinger about hiring smart to make sure that your firm never suffers from employee issues. Daryl Calfee: Leather is a Luxury Nick sits down with Daryl Calfee, VP of Marketing for leather producer — and newest Chaise Lounge sponsor — Moore and Giles. The Moore and Giles Story Daryl says that you've probably sat on Moore and Giles leather — and may even have it in your home — without knowing it. The company has been based out of Lynchburg, Virginia since the 1930s, when its founder, Donald Gray Moore, was laid off from his gig working at a local shoe factory and instead became the factory's leather supplier. Later, the company expanded into furniture sales. In the 1990s, however, the firm switched its attention to building a new luxury, worn-in leather product and partnered with Spain-based tannery Tanerias Omega. The first order was a whopping 50,000 square feet, and despite initial challenges, they learned how to develop institutional knowledge for natural leathers. Now, Moore and Giles are a fixture in restaurants like Starbucks, hotels in Vegas, and Boeing aircraft for their vintage, worn-in and waxy leather. Passion for the Product Daryl discusses the history of leather, which has evolved with humanity for thousands of years and has become a luxury good only relatively recently.  Moore and Giles, he says, invests heavily in sustainable, high-quality rawhides from different climates for different needs — whether that means sourcing from South America, where hides are very large but thin, or a northern climate like Germany for a naturally thicker hide and is generally more free of scarring. Aside from color saturation or some light waxing, Moore and Giles avoid painting on color — which Daryl says is a cheap move to cover up a low-quality rawhide (Nick likens to a faux finish). Instead, they embrace the imperfections and celebrate that each one is going to be different. Faux leather doesn't exist, Daryl says — it's something else entirely. And when passion for creation and expression trumps cheap manufacturing, the money follows. Phyllis Harbinger: Hire Smart Phyllis, a regular guest in the Lounge, shares the lessons she has learned while intelligently growing her firm, Design Concepts Interiors, from a “lean and mean machine” of one into a team of creative and self-sufficient individuals. She says that she hired her first — and second — full-time employee through establishing an intern program about fifteen years ago, and invested handsomely in both. The Value of Nurturing Interns “It's not inexpensive, but you get what you pay for,” Phyllis explains. “When you find that talent, and nurture that talent, it goes places.” Initially, Phyllis focuses on teaching and mentoring interns before raising their pay from minimum wage when they become more competent and experienced. She even Ubers her current intern to and from work in order to nurture what she considers to be an indispensable relationship. Her third employee was a former student who showed promise and drive. In time, all three grew into positions that naturally fit their personality and freed Phyllis to avoid spending time on accounting or CAD and creatively run her business. Respect Gets Respect — and Returns Above all, Phyllis says employers should be guided by respect and recommends thinking freely about hiring: whether that's considering several part-timers over one full-timer if that is mutually beneficial; establishing a three month trial period for new hires; looking into virtual employmen...

