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This week we sit down with Olympian Lily Williams who will represent the United States on the Women's Pursuit team. While track cycling is not our typical fare, Lily has a cyclocross background (and a maybe a gravel future).  In addition to representing our country, Lily is the Communications Director of Bike Index.  Lily Williams Instagram USA Cycling Olympic Track Schedule Support the podcast Automated Full Episode Transcription (please excuse the typos): Craig Dalton: [00:00:00]   Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.  [00:00:10] This week on the podcast, we've got Olympian, Lily Williams, joining the show. Lily's got a bad-ass background as a cyclist particularly as a cyclocross racer after a career as a collegiate runner. [00:00:24]Team. Lily races professionally on the road with the Rally Cycling, [00:00:28]And caught the attention of USA cycling and was brought to Colorado Springs for some performance testing on the track. I'll let her explain what happened next but a pretty amazing journey from someone who just found cycling after college. [00:00:41]Like many professional cyclists, Lily also holds down a full-time job, full disclosure. We work together at the nonprofit bike index. And we'll talk a little bit about that. And the mission bike index is on.    [00:00:54]Before we get started, I needed to thank this week sponsor Athletic Greens, who also happens to be a sponsor of USA cycling.  [00:01:04]Athletic greens is N S F certified for sport. Meaning they take their product seriously. Consistently testing and auditing it to ensure what's on the label is actually in the pouch. As you can imagine, that's critically important for Olympians and professional athletes and gives us average athletes the confidence to know what's going in the body.  [00:01:27]I'm actually drinking my post ride athletic grains right now, my personal way to prepare it. I like two big heaping scoops of ice, and then a heaping spoonful of Athletic Greens.  [00:01:39]Athletic Greens is a complex blend of 75 vitamins minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients. Athletic greens is green powder engineered to help fill the nutritional gaps in your diet. Their daily drink improves everyday performance by addressing the four pillars of health energy recovery gut health and immune support  [00:02:00]I've said it before. I'm a little bit embarrassed at times as to how poor my diet can slide when I get stressed out. But with athletic greens being packed with  for recovery. Probiotics and [00:02:12] Digestive enzymes for gut health, vitamin C and zinc [00:02:17]For immune support, it's just an easy all-in-one solution to help your body meet its nutritional needs. And boy, I could use all the help I can get. My program, I'd take one scoop every morning, and then I'll typically do two glasses on days where I've depleted myself through a big gravel ride. It's keto, paleo vegan. Dairy-free and gluten-free. All in a drank with less than one gram of sugar that tastes great over ice . [00:02:45]So, whether you're looking to boost your energy levels, support your immune system or address gut health. Now's the perfect time to try athletic greens for yourself. Simply visit athletic greens.com/the growl ride to claim my special offer today and receive free. K-12 wellness bundle with your first purchase.  [00:03:05] That's up to a one-year supply of vitamin D as an added value. When you try, they're delicious and comprehensive daily, all in one drink. You'd be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive nutritional bundle anywhere else. Again, that's athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. Would that business of supporting our sponsors behind us. Let's jump right in to my conversation with Olympian Lily Williams.  lily. Welcome to the show.  [00:03:31]Lily Williams: [00:03:31] Hey Craig. Thanks for having me  [00:03:33]Craig Dalton: [00:03:33] Our weekly calls. Aren't enough , Lily and I work together at the nonprofit bike index. [00:03:38] So we are in frequent communication.  [00:03:40]Lily Williams: [00:03:40] It's true, but nonetheless, I'm happy to be here.  [00:03:42] Craig Dalton: [00:03:42] And in the context of this conversation, huge congratulations for being selected to the Olympic team for the United States.  [00:03:49]Lily Williams: [00:03:49] Thank you. Yeah. So exciting. How many people have told me I'm fulfilling a dream and I'm just like, forget how  [00:03:56] cool it is. [00:03:57] Craig Dalton: [00:03:57] I think it's absolutely amazing. And I'm one of those people who constantly feels the need to remind you what an amazing journey you've been on.  [00:04:04]Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you. For the  [00:04:08] listener. I want to be clear, unfortunately, this is not the Olympic gravel cycling team.  [00:04:12]Lily Williams: [00:04:12] Not yet, but what might  [00:04:15] Craig Dalton: [00:04:15] happen? [00:04:15] This is the Olympic pursuit team on the track.  [00:04:19]Lily Williams: [00:04:19] Yes. Yeah. Which is about as far from a gravel race as you can get. But that doesn't mean I don't have a passion for all things off-road as well.  [00:04:27] Craig Dalton: [00:04:27] Is this true? And we will get to this Lilly. There is a tie into gravel cycling and dirt riding. For Lily. And we'll get to that. [00:04:36] In fact, where I wanted to start the conversation. I know you were a division one runner in college and transitioned and went into grad school, found the bike, but why don't we start there on your journey about where you started riding the bike, what you started getting excited about. And then we have to, for the listener, figure out a way to show them how you ended up. [00:04:56] Being on the Olympic track team of all things.  [00:04:58]Lily Williams: [00:04:58] Yeah. That might be worth some explaining. Yeah, so I started, I got my first bike as an adult, I think my sophomore year of undergrad. Maybe no, it was my freshman year of undergrad and I just had a bike that I was riding around campus. And then I was running track and cross country for my university. [00:05:14] And anytime we had an off week, I would ride my bike around town. So I definitely really enjoyed. Riding the bike, didn't wear a helmet or flip flops. Wasn't a cyclist, just was a person, bobbing around getting to the grocery store. And then I moved to Chicago for graduate school. [00:05:30]And that's where I really started writing. I started working at a bike shop and got a road bike and pimped out my computer so that I could get to and from class, which was downtown and I lived in the north. Northern part of the city. Yeah, I really started as a commuter, even though I was an athlete before in a different sport. [00:05:48]And then, because I was working at a bike shop, my coworkers coerced me into trying to become an athlete again. So that's where it started in 2016. So as I  [00:05:58] Craig Dalton: [00:05:58] understand it, your collegiate running career was. Maybe challenging for you in terms of what you thought it was going to be and what it turned out to be. [00:06:07] Were you looking for another athletic career at this point?  [00:06:11]Lily Williams: [00:06:11] No, my collegiate sport experience was pretty terrible. And a lot of it was just like me not knowing how to balance being basically a full-time athlete, which is what division one athletes are and getting, going to school and not failing. [00:06:24]And I also just yeah, socially, there's so much fun things to do at school. And you just find a way to prioritize the thing you like the least, which at that time was sports for me. So I was pretty ready to not be an athlete ever again. When I went to grad school and that lasted all of four months before I found cycling. [00:06:42] Craig Dalton: [00:06:42] So you found cycling at the, you said in the context of a road bike, but quickly discovered that cyclocross was an interesting part of the sport for you.  [00:06:51]Lily Williams: [00:06:51] Yeah because I was living in Chicago people may know that the Chicago cyclocross cup is a pretty big deal. There's a bunch, I can't remember how many, 10 ish race, weekends, all within driving distance of city throughout the course of the fall and winter. [00:07:06] And the money's really good and the it's just a really good time. And the competition is pretty good. And quickly started borrowing a demo bike from the shop that I was worked on. Shop that I was working at and was taking it to cyclocross practices in town just after class, just to, I don't know, just hang out with people and have a good time. [00:07:28]And then doing the races to have a good time as well. And I started having a lot of success in cyclocross, at least locally which kind of motivated me to want to try to do some of the bigger events as well.  [00:07:40] Craig Dalton: [00:07:40] And so you use that. Springboard. And I think you had mentioned there was a really good shop in Chicago land that leans into cyclocross and had a good team that you could get to be a part of. [00:07:52]Lily Williams: [00:07:52] Yeah, 100%. So initially I was aware being at Turin bicycle, which is a shop in Ravenswood, which is the neighborhood I was living in. And then I did just a season with the club team based out of Turin which is called bonkers cycling. And. Then I also did a few races for Northwestern because I was at Northwestern for school and was able to compete and cross and on the road and cyclocross for Northwestern. [00:08:18]And then that would have been in winter of 20 16, 20 17. And then my partner and I at the time wanted to do a full UCI calendar of cyclocross the next winter. And we approached the pony shop, which is in Evanston, which is the city immediately north. Of Chicago and they hooked us up. [00:08:37] They helped us get all of our equipment and kit and race entries and everything. And we just jumped head first into a full UCI calendar. And it was awesome. Like we got on some podiums and we got UCI points and it was really fun, a fun program. That's still going by the way and is growing. [00:08:54]Craig Dalton: [00:08:54] That's amazing. I remember getting introduced to the idea that Lily is going to be my coworker. And I think our coworker south basically said that Lily she's based in Chicago, she likes, she races. Cyclocross was very sort of unassuming introduction. Given what you've subsequently been able to achieve. [00:09:15]Lily Williams: [00:09:15] Yeah Seth and I, we just bombed around town and had a good time. And at the point that I knew Seth in Chicago, we didn't really I did not have any aspirations to be a professional athlete. I was really just looking to meet new people and enjoy like exercising for fun, crazy concept. And yeah, over the years, even since you and I have been working together, I think it's changed quite a bit into something a little more serious than what it was initially. [00:09:39]But yeah, I thought I was going to full gossipy, a cyclocross, a pro, and race in Europe and be sick over there. So things have just changed drastically, as you may assume, have assumed.  [00:09:50] Craig Dalton: [00:09:50] And after those results in 2018, you signed on board with rally cycling on the road.  [00:09:57]Lily Williams: [00:09:57] Is that right? In 2017, late 2017. [00:10:01] So I had already done. Oh man. I'm like already losing sense of the timeline. It's been four years and I can't even remember what I've done. In, so even before I had really done a full UCI cross calendar, I had been racing on the road and doing all the professional road races. And so in 2017 I reached out to Hoggins Berman Supermint and then signed with them for 2018. [00:10:26]As my first pro road contract. And then, so before I ever raced with Superman, I did after I signed, but before I raced, I did a full winter of cyclocross racing for the pony shop. Yeah. And then the following the subsequent year, I continued with the pony shop and did another full season of UCI cyclocross and one of my first UCI race. [00:10:44]And then after 2019 Superman, I signed with rally cycling for 2020 cause Superman folded.  [00:10:54] Craig Dalton: [00:10:54] Gotcha. And at what point did you start getting the interest from USA cycling to introduce this idea of riding on the track?  [00:11:01]Lily Williams: [00:11:01] Yeah, so it seemed so you got a new women's endurance head coach for the track program after Rio. [00:11:09] And his name is Gary Sutton. So he's our coach now. And he was just bringing people in from the road since he got to the U S so the team was really strong. They were defending world champions, Olympic silver medalist. But Sarah Hamer, who was one of their key riders retired. And there were just a few spots that they needed to fill. [00:11:25]So he was bringing people in just based on who was doing well on the road. So in late 2018, so this would have been after cyclocross nationals, two of 2018. So the first one was in January and Louisville, Kentucky, or excuse me, Reno, Nevada. And then the second one was in December in Louisville. I flew two days after Louisville out to Colorado Springs to do some testing as one of many people. [00:11:50]And then realized I might be able to be good enough and then started pretty heavily coming to the track starting early 2019. So I was coming to Colorado Springs for camps once a month, at least before my first race in July of 2019,  [00:12:06] Craig Dalton: [00:12:06] the identification testing look like. So you go to Colorado Springs and they make you do something. [00:12:10] What do they make you do? And what are they looking for?  [00:12:12]Lily Williams: [00:12:12] I was like, yeah. So I was trying specifically for the team pursuit. Like I knew that going in because I'm literally,  [00:12:20] Craig Dalton: [00:12:20] why did you know that? I'm just curious.  [00:12:21]Lily Williams: [00:12:21] I guess I didn't really know that I just assumed that, but I was a 1500 meter runner in college, which is a four-ish minute event, like four minutes. [00:12:30] 20 seconds or whatever. And then the team pursuit, the world record is like a four, 10, great Britain has it. So I knew that there was an event that was similar to what I would be doing. And then I came to USA to the us Olympic training center and did some power or testing on a watt bike. So I did like a sick test, 32nd test, four minute test, just to see where you are. [00:12:53] I think my six second test was the worst test they'd ever recorded. And then my four minute test was like the best test they'd ever written. So they were like, there's something here. We don't know what it is. And then when I got on the track, so I actually wrote the track. They put me on a pursuit bike. [00:13:08] So with the arrow from run end and I was doing pursuit specific efforts, just like riding the bike behind the motors. The motor and then like doing some flying 32nd efforts, ish, just to see how quickly I can cover ground without falling off the bike was of course I'd never written one before. [00:13:23]So yeah, it was like two or three days. And then they were like, if you want to come back we'd love to have you, but obviously, like you have to want to do it. And at that point it would require me giving up my cross program and potentially missing a lot of road, which I ended up doing. But yeah, so it's been pretty full gas since. [00:13:39] Probably January of 2019.  [00:13:41] Craig Dalton: [00:13:41] Yeah. I can only imagine how challenging it was getting on a track bike for the first time.  [00:13:46]Lily Williams: [00:13:46] I guess that's not really a true rule. I have written it Northbrook, which is the velodrome. And once again, just north of Chicago, but just two or three times, just for the summer series. [00:13:55]I borrowed one of the bikes they have at the track. I had no idea what gear was going on it, I think I probably switched the seat height between me and my friend riding the same bike the same night. So I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just like, I'd been on a bike, but not really. [00:14:12] Then I remember  [00:14:13] Craig Dalton: [00:14:13] you got to try over the course of our relationship. You would ask for things like, Hey, I need to reschedule a call because I'm going to be in Lima, Peru, and then you'd come back and say, oh, we won this medal. And then you said, Hey, I have to go to Berlin and not knowing the track schedule as well as I might know, road scheduling. [00:14:33] I didn't realize it was the world championship. And lo and behold, I see. Oh, I came back with the gold medal, wearing the rainbow striped Jersey on the track.  [00:14:43]Lily Williams: [00:14:43] Yeah. I remember that night I was in bed in the hotel doing some work and you were like can you just stop and go celebrate for a little bit? [00:14:51]I'm busy. I have to answer my email. Yeah, it's cryptic, especially in the U S where there really aren't that many velodromes to race on. I don't think people, I certainly didn't know what. What I was doing or what track cycling was about. And it was only until I started going to the world cups, which I got pretty fast tracked into. [00:15:07] Did I see what a track cycling is and it's the, how it's popular in other countries and what events there are. But yeah, we've gone to some interesting places. We spent 10 days in Cochabamba, Bolivia, which was that like 10,000 feet for a race. So it's kinda cool.  [00:15:23] Craig Dalton: [00:15:23] And for clarity, you race on a four woman pursuit team. [00:15:28] Can you talk about those team dynamics and what you're looking for? Because I know over the process of the Olympic selection process, there were multiple women vying for spots, and I'm imagining as a coach, you're trying to factor in certain things. I'd be curious, like what things were they trying to factor in? [00:15:44] And what's important in the dynamic between you and the other athletes.  [00:15:48]Lily Williams: [00:15:48] Yeah, that's a great question. So you're right. It's four people and you basically just want to maximize the four that you have. So everyone in the group is going to be doing something a little bit different from, starting position one to starting position four, or, if you're Chloe you're spending the last three laps on the front, when someone else in line might only be able to do. [00:16:11] Three laps, total of the race. So you really have to maximize the four that you have in a combination. That's going to be the most effective and that's completely different for every team and is completely different depending on the combination of riders that you have. We set out a schedule the night before, or the morning of the race and say, this is where you're going to start. [00:16:29] This is how much time you're going to spend on the front. We like go over our communication strategy because things can always go wrong and you have to be able to tell whoever's on the front, what's happening three wheels back. And then we'll have the coach walking the line on a certain pace. [00:16:43] So we always know where we are relative to the other team. And we always know exactly what pace we're riding to equate or the final time. So for something that's relatively simple there's quite a bit that goes into it. And there were seven women on it. The team pursuit, long team and five women were selected. [00:17:03]So even though it seems like there were a pretty, if you were on the long team, you had a pretty good shot of making it even getting on the long team was a big challenge because you had to either have podium at a world cup or written a certain time standard. It was definitely a tight selection. [00:17:19]Craig Dalton: [00:17:19] Within there are limits to figure out how to phrase this. So for clarity, everybody in this particular event needs to finish at the same time. So your time is taken on the last rider going across the line.  [00:17:30]Lily Williams: [00:17:30] Yes. So you start with four and you only have to finish three writers. So for most countries the starter who does the most work at the beginning of the race does not finish. [00:17:40]Our starter is a woman named Jen Valente, who Usually finishes the ride. She's pretty good. So is there a benefit  [00:17:47] Craig Dalton: [00:17:47] for her hanging on throughout the rest of the ride?  [00:17:49]Lily Williams: [00:17:49] Not necessarily, but she's good enough at it that she can still do more with the start. Those of us who are newer and not quite so strong. [00:17:57]So it, the time is taken on the third rider across the line. So in theory, you're. Your three writers come across at the same time, you like fan up and all right across the line together. Sometimes it goes wrong. Somebody gets dropped or you crash or something. So you start four, but time has taken on three. [00:18:14] Craig Dalton: [00:18:14] And so that starter that you alluded to with maybe slightly different physiology, is it just sheer power and Watts to get up to the speed? The team needs as quickly as possible.  [00:18:23]Lily Williams: [00:18:23] Jen is the best starter in the world. She has a really, she's probably got the longest track background of anyone on the team. [00:18:28]She definitely does. And she is has a history in doing the sprint events too. So she's by far the quickest of all of us over the, just getting out of the gate and getting us up to speed. The us will typically start almost a second faster than. Some most of the other teams, which is not insignificant when races are won by tenths of seconds,  [00:18:50] Craig Dalton: [00:18:50] your stacks up the track and she starts, and then you've got, obviously everybody else is starting at the same time. [00:18:56] And you've got to, you've got to tuck in. If Chloe is your cleanup batter, so to speak, is she expanding a little less energy at the start? Because she can fade into the fourth slot.  [00:19:07]Lily Williams: [00:19:07] No, because she normally, yeah, I'll start second, which is the second most challenging position because you're getting up to speed basically at the same pace as the starter, and then the starter pulls off and you have to do your turn immediately. [00:19:20] Whereas say at worlds, I started in fourth position. I had three people's terms before I had to take my first turn, so I could settle into the ride and then do my turn. Whereas someone like Chloe, who is. Next level world-class she can do the star behind, P one and then also, take her pole right away without any recovery. [00:19:41] Craig Dalton: [00:19:41] Okay. And then as far as when you peel off from the front, how many rotations would you typically get in an event?  [00:19:47]Lily Williams: [00:19:47] It usually it totally depends. We've tried a bunch of different structures, I think. If you look at any of our footage from past races, normally we do two to three on the front depending on where you start in line. [00:19:59]So for me, it's always been two. I think I'll be able to contribute quite a bit more after an additional year of training, but traditionally the races I've done, I would take two turns on the front.  [00:20:10] Craig Dalton: [00:20:10] And is it you, I think you mentioned that is likely decided the morning of the event via your coach and you're just following a plan. [00:20:18] Lily Williams: [00:20:18] Yeah. It's pretty much based. Yeah. It's based on a plan that's laid out. We have some input as well if we want. Which is really nice because I think of course we all know each other in our own bodies very well. And yeah, the structure as we call it, or the schedule is usually not. Sent out until pretty close to race time. [00:20:35]Which is good. I think it minimizes the stress of thinking about it and it always is very logical. There's never anything crazy in it. Like they would never say Lilly are doing the eight laps in the middle of the race. So we all know what is going to happen? How many  [00:20:49] Craig Dalton: [00:20:49] laps total are we talking about? [00:20:50]Lily Williams: [00:20:50] So a track is a track that we would race on is 250 meters. And we'll do 16 laps. From a standing start. So it's four kilometers total for the team  [00:21:01] Craig Dalton: [00:21:01] pursuit. Another team on the other side of the track starting at the same time, right?  [00:21:06] Lily Williams: [00:21:06] Or is that not the case? Yeah, so to, to confuse it even more, there were three rounds in the first round is called qualifying in. [00:21:14] The second round is called first round. The third round is called finals, but qualifying is just for time. So the, at the Olympics there'll be eight teams. And you will all ride individually with no other team on the track to set a time. And then they seed you based on the time that you have written and qualifying. [00:21:35] So there's a there's then three man, and I really don't even know, like I really should know this. But then there are then in first round, they race, I believe they race first and fourth from qualifying together against each other. And the winner of that ride goes onto the gold medal round and then they race second and third in the winner of that ride also goes on to the gold medal round. [00:21:59] And then whoever gets S whoever gets seconds in the, yeah. [00:22:07]Yeah. I really don't even know. I'll be honest with you. I know that. I know how you get to the gold medal round, but I don't really know how you get to the silver or to the bronze metal round, so I never have to learn it. But yeah. And then they'll slot the fourth, fastest time from quals in or a fourth fastest time from first round in to the final in that bronze medal ride, I think, or maybe from the non. [00:22:34] Yeah, but I don't know.  [00:22:35] Craig Dalton: [00:22:35] So I'm curious, you mentioned something about being able to take clues from your coaches about the timing. Are they flashing you up, assign each lap about where you're at?  [00:22:45]Lily Williams: [00:22:45] He'll stand on the line that we started. So if he's in front of the line, it means we're going too slow and he's behind the line. [00:22:51] It means that we're up. There'll be different things. It's a different part of the race. So like the first part of the race, he'll be standing on the line based on the time that we set for ourselves. And then later on, he'll be walking the line based on how far ahead or behind we are the opposite team. [00:23:04] So yes, as I forgot to mention, quals is an individual just for time ride. And then first round and finals are with another team on the track. So you are thus pursuing each other.  [00:23:16] Craig Dalton: [00:23:16] So for that qualifying round, you presumably the coach has in his or her head, this is the time we need to hit in order to seed ourselves one or two or whatever you're going for  [00:23:27]Lily Williams: [00:23:27] in theory. [00:23:28] But it always ends up just being full gas. If we were really up in. Calls is always full gas. Cause you want to set the fastest time because you want to automatically be seated in a first round ride. That'll get you into the gold medal final. Yeah. And then first round you definitely, all you have to do is beat the other team to move on, but at the same time you are still going pretty much full gas because it's hard to beat the other team, there's not as much strategy in it as you would think. And then of course finals is full gas too. So it's it's pretty much three. Three, all out rides. That seems  [00:23:58] Craig Dalton: [00:23:58] what I could imagine. It's just, you're going to be going hard and fast and it's hard to take it up to the next level. Even if someone's saying you have to, because you're behind. [00:24:08] Lily Williams: [00:24:08] Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because calls is first as one day. So you do that and then you know where you're at. And then first round and finals are on a together on another day. And when we won worlds in Berlin first round felt easy. Like we, four of us finished and we were all just this is interesting. [00:24:25] And so we moved, went into the final feeling, pretty confident. Even though sometimes it feels easy, but you're really still going very hard and accumulating fatigue. But yeah, you kinda just have to take it one round at a time. Yeah. That's  [00:24:37] Craig Dalton: [00:24:37] interesting. Are there, which countries are you looking out for the most in terms of competition for the Tokyo Olympics? [00:24:43]Lily Williams: [00:24:43] So great Britain has won great Britain, won London and Rio, and the U S got second in London and Rio. And then we won worlds and great Britain was second, which is what happened before Rico as well. So the U S women were world champions, and then I got to great Britain at the Olympics. So we know that great Britain always comes to the Olympics prepared like they do a full four year cycle with the really, the only goal of winning an Olympic gold. [00:25:07] So they're certainly the ones who are on paper, the best to be. But Germany set a pretty fast time at worlds as well. So we know that they have at least one really fast time in them Oz Australia or the world champions in 2019. I'm sure they will be on good form. And knowing our coach, Gary, who came from Australia knowing how good of a coach he is, you have to assume that. [00:25:28]Whoever is coaching those women now also knows how to make them best. And then New Zealand is very fast. They almost broke the world record in 2020, and rumor has it that they almost broke it again in training this year or at nationals or something. And then Frank, it's had a couple of really fast rides two years ago. [00:25:47] So there is really, the eight teams that are there are really. All metal capable on Canada. Canada got bronze in in Rio and consistently podium at world cups. So there's a lot,  [00:26:02] Craig Dalton: [00:26:02] it sounds like you're going to be looking over your shoulder at basically everybody who's on the opposing end of the track. [00:26:07]Lily Williams: [00:26:07] Pretty much. Yeah. I'm trying not to get overwhelmed by how stressful it is, but I also feel very confident in our group. I take a lot of solace in that. And I  [00:26:17] Craig Dalton: [00:26:17] believe I saw from our friends that felt that they've got a pretty sweet track bike for you guys to race.  [00:26:23]Lily Williams: [00:26:23] Yeah. So they built it for Rio. [00:26:26]And it's left side drive. And sometimes I pull out my road bike, my normal felt road bike. And I'm like, why is the crank on this side? And then I remember that's what a normal bike is like. Yeah, so it. Pretty much the same as a regular track bike, but in theory, the left side drive decreases drag because it's traveling the shorter there's drag on a shorter distance, if that makes sense. [00:26:45] So the inside of the track is shorter than farther up on the track. So if you have the cranks or if you have the crank set on the inside the drive train, then it's spending less time in the wind. And we have some other secret stuff that we're developing on the bikes right now, or just fitting the bikes out with. [00:27:05]It's going to be exciting. Everyone shows up at the Olympics with at least so I've heard because I've never been with crazy new bikes and equipment and skin suits. And it's people don't realize that track cycling like the cutting edge of all of this arrow stuff that USU and the. [00:27:20] Are you shun in the gravel world? But a lot of it's pretty, pretty cool. And arrow bars are, people are using arrow bars on the gravel now, too, so I can empathize.  [00:27:29] Craig Dalton: [00:27:29] Yeah. It's definitely one of those things I always look out for when the Olympics come around to see what kind of snazzy new tech or bike is going to be introduced. [00:27:37] I know as you mentioned, the UK always seems to introduce new, fast looking bikes. And that felt like with the drive train on the other side is just But when you talk about marginal gains, like that little bit of moving it from one side or the other.  [00:27:49] Lily Williams: [00:27:49] Yeah. Yeah. We're talking like half of 1%. [00:27:52] So in my opinion, I'm just like, okay, I'm going to work so hard that none of those one percents matter, so that nothing can go wrong and I don't have to think about anything else. But they make a big difference. They all add up and especially when you're trying to get an Olympic medal, you really have no room to let other teams. [00:28:07]Take extra from you where you could be doing the same thing. Yeah. I  [00:28:11] Craig Dalton: [00:28:11] mean, we want all you athletes to feel fast in your clothing, your bikes, your helmets, everything, right?  [00:28:17]Lily Williams: [00:28:17] Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of thought that goes into it. I don't think people realize quite how much time and money and energy is spent on making sure we have the best of everything. [00:28:28] Yeah.  [00:28:28]Craig Dalton: [00:28:28] It's going to be awesome. I'm excited. I'll put links to where people can watch the stream. I think I looked it up correctly. Is August 2nd sound right? For one of the start of the events. Yeah. And it sounds like it's going to be around 11:30 PM. Pacific time to watch.  [00:28:43]Lily Williams: [00:28:43] I hope so. I looked it up on NBC. [00:28:46] I'm not sure it'll even be aired because most people are at once again are like, what is track cycling? But hopefully, especially if. We have multiple events that are metal capable. NBC has some incentive to yeah. Just show it. Exactly.  [00:28:58] Craig Dalton: [00:28:58] There's nothing worse than my, my, my past when I've stayed up at night to watch something on the Olympics and they're covering something totally different than the sport that I wanted to see. [00:29:07] Lily Williams: [00:29:07] It's like a question or something and you're like, dang it. Yeah. But this is going to be awesome. Olympic trials yesterday. It's finally happening. It's  [00:29:15] Craig Dalton: [00:29:15] exciting. Definitely. Wow. I'm excited to be along for the ride with you. I know you've worked tremendously hard to get to this point and we've already said we don't want you working on bike index stuff while you're over there. [00:29:28] Yeah.  [00:29:28]Lily Williams: [00:29:28] Yeah. We'll try. I'll try really hard. I'm going to have to shut down slack and some other things are also being really tempted. I get on and talk to you guys.  [00:29:36] Craig Dalton: [00:29:36] If it's relaxing, talk to us. If not we'll survive.  [00:29:40]Lily Williams: [00:29:40] Yeah. Sometimes it's so nice to have a tie to normalcy. I'll be perfectly honest when all you've done is be at the track all day. [00:29:46] And you just want to talk to someone about something that isn't splits or which drink mix to put in your bottle or which gear to put on the bike or whatever. Yeah. So  [00:29:55]Craig Dalton: [00:29:55] In what may seem like a giant leap for the listener bike index is a nonprofit where a stolen bike, sorry, where a bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform. [00:30:06] So at its basic level, You register your bike, it's free to use. You can do that as a, as an owner. You can do it a lot of times, right? At the shop level when you purchase your bike. But the really interesting things that Lily and I get to see are on the stolen bike recovery side. And I thought it might be fun just to share a couple of stories of some of our favorite recoveries that we've seen on bike index. [00:30:29]Lily Williams: [00:30:29] Yeah. I'll steal our favorite one. We have recovered a bike that somebody reported stolen on bike index when they were an undergraduate. I think in Iowa, I think at Iowa state or a university or some, one of the universities in Iowa, and then. I think it was six or eight years later, they were back at the same school for their medic getting their medical degree. [00:30:51] And they recovered the bike that they had reported stolen when they were there for undergrad. So that was a pretty fun. Yeah. Yeah. It's always  [00:30:59] Craig Dalton: [00:30:59] incredible. Basically once it's indicated as stolen on the platform, it's just going to sit there. And as a nonprofit, we've got a pretty wide community of volunteers that are looking out for it. [00:31:10]If they see something that's. Listed on offer up or Craigslist or Facebook marketplace. That looks too good to be true. Oftentimes our volunteers will just check bike index and be able to reconnect with the owner and at least give them a heads up. Hey, I think we've seen your bike here, or I think it's being sold there and it gives you a fighting chance to recover your bike. [00:31:29]Lily Williams: [00:31:29] Yeah, 100% or recovery rate is growing from around 10%, which is the highest reported recovery rate of any registration service. And yeah, not only volunteers, but law enforcement officers and members of the community of which we have hundreds of thousands are all looking out for stolen bikes and sending messages to people just out of the goodness of their hearts about. [00:31:53] If they see your stolen bike somewhere, they can let you know where it might be, so you can recover it. So it's pretty successful.  [00:32:00] Craig Dalton: [00:32:00] And while we can't talk about the details in this context and listener, I do trust that you won't you won't share this too widely until we tell you it's available, but we have been tracking this absolutely massive theft ring ranging all the way from Northern California. [00:32:16] Into Mexico and we've traced over $500,000 worth of bikes to one seller. We've got active police investigations in a number of different cities and counties in California that are all triangulating around this same effort. We've got a national publication. That's been following it along with our partner who focuses on stolen bike recovery. [00:32:38] And it's going to be the biggest bicycle theft ring I think ever uncovered in the United States.  [00:32:44]Lily Williams: [00:32:44] Yeah. Pay attention. But like that really galvanizes people, I think when you rely on your bike as transportation or your way to get to work or your sole opportunity for recreation it's really a problem. [00:32:55] And hopefully it, we are here to make it better. Yes.  [00:32:58] Craig Dalton: [00:32:58] So thank you for your continued efforts on that behalf, Lily.  [00:33:01]Lily Williams: [00:33:01] Of course,  [00:33:03] Craig Dalton: [00:33:03] but time to focus on the Olympics, we have high expectations for you. We can't wait. We're all standing at your back and I appreciate you sharing with our listeners. I'm sharing this because you started in the dirt. [00:33:15] You're going to go into metals. I think you're going to come back to the dirt and we're going to see you at some of these big events in the future.  [00:33:21]Lily Williams: [00:33:21] I think you're probably right. I've paid close attention to a lot of them. And I'm just wondering, like when I'm going to bite the bullet and do Unbound or one of the other big races domestically or as I was telling Craig earlier pseudo dirt, Go over to Europe and hopefully rice, the first ever women's Perry Ruby in a few months here, if my team rally cycling gets the invite. [00:33:43]So yeah, I did one gravel race in 2017. I did Barry Ruby up in Michigan. And it was for reasoning. It was like 40 degrees and raining, so it wasn't cold enough for it to be snow. And it was just wet and miserable the whole time. But I did win. So I think that I will come back at some point and I'll probably bring the arrow bar. [00:34:04] Craig Dalton: [00:34:04] Oh, controversy right there.  [00:34:07]Lily Williams: [00:34:07] I feel like that's an old controversy now. There's always something new and arrow bars are just like part of the litany.  [00:34:14] Craig Dalton: [00:34:14] Yeah, exactly. Cool. Thanks for all the time today, Lily. I appreciate it.  [00:34:18]Lily Williams: [00:34:18] Yeah. Thanks Craig. It's good to talk to you as always.  [00:34:22] [00:34:22] Craig Dalton: [00:34:22] Huge. Thanks to Lily for joining us on the show this week. I'm so proud of her for making the Olympic team and so excited for the women's track team in Tokyo. Her event is starting on August 2nd, Monday, August 2nd, the first rounds, and then the finals will be on August 3rd. [00:34:42]Make sure. And send USA cycling and Lily, your support over social media. I'll put her handles. In the show notes. I know it can be funky finding cycling on the streaming and television networks. But do what you can. I think for the USA cycling program. We've got a great shot at gold in the women's pursuit. and i can't wait to follow the journey. [00:35:03] [00:35:03]Thanks again to this week's sponsor athletic greens. Remember visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride to obtain that special offer. And thank you. Thank you for all the new members. Thank you for all my one-time supporters. When you visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride, that's your way to directly support what we're doing over here at the podcast. We couldn't be doing what we're doing without the support of members. Like you.  [00:35:32] And also the generous sponsors from the industry. And outside the industry.  [00:35:38]One final ask would be, if you have a friend or a group of friends that are getting into gravel cycling, please share the gravel ride podcast with them. I'm endeavoring to create a body of work. That'll take a new rider on a journey and take an experienced rider through some deep dives. We want to create content that just helps people stay stoked.  [00:35:57] On the sport of gravel cycling. Until we speak again. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels

This week we sit down with Gavin Coombs from Dead Man Gravel. We get into the details of this new July event in Colorado including conversation about the events' efforts towards diversity and the financial investment it takes to get an event off the ground.  Dead Man Gravel website and Instagram The Ridership Forum  Support the podcast   Dead Man Gravel - Full episode transcript. [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride [00:00:03] podcast i'm your host craig dalton on this week's episode, [00:00:07]We have Gavin Coombs, one of the founders of the dead man gravel event in Nederland, Colorado.  [00:00:15]The event is scheduled to take place on July 31st, 2021. Our conversation ranges from diversity and inclusion. To the economics of event production. And obviously the ins and outs of dead man gravel. Before we begin. I'd like to apologize for about a minute of poor quality audio. In the last episode, I only learned it after the fact. [00:00:39]From a listener. In the ridership. I appreciated that feedback, but thank you for bearing with me. I apologize for that. I'd also like to say a big thank you to those of you have supported the podcast via buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. In particular, those of you who have chosen the membership option. [00:01:00] Having a consistent baseline level of support from you? The community means a ton to me, more and more. I'm having to move things around in my life. In order to hustle to get these episodes out the door. But knowing that you're counting on me, puts a little fire in my belly. When I first started the podcast, my intention was to cover an equal mix of athletes. [00:01:22] Product designers and event organizers. [00:01:26]As the COVID pandemic took hold in 2020. [00:01:30] It largely took events out of the equation for the podcast last year. So I'm happy to be slowly bringing them back into the fold. I'm cautiously optimistic that in the latter half of 2021. We will see events safely going off with riders and organizers, both sharing. [00:01:47] In the responsibility of safety. I have a ton of respect for advent organizers as you'll hear in my conversation with gavin even with a modest event size it often can carry significant expenses associated with it i hope you'll walk away from this episode with a little bit better understanding of what organizers go through in order to give us these experiences in the gravel community With all that said let's dive right in to my discussion with gavin about dead man's gravel. Gavin, welcome to the show. [00:02:21]Gavin Coombs: [00:02:21] Thanks Craig. Excited to be here. [00:02:22] Craig Dalton: [00:02:22] Yeah. I'm excited to talk to you about dead man. Gravel. It ticks a couple things that I really like about events. [00:02:30] It's got a funny name and it looks really hard and adventurous. [00:02:36] Gavin Coombs: [00:02:36] Yeah, definitely. We wanted to be a really fun event. And, I think the area that we live in up here in the mountains is a pretty special place. And yeah, it's going to be a great event. I think [00:02:47] Craig Dalton: [00:02:47] Before we get into the event, let's learn a little bit about you and your background as a cyclist. [00:02:52] And after that, I'd love to learn a little bit more about what inspired you to create an event. [00:03:00] [00:03:00] Gavin Coombs: [00:03:00] Yeah. In all, honestly, I am a new cyclist and I know lot of people pretty new to gravel riding. I was a professional trail runner for a number of years and would occasionally ride as like cross training. [00:03:13]I've been riding a bike, for a really long time. But just never in any kind of like structured or organized way. But it was always a runner and in my leader, Career was like a trail and ultra runner. And what really drew me to that is just the ability to be able to get out into the mountains and explore and just see just everything that. [00:03:31]That all has to offer. And then recently I ended my running career and then had a a skiing accident where I messed up my knee. Pretty good. And after a couple of surgeries, I've gotten more into cycling and just as a way to, to continue to do the things I loved about trail running I was able to do on a bike as well. [00:03:50] And was that's what really drew me to, to gravel cycling and in terms of starting an event I've been wanting to do something like that. I operate another business that runs dead, man gravel called peak-to-peak endurance. And we do like retreats and camps, and then wanting to get into the event world for a while now. [00:04:08] And saw this as an opportunity to create an event where there wasn't one here in Boulder County, Colorado, there are a few bike races not. A ton of gravel, specific ones, there's a couple races or one race in the winter. That's a little kind of gravel bike. And then but there's not a lot of races in this [00:04:30] area. [00:04:30] And so we saw an opportunity and kinda just threw ourselves into it and just went after it. That's [00:04:36] Craig Dalton: [00:04:36] awesome. So I want to go back to something you said about how gravel cycling is ticking some of