Industry: Phyllis Harbinger and Daryl Calfee This Friday in the Lounge Nick is joined by Daryl Calfee, Vice President of Marketing for leather manufacturer and Chaise Lounge sponsor Moore & Giles, for a fascinating conversation on the history and art of luxury leather production. Plus, Moore & Giles will be giving away a FREE luxury bag for listeners who follow The Chaise Lounge podcast on social media. Details coming soon! Next, Nick chats with monthly speaker Phyllis Harbinger about hiring smart to make sure that your firm never suffers from employee issues. Daryl Calfee: Leather is a Luxury Nick sits down with Daryl Calfee, VP of Marketing for leather producer — and newest Chaise Lounge sponsor — Moore and Giles. The Moore and Giles Story Daryl says that you've probably sat on Moore and Giles leather — and may even have it in your home — without knowing it. The company has been based out of Lynchburg, Virginia since the 1930s, when its founder, Donald Gray Moore, was laid off from his gig working at a local shoe factory and instead became the factory's leather supplier. Later, the company expanded into furniture sales. In the 1990s, however, the firm switched its attention to building a new luxury, worn-in leather product and partnered with Spain-based tannery Tanerias Omega. The first order was a whopping 50,000 square feet, and despite initial challenges, they learned how to develop institutional knowledge for natural leathers. Now, Moore and Giles are a fixture in restaurants like Starbucks, hotels in Vegas, and Boeing aircraft for their vintage, worn-in and waxy leather. Passion for the Product Daryl discusses the history of leather, which has evolved with humanity for thousands of years and has become a luxury good only relatively recently.  Moore and Giles, he says, invests heavily in sustainable, high-quality rawhides from different climates for different needs — whether that means sourcing from South America, where hides are very large but thin, or a northern climate like Germany for a naturally thicker hide and is generally more free of scarring. Aside from color saturation or some light waxing, Moore and Giles avoid painting on color — which Daryl says is a cheap move to cover up a low-quality rawhide (Nick likens to a faux finish). Instead, they embrace the imperfections and celebrate that each one is going to be different. Faux leather doesn't exist, Daryl says — it's something else entirely. And when passion for creation and expression trumps cheap manufacturing, the money follows. Phyllis Harbinger: Hire Smart Phyllis, a regular guest in the Lounge, shares the lessons she has learned while intelligently growing her firm, Design Concepts Interiors, from a “lean and mean machine” of one into a team of creative and self-sufficient individuals. She says that she hired her first — and second — full-time employee through establishing an intern program about fifteen years ago, and invested handsomely in both. The Value of Nurturing Interns “It's not inexpensive, but you get what you pay for,” Phyllis explains. “When you find that talent, and nurture that talent, it goes places.” Initially, Phyllis focuses on teaching and mentoring interns before raising their pay from minimum wage when they become more competent and experienced. She even Ubers her current intern to and from work in order to nurture what she considers to be an indispensable relationship. Her third employee was a former student who showed promise and drive. In time, all three grew into positions that naturally fit their personality and freed Phyllis to avoid spending time on accounting or CAD and creatively run her business. Respect Gets Respect — and Returns Above all, Phyllis says employers should be guided by respect and recommends thinking freely about hiring: whether that's considering several part-timers over one full-timer if that is mutually beneficial; establishing a three month trial period for new hires; looking into virtual employmen...

”I do feel like there’s this part of me that’s been rebuilt and it’s different than it was beforehand. And we’re never going back to the girl who wasn’t assaulted. That’s inaccessible. But this thing is stronger and bigger and more valuable.”   SPONSORED BY DUBSADO Dubsado is a client management system for creative entrepreneurs, and it helps you do everything from sending contracts, invoices, and questionnaires, to managing all things your biz in one place - with a few clicks of the button. Use code TRFE at checkout for 30% off your first month or year: http://bit.ly/dubsadotrfe   WHAT'S IN THIS EPISODE? Years after a traumatic experience in college, Lily was suffering from nightmares and flashbacks. At the time, she was running her first business, an organic pie company in rural Vermont. Three years into the business, she found herself with crippling depression, a pervasive unhappiness with her body and career, and a sugar addiction. After going back to school for nutrition and learning how to comfort her body without sugar, Lily has inspired hundreds of women to treat themselves to only the best in their relationships, careers, and self-care. We talk about… How she healed herself after sexual assault through cooking and painting Running a pie company in Vermont after graduating college The connection between stress and sugar How her biz evolved from nutrition to self-care   WHO IS LILY CALFEE? Lily Calfee is a self-love and nutrition strategist in Denver, Colorado where she benignly hoards house plants, herbal teas, and denim. She has inspired hundreds of women to treat themselves to only the best in their relationships, careers, and self-care. Lily hosts retreats, workshops, and cooking classes, and motivates her clients to start writing, dancing, drawing, and singing again. Lily got her undergraduate degree at the University of Vermont and spent a semester painting at The Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art in rural France. She managed HoloBeing Wellness Center in Boulder, Colorado before setting out to live her dreams. She was awarded certification as a Holistic Health Coach through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in 2011. Lily currently spends her time writing about the connection between self-love and health, and coaching women to radically transform their lives and health. You can learn more about her work at www.lilylovesyou.com and follow her on Instagram @lilycalfeelovesyou.   LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE: "Stop Your Cravings" by Jennifer Workman www.lilylovesyou.com The Sisterhood

Enjoy some astonishing stories as we welcome K James Sullivan to the studio, Chair of Calfee's Insurance Recovery Group and Chair of the Board of the CMBA Committee on Mental Health and Wellness. After Molly and Alex share their harrowing stories of the big Northeast Ohio storm, James is peppered with inane questions and we learn so much... What's the "K" stand for? Who really spilled the bottle of Louis XIV? Why did his pants make a big impression when he started his job? Why wouldn't his mom let him watch Nick-at-Nite? How did James win the in-law lottery? Best.Podcast.Ever. closes out 2017 with this pleasant conversation. From all of us at BPE, we wish you a safe and happy new year! Get in touch with James at Calfee by visiting calfee.com/professionals/k-james-sullivan/ or via his profile on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/kjamessullivan The We Solve Problems Essay Contest is requesting business groups to be judges and read a few short essays for this year's contest. Sign up at www.wesolveproblems-essay.com or send an email to essay@gertsburglaw.com for more information. Or be like James, who was a judge AND a sponsor last year! CoverMySix is a one-stop legal audit for your business, led by award-winning litigators and in-house counsel at The Gertsburg Law Firm. CM6 minimizes your exposure to lawsuits, investigations, disgruntled employees and customers, and all the damage that comes with them. Go to CoverMySix.com to learn how we keep you safe by covering yours. Don’t get sued. Cover Your Six. [caption id="attachment_716" align="alignleft" width="225"] KJS and his funky socks[/caption] [caption id="attachment_717" align="alignright" width="225"] The Big Storm causes major damage in Chagrin Falls[/caption]               SHOW NOTES * 1:00 A Big Storm Strikes Northeast Ohio * 12:45 Driving with the Geblers * 14:20 Introducing James * 20:50 First impressions * 27:30 What happens when you wear a tight suit * 30:50 An astonishing bird poop story * 33:42 Chagrin Falls love * 34:58 Where law and insurance meet * 42:51 Top three practical insurance tips * 45:11 What does it look like when James is stressed out * 50:28 What the CMBA Mental Health & Wellness Committee does * 53:01 How James avoids getting stressed * 54:45 KJS: Fashion Guru * 56:43 Lightning Round * 1:21:58 Short sample of music by Burial (Lambeth) - hear the full song at www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI8Gft90-wc

Hello Couragemakers and welcome to episode 67 of The Couragemakers Podcast! Before we dive into this week's episode, I wanted to let you know that Couragemakers is going to be taking a short break over the summer. Couragemakers will be back on September 4th, and I'm already excited to share the amazing episodes that are lined up! There might be some spontaneous solo shows released over the summer, so keep your eyes peeled! Over the summer, I'll taking a break, sorting out various health issues which have really been draining me and spending lots of time with Mr. Meg! Rest assured, that Couragemakers is absolutely going nowhere! Now, onto today's show! This week, I'm happy to share my conversation with Lily Calfee. Lily describes herself as a foodie, health nut, and journal scribbler who lives in Denver, Colorado. Lily is a baker-turned-nutritionist, a control freak-turned-intuitive eater, and manages her own private practice coaching women who want to experience more freedom and ease with food and their bodies. In this episode, Lily shares her journey, from being a creative and going to art school to opening a bakery and later becoming a nutritionist and using creativity to redirect self criticism and as a way to help people with their health. We really dive into the relationship between creativity and self respect, setting intentions instead of goals and the importance of how we speak to ourselves in our head. We have a great conversation about the problem with the word deserving and really explore how our economy runs off of women believing they are not enough, so it is an act of radical bravery to claim your own worth AND want to make a bigger impact. Just to give a quick heads up that a very brief reference to sexual assault is mentioned during this episode around the six minute mark. I love how Lily blends art, creativity, food and health and I loved hearing her own creative journey and how it has led her to where she is today. Creativity can be such a tool for change and this conversation is a great reminder to explore ways to use your creativity to heal yourself. Enjoy the show and see you in September!   About Lily Lily is a creative health coach and describes herself as  a foodie, health nut, and journal scribbler who lives in Denver, Colorado. Lily is a baker-turned-nutritionist, a control freak-turned-intuitive eater, and manages her own private practice coaching women who want to experience more freedom and ease with food and their bodies.  Website | Instagram |  Twitter | Pinterest | Facebook   Things We Talked About   Lily's journey, from being an artist to creative a bakery in rural Vermont, then finding nutrition and working as a women's creative health coach The importance of how we speak to ourselves The problem with the word deserving How looking after yourself is radical   About Meg & That Hummingbird Life I'm Meg and I'm the host of Couragemakers and founder of That Hummingbird Life. I'm an INFJ creative and multipassionate who has a bit of a notebook and post-it note obsession, loves foot-stomping country music and likes her hot chocolate with way too much chocolate. I started Couragemakers because I wanted to create a platform for passionate and unconventional women to have honest conversations and to share their stories, struggles and dreams. The intention behind this podcast is to inspire and encourage creative and mission-driven women to live a wholehearted life and follow the beat of their drum. When I'm not recording episodes, writing bullshit-free, very vulnerable and encouraging Sunday emails to fellow couragemakers or making new friends with the wonderful guests, you can find me working on all manners of magic over at That Hummingbird Life. THL is the online home for unconventional creatives and multipassionates who want to show up unapologetically and intentionally as who they are, and really own, live and share their many stories. It's made for couragemakers who have so much great shit to give the world and want to leave their mark but have too much self doubt standing in the way!  

Dr. Nitin Seam is joined by Drs. Carolyn Calfee and John Marshall to continue the discussion on developing a new Sepsis definition. Listen in as they discuss the observations made in Dr. Calfee’s editorial.

Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or new to business ownership, the law can be confusing when it comes to protecting your assets, limiting your liabilities or just creating your company's operating agreement. On today's episode of The Second Stage our hosts will be joined by legal expert, Michael Marhofer, Partner at Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP, to address some of the common pitfalls for business owners from a legal perspective. The hosts will discuss many topics when it comes to forming your organization, including what your entity choices are, where you should form your entity and the necessary documents. Don't miss this important episode covering many of the basic legal points essential to not only getting your small business started, but planning for the future.

Steve walker is many things. He's a marine, he's a husband, he's a realtor, he's a dad and he's an Ironman Triathlete. In 2015 Steve even got to race the Ironman World Championships in Kona. It's a great story and like many of my interviews here on the Mile after Mile Podcast this one has a twist. Steve is legally blind.   Steve has Retinitis Pigmentosa which was discovered when he was in the US Marine Corps. We talk a little bit about his condition in the first few moments of the podcast.   Interestingly Steve has or had a tremendous fear of water and swimming. But he came to triathlon with the help of his wife and his best friend and of course, Google.   We talk about going through a dark place as he lost his vision and how he came out of that through training for triathlon and with the help of those around him.   We talk about how Steve and his guide are connected to each other during the race.   No Ironman interview would be complete without a full discussion of his bike. Steve uses a Calfee tandem bike. Steve describes his bike as the Ferrari of tandems. We do a lot of chatting throughout the podcast about lots of things to do do with cycling.   His local Triathlon shop is Triathlon Lab in Redondo Beach.   He found his first swim coach and as luck would have it he met a great training partner in Carl, his first Bike pilot. We talk about the challenges of swimming and training for swimming as a visually impaired athlete. Luckily he has Endless Pools as a sponsor.   His first 70.3 was Superfrog in Coronodo California and then Ironman Cozumel. We talk about how he and his guide navigate the rough surf and conditions in a triathlon. This is at about 27:00 and it's super interesting how Steve and his guides do this.   We talk about how Steve got to the Ironman Kona start line which is a great story. Nico from Challenged Athletes Foundation gets a good shout out here. We also talk about what it was like to be followed by NBC during the race.   Steve's guide in Kona was pro triathlete, Chris Foster. Steve talks about what an amazing pilot Chris is around 35 minutes into the podcast and many other times.   We talk about his whole day in Kona. Steve describes the deep water mass swim start as "quiet chaos."   We talk about transition. Which when you can't see is a lot more complicated.   We talk about the heat and wind and rain on the Kona bike course.   Steve and I talk about the mental aspect of dealing with the heat on the bike and run. We talk about that special nervousness that comes with wondering if you'll make it through an Ironman run. We talk about the help it is to see people we know and love on the run course. Steve gives shout outs to his amazing family, Chris's coach Siri Lindley, Steve's agent Berk Boge and his Computrainer rep who were all there cheering him on.   We talk about the fact that Kona is a once in a lifetime opportunity and making the most of that special event. Steve had other sponsors including Monster Energy Drink and Go Pro.   Endurance athletes are some of the most generous people I know so I know that one thing my listeners want to know is how they can be a resource for athletes like Steve. Two resources for guides and athletes that we discuss are Bicycling Blind and United in Stride.   I think I say "fantastic" about 30 times during this interview. But for me as the host I just loved learning about how Steve and his great team have made his Ironman journey happen. I hope that you too enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed making the interview.   You can follow Steve's adventures on Instagram at SteveWalkerRacing and he has a website. He'll be running the California International Marathon in hopes of running the Boston Marathon. And he was inspired by my interview with Joan Dietchman to aspire to ride RAAM.   Steve, thank you very much for being a guest on the Mile after Mile Podcast and thank you to everybody who listens.   If you love the Mile after Mile Podcast I do hope you'll be so kind as to leave a review on iTunes.   You can find out about Amy's adventures at www.amysaysso.com            

John Swantek is joined by Golf Digest editor Alex Myers, PGATOUR.com ‘Fantasy Insider’ Rob Bolton and the President of the Web.com Tour, Bill Calfee.

Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or new to business ownership, the law can be confusing when it comes to protecting your assets, limiting your liabilities or just creating your company's operating agreement. On today's episode of The Second Stage our hosts will be joined by legal expert, Michael Marhofer, Partner at Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP, to address some of the common pitfalls for business owners from a legal perspective. The hosts will discuss many topics when it comes to forming your organization, including what your entity choices are, where you should form your entity and the necessary documents. Don't miss this important episode covering many of the basic legal points essential to not only getting your small business started, but planning for the future.

You've worked hard to create a successful business and have made the life changing decision to sell. Don't overlook the magnitude of not only the sale agreement, but the employment, shareholder and operating agreements as well. On today's episode the hosts will again be joined by legal expert, Michael Marhofer, Partner at Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP to continue the discussion around the importance of putting well-documented agreements in place. On this final episode of our three-part legal series, we will explore in detail shareholder, operating and employment agreements and their key provisions. Learn more by joining this legal series on preparing your business for sale.

You've worked hard to create a successful business and have made the life changing decision to sell. Don't overlook the magnitude of not only the sale agreement, but the employment, partnership and operating agreements as well. On today's episode the hosts will be joined by legal expert, Michael Marhofer, Partner at Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP to discuss the importance of putting well-documented agreements in place, beginning with the sale or purchase agreement. It outlines the terms of the sale to avoid misunderstanding now and in the future. On the first of this three-part series, Mr. Marhofer will review the types of sale, asset versus ownership, and the various sections of the purchase agreement, their significance and meaning. For both sides of the transaction, it is crucial to understand the details (Definitions, Representations and Warranties, Indemnifications, etc…) to be able to negotiate. Learn more during this legal series on preparing your business for sale.

You've worked hard to create a successful business and have made the life changing decision to sell. Don't overlook the magnitude of not only the sale agreement, but the employment, shareholder and operating agreements as well. On today's episode the hosts will again be joined by legal expert, Michael Marhofer, Partner at Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP to continue the discussion around the importance of putting well-documented agreements in place. On this final episode of our three-part legal series, we will explore in detail shareholder, operating and employment agreements and their key provisions. Learn more by joining this legal series on preparing your business for sale.

You've worked hard to create a successful business and have made the life changing decision to sell. Don't overlook the magnitude of not only the sale agreement, but the employment, shareholder and operating agreements as well. On today's episode the hosts will again be joined by legal expert, Michael Marhofer, Partner at Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP to continue the discussion around the importance of putting well-documented agreements in place, beginning with the purchase agreement. On the second of this three-part legal series, we will review transaction structures, asset versus stock sale, and the various sections of the purchase agreement, their significance and meaning. For both sides of the transaction it is crucial to understand the unique segments including: Definitions, Purchase Price, Representations and Warranties, Closing Conditions, Covenants and Indemnifications. Learn more by joining this legal series on preparing your business for sale.

You've worked hard to create a successful business and have made the life changing decision to sell. Don't overlook the magnitude of not only the sale agreement, but the employment, partnership and operating agreements as well. On today's episode the hosts will be joined by legal expert, Michael Marhofer, Partner at Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP to discuss the importance of putting well-documented agreements in place, beginning with the sale or purchase agreement. It outlines the terms of the sale to avoid misunderstanding now and in the future. On the first of this three-part series, Mr. Marhofer will review the types of sale, asset versus ownership, and the various sections of the purchase agreement, their significance and meaning. For both sides of the transaction, it is crucial to understand the details (Definitions, Representations and Warranties, Indemnifications, etc…) to be able to negotiate. Learn more during this legal series on preparing your business for sale.

There has been much discussion about the changes that may be coming in the wake of the recent SEC Investor Advisory Committee meeting, where they considered changing the definition of the term Accredited Investor. In Episode 2 of Accredited Investor Markets Radio, Alicia Purdy explores what this proposal means with guest, Robert Rapp. Robert, a partner in the Securities and Capital Markets Practice of Calfee, Halter & Griswold, LLP. He weighs in on the impact of changing this definition, the thought process behind it and what to expect moving forward.   Learn more about SEC Regulations and what it means to be an Accredited Investor by visiting our site, www.aimkts.com Learn more about Robert Rapp by visiting http://calfee.com/attorney/robert-n-rapp/      Bob is Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, where he teaches Securities Regulation and Law, Theory and Practice in Financial Markets. Bob is also a partner in the Securities and Capital Markets Practice of Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP in Cleveland, Ohio. He handles financial market regulatory, compliance and related administrative and civil litigation matters, for a wide range of market participants and financial intermediaries. Bob is a noted author in the field of securities law and financial market regulation. His work has been published in numerous law journals and cited by courts including the United States Supreme Court. He lectures frequently on capital markets issues. Bob is the author of Blue Sky Regulation, the definitive treatise on state securities regulation in the United States, and is a principal contributing author for Federal Securities Act of 1933 (Matthew Bender Lexis/Nexis).  

With the ever growing popularity of crowdfunding and the Securities and Exchange Commission approval of the JOBS Act this past year, the hosts of The Second Stage, Jeffrey Kadlic and Brendan Anderson, would like to break down the facts with their guest and legal expert Bob Rapp, Partner at Calfee. They will discuss how this landmark legislation within the JOBS Act has changed the fundraising landscape possibly forever as well as what it means for business owners and entrepreneurs looking to raise equity. Pros and cons will be weighed and questions addressed such as when crowdfunding is a viable option and when is it best to investigate other alternatives?

October 19, 2012 Strategic Partners: Women in General Counsel and Senior Leadership Roles Case Western Reserve University School of Law Women in Law Leadership Conference How Skilled Women Lawyers Build Consensus Introduction: Bethany Thomas, '14 Moderator: Catherine Vernon, '93, Vice President and General Counsel, Formica Corp. Panelists: Len Cullo, '85, Vice President & Treasurer, HJ Heinz Company Mara Cushwa, '90, Partner, Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP Suzanne Hanselman, Partner, Baker Hostetler Valerie Sachs, '81, Vice President, General Counsel, Secretary, OM Group Heather Lennox, Partner, Jones Day

When it comes to employee discipline and discharge, entrepreneurs probably have more questions than they care to admit. As you work hard to establish and grow your business, human nature is to believe in your employees and trust they are there to support the organization. Unfortunately this is not always the reality and can lead to stressful situations for both the business owner and employee. And if termination is necessary, legal ramifications are real. To help shed some light on this important topic, the hosts of The Second Stage have invited labor and employment law expert, Todd Palmer, Partner at Calfee, to join today's discussion. Todd will provide practical advice to questions such as: What laws do I need to be mindful of?; Should I have a policy outlining my disciplinary process?; How should I document warnings?; and When should a legal advisor be consulted? Walk away with rules of thumb when it comes to documenting disciplinary actions and terminating employees.

With the ever growing popularity of crowdfunding and the Securities and Exchange Commission approval of the JOBS Act this past year, the hosts of The Second Stage, Jeffrey Kadlic and Brendan Anderson, would like to break down the facts with their guest and legal expert Bob Rapp, Partner at Calfee. They will discuss how this landmark legislation within the JOBS Act has changed the fundraising landscape possibly forever as well as what it means for business owners and entrepreneurs looking to raise equity. Pros and cons will be weighed and questions addressed such as when crowdfunding is a viable option and when is it best to investigate other alternatives?

Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or new to business ownership, the law can be confusing when it comes to protecting your assets, limiting your liabilities or just creating your company's operating agreement. On today's episode of The Second Stage our hosts will be joined by legal expert, Michael Marhofer, Partner at Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP, to address some of the common pitfalls for business owners from a legal perspective. The hosts will discuss many topics when it comes to forming your organization, including what your entity choices are, where you should form your entity and the necessary documents. Don't miss this important episode covering many of the basic legal points essential to not only getting your small business started, but planning for the future.

In this edition of In-House Legal presented by Lex Mundi, host Tim Corcoran senior consultant with Altman Weil, explores the question of Litigation and builds a framework for In-house Counsel. Special guests include Kim Moses of Calfee, Halter & Griswold (Lex Mundi member firm for Ohio), and Kathy Vanderwist, Legal Director for Tarkett, North America. The group discusses whether and when it is in company’s best interest to pursue a litigation claim, the role of In-house Counsel as it relates to litigation, and factors to consider when deciding litigation.

According to Wikipedia, Innovation is characterized by something new - or substantially different, not an insignificant change. Innovations are intended to make someone better off, and the succession of many innovations grows the whole economy. NEO is home to a variety of tech companies offering innovative designs and executions to solve customer problems and enhance business. This quarterly forum will feature tech companies introducing truly unique innovations that have put their companies on impressive growth trajectories. Among our panelists are: Phil Alexander, CEO - BrandMuscle (http://www.brandmuscle.com); founded in 2000, BrandMuscle provides a unique solution that automates and facilitates advertising creation and placement. this solution has been widely adopted and implemented by global companies both in the United States and overseas. Mike Broderick, CEO - Turning Technologies; winner of the 2007 Weatherhead 100, Turning Technologies created and markets Turning Point, an interactive technology that enables real-time, direct interaction between presenters and audiences. Gene Groys, CEO/Founder of Staff KNEX; founded in 2007, Staff KNEX features a mobile texting platform encompassing hardware and software that connects a company to its employees on a real-time, interactive basis. Sponsored by Calfee.

According to Wikipedia, Innovation is characterized by something new - or substantially different, not an insignificant change. Innovations are intended to make someone better off, and the succession of many innovations grows the whole economy. NEO is home to a variety of tech companies offering innovative designs and executions to solve customer problems and enhance business. This quarterly forum will feature tech companies introducing truly unique innovations that have put their companies on impressive growth trajectories. Among our panelists are: Phil Alexander, CEO - BrandMuscle (http://www.brandmuscle.com); founded in 2000, BrandMuscle provides a unique solution that automates and facilitates advertising creation and placement. this solution has been widely adopted and implemented by global companies both in the United States and overseas. Mike Broderick, CEO - Turning Technologies; winner of the 2007 Weatherhead 100, Turning Technologies created and markets Turning Point, an interactive technology that enables real-time, direct interaction between presenters and audiences. Gene Groys, CEO/Founder of Staff KNEX; founded in 2007, Staff KNEX features a mobile texting platform encompassing hardware and software that connects a company to its employees on a real-time, interactive basis. Sponsored by Calfee.

According to Wikipedia, Innovation is characterized by something new - or substantially different, not an insignificant change. Innovations are intended to make someone better off, and the succession of many innovations grows the whole economy. NEO is home to a variety of tech companies offering innovative designs and executions to solve customer problems and enhance business. This quarterly forum will feature tech companies introducing truly unique innovations that have put their companies on impressive growth trajectories. Among our panelists are: Phil Alexander, CEO - BrandMuscle (http://www.brandmuscle.com); founded in 2000, BrandMuscle provides a unique solution that automates and facilitates advertising creation and placement. this solution has been widely adopted and implemented by global companies both in the United States and overseas. Mike Broderick, CEO - Turning Technologies; winner of the 2007 Weatherhead 100, Turning Technologies created and markets Turning Point, an interactive technology that enables real-time, direct interaction between presenters and audiences. Gene Groys, CEO/Founder of Staff KNEX; founded in 2007, Staff KNEX features a mobile texting platform encompassing hardware and software that connects a company to its employees on a real-time, interactive basis. Sponsored by Calfee.

TWIBH- Rick ReuschelDictionary- Eat the BallTour- Calfee Park