those same feelings you might have had of adventure. W when you were doing your ultra marathoning, it'd be, if you drill into that a little bit, do you feel like it has similar elements in how you feel after doing a big adventurous workout? [00:04:56] Gavin Coombs: [00:04:56] Absolutely. Yeah. The similarities, on the surface, there can it's easy to see some similarities between, gravel and trail running. And then as I've just gotten more into the gravel community, the similarities are just incredible. Just. Based on the community, everyone's like super welcoming and that's what drew me to trail running initially from the roads. [00:05:18] And like just the fact that everything's just super chill and people just want to have fun and adventure and explore. And the same thing I've found the exact same thing with gravel riding and that, it was just a huge draw for me. And And you can still do the same things. [00:05:32]Obviously you can't ride a gravel bike everywhere you can run, but you can still get a lot of, to a lot of really incredible places and can get, go a lot further, it's yeah. It's one thing to go run 50 miles. It'd be completely trashed, but you can go out and ride 50 miles and, be able to see, just as much or a lot of different stuff in, not it doesn't totally destroy your body and Yeah know, so there's just a lot of similarities there. [00:05:56] Craig Dalton: [00:05:56] I didn't draw it connection until this moment about the ultra running [00:06:00] community and the gravel cycling community, but that's so spot on, I think, sport to sport. There's those elements that you described of once you started running off road, it just became this different thing. It wasn't about running a six minute mile. [00:06:14] It was about covering this amazing mountainous terrain by any means necessary. And sometimes that meant walking. Sometimes it meant running all the time. It meant getting dirty. Oftentimes it meant getting bloody. But it was, just really about getting out there. And obviously there's so many similarities from road cycling to gravel, cycling where all of a sudden a light bulb goes off and roadies are discovering, getting dirty and getting out there on these mountain roads that are right there in their community can be so much more rewarding than the same road routes they've been doing forever. [00:06:50] Gavin Coombs: [00:06:50] Totally. Yeah. And I think you're definitely seeing that in the industry. Obviously gravel is exploding and in a lot of that's driven by new people getting into cycling because it is more approachable. I feel like. But you see a ton of people going from the roads to gravel because, honestly I think. [00:07:05] That being like a former road runner. I know how exhausting that world can be. Yeah. Just mentally and physically to come to a place that is just so much more laid back. And it's not about, like you said, it's not about hitting a specific time or pace. It's just about. The overall adventure. And, I think people are really drawn to that, [00:07:25] Craig Dalton: [00:07:25] Not to drill too much into the ultra community. and I certainly won't profess to be an active [00:07:30] member of it, but I do remember in the ultras I've done, there was just a creativity in the wardrobe and attitude of all the athletes. I remember going to an event and, seeing like tie, dye, tall socks, and people running in Hawaiian shirts and it just immediately broke down. [00:07:47] Any kind of performance anxiety, because it just felt like we're there for an experience. And whether you're, this amazing 60 year old runner with a long white beard or, a new athlete in their twenties, like everybody just wanted to be part of this experience in the wilderness. Totally. [00:08:09] Yeah. And then gravel's obviously the same way. And I love that about it. I love, I think it's just this great reminder. Anytime I see someone wearing a Hawaiian shirt or doing something goofy on the bike that, we're just out there acting like kids and just, triggering that element of our psyche. [00:08:26] Gavin Coombs: [00:08:26] Absolutely. Yeah.  It's just fun, and. Obviously there's becoming as with anything the more popular it gets a level of professionalization that's happening which has bound to happen. And I don't think it's bad for the sport because I think ultimately people are still the majority of people out there riding gravel and doing a lot of these events are just having fun with it. [00:08:43]Like wearing jorts and like you said, like Hawaiian shirts and it's just about having fun, and that's the most important thing. [00:08:49] Craig Dalton: [00:08:49] So that obviously plays a role in any event design, just to set the stage for everybody listening, who may not be familiar with Colorado. [00:08:58] Can you just talk [00:09:00] about where the event is located and maybe a little bit about what the terrain looks like? [00:09:06] Gavin Coombs: [00:09:06] Totally. Yeah. Generally we're in the, what's considered the front range of the Rocky mountains, which is the Eastern edge of the Rockies. And most people are at least familiar with Boulder. [00:09:16]We are about 15 ish miles West of Boulder and about 3000 feet higher. The race. Is all at elevation starts about 8,200 feet. Never goes below 8,000 tops out at about 10,300 hundred feet. And so it's hilly, there's there's, you're up and down the whole time. There's not really any flight section whatsoever, and that's just kind of part of the geographic nature of where we live. [00:09:41] It's. It is mountainous. We're at the base here at 8,000 feet. We're at the base of a whole string of 12,000, 13,000 foot mountains. We see, right out our front door and that you get to look at pretty much the entire course, you get The views are just incredible. [00:09:57] You never get up like about treeline or anything, but it's just pretty incredible views. And but it's not in terms of setting the like elevation and the altitude aside, it's really not that much different than what you could find in gravel roads anywhere. Most of the roads are really well-maintained County roads. [00:10:17] And the kind of our long course, which is about 66 miles is about 70% gravel. And so those are just really nice, normal dirt roads that, nothing special about there are a couple of County roads that are a little bit [00:10:30] further out that are a little bit Rocky. [00:10:32]Some kind of like baby head kind of staff and but are easy to To maneuver through definitely it's all very much gravel bike friendly. You certainly wouldn't need a mountain bike or a hardtail mountain bike to do anything that, that th these courses offer [00:10:46] Craig Dalton: [00:10:46] Do you think that terrain is going to be ultimately what, or the climbing is ultimately what breaks up this race? [00:10:52] Is it the type of event that riders can likely stay together from a technical perspective, but ultimately it's going to come down to horsepower. [00:11:00] Gavin Coombs: [00:11:00] I think so. Yeah. There's not really any sections where that are going to favor someone with more technical bike handling skills. [00:11:07]Are like I was saying our, I guess we were considered like the premier race, the, we call it our tungsten course. Cause tungsten was a mineral that is, and it was mine out here. And it's also. The hardest mineral that's mined. And that's what we're calling our hardest course. [00:11:20] And like I said, 66 miles with about 8,300 feet of climbing so pretty stout. And there are a few. Big climbs. And so I think that's really ultimately, what's going to end up separating people and who can adjust to the altitude to, coming someone coming from sea level is going to, have a little bit harder time. [00:11:37] Craig Dalton: [00:11:37] Yeah. I was going to say it's it's always been one thing for me to be in Boulder at 5,000 feet coming up from sea level. But getting up to 8,000 feet is definitely, it definitely has a huge effect physiologically on me. [00:11:50] Gavin Coombs: [00:11:50] Yeah. And it does honestly, with people From Boulder to, it's the the effects of altitude are not like in a linear way. [00:11:56] It's ex it's exponential. So like coming from Boulder to up to [00:12:00] here is about the same from going from sea level to Boulder. And for those who don't know, Boulder sits about 50. Three 5,400 feet. But [00:12:07] Craig Dalton: [00:12:07] yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So that's definitely going to play a role in it. Why don't we look? Course, by course, and I think it's, always like to tease out as an event organizer, how you thought about creating these routes and what type of challenge did you want to create with each route? [00:12:25] Gavin Coombs: [00:12:25] Yeah. So we really set out when creating these routes when we wanted to keep it's simple, we didn't want to make it overly complicated with more turns than were necessary. And we wanted to highlight, some cool features. So one, we wanted to make sure we got some really Yeah, Epic views in there. [00:12:41]Highlight a couple of the big climbs in the area. And then there's just some cool historical stuff, there's a ghost town that you go through that's been abandoned for. Oh, I don't know about a hundred years or so. And so there are just some cool historical features and some just interesting areas that we wanted to highlight. [00:12:59]And so breaking it down by, we have. Breaking it down course. By course we have three course offerings. We call them our tungsten course, our gold course and our silver course which were all minerals, mined in this area. And the gold course and the tungsten course start and they share the same first 20 miles or so. [00:13:18]And They both hit, that really big the first, really big, long climb. It's about five miles with 1500 feet of climbing. That's pretty Rocky. You need to, pay attention to pay attention when climbing it for sure. And then they [00:13:30] diverge in the tungsten course continues on and hits another big climb before coming back into town and doing another loop that all describe it a second, but, and then the gold course continues on, in a different direction, which stays on the road a little bit more. [00:13:43] So the gold course, if someone's coming in and wanted more of a like a bit more, maybe coming from road background or, is not Feeling like super strong at altitude or something. The gold course is a really good option just because it does have a little bit more pavement to it. [00:13:57]Takes out one major climb. And so that's at 40 miles with just under 5,000 feet of climbing. Yeah, there's just a little bit more approachable. And then we have our will, we're really pushing as like our, or really beginner friendly course. And I think we'll get to this a little bit later, but the. [00:14:12]We wanted to have a course that was really approachable to anyone who maybe had just an interesting gravel if they had never done a race before. And it's about, it's just about 20 miles. Just just over 2000 feet of climbing. So it's still a challenge, but it's about 50, 50 pavement to road pavement to gravel. [00:14:31] And so it's just a much more approachable. Approachable kind of course. There's no technical sections. You could probably do it on a road bike and be just fine. Tire size and selection, isn't that big of a deal. And I'm sure we'll even have probably some people do it on a mountain bike and that's great too. [00:14:46]It was just a really Beginner friendly course, to get your feet wet with some gravel riding. [00:14:51] Craig Dalton: [00:14:51] Yeah, I think it's so important. You want people to be able to hop into a course and get the thrill and invigoration of being out there in the [00:15:00] woods and get the feel and sense of gravel without putting them in a situation where. [00:15:05]They're going to come home crying because it was a horrible, too difficult experience. And, I think it's great when race organizers are able to embrace that and be inviting into the community. [00:15:15] Gavin Coombs: [00:15:15] Yeah, totally. And, we've scaled back and we may end up doing, in and then next year, or, maybe a following year, more like an adventure style race where, it gets. [00:15:24] It gets pretty gnarly and really pushes your bike to the limit. We didn't want to do that this year just because we wanted everyone to come away from this race, having a really good experienced that's one reason why, like all of our courses have a downhill finish. They all start and finish in the same spot, which is right in the town of Nederland. [00:15:38]But so they all have a downhill finish, which we felt like. No one wants to finish a hard race on an uphill climb. And we made sure that, the last few miles are going to be really fun. And so it kinda end with, that, that good feeling, and at the front of your mind. [00:15:52] And and so we did we authored the courses quite a bit before we ended up on a final final course. And we just wanted to make sure that, regardless of which course you choose. You're not going to walk away from it with any bad feelings. Obviously there's always the chance you could wreck or, flat out a bunch of times and, we have hopefully the support for that, but we want everyone to have a good time with it. [00:16:12] Craig Dalton: [00:16:12] It sounds like there's a solid chance. We'll all be gasping for air, but besides that it'll be a lot, [00:16:16]Gavin Coombs: [00:16:16] definitely. Yes, for sure. Everyone will be struggling for air at one point or another. [00:16:22] Craig Dalton: [00:16:22] You've also put a stake in the ground about your desire to be super inclusive for the race. Do you want to talk about that [00:16:30] kind of value and what it means to you? [00:16:32] Gavin Coombs: [00:16:32] Absolutely. Obviously, and I feel like there's slowly but surely beginning to be a change in the general cycling world. And I think he's see that very specifically in the gravel world. And we, me as the race director and also the team that I have around me recognize that we have a certain level of. [00:16:52] Of privileged that we can, just decide to start an event like this. And that we have a certain platform that comes with that. And so from the very beginning I wanted to use that platform that we have to try to lift other people up and and not exclude anybody, we don't want we don't want our race. [00:17:12] To be a part of the problem that is the kind of homogenous. And typically at least on the surface appears to be, exclusionary world of that road cycling has that connotation too. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not, I guess I certainly would not make that broad statement to everyone who rode rides on the roads or anyone who rides a bike is just a middle-aged white man that doesn't care about anybody else. [00:17:35] But but there is that sort of that perception in the world of cycling and so we wanted to be very conscious of that and do what we can in our own small way, realizing that we're not a huge race and we're not going to have, Just, hopefully we'll have a big impact in our local community. [00:17:51]Colorado is not exactly known as the most diverse place in the world and but we want to do what we can to help other people Experienced [00:18:00] new things, find a new passion have a chance to express that passion that they have. And and so we felt this is a perfect kind of vehicle to be able to do that with. [00:18:08] Craig Dalton: [00:18:08] Are you, if you, are you making any sort of adjustments in the way, the number of slots that are available for particular gender? [00:18:15]Gavin Coombs: [00:18:15] Yeah, so we are. First off, the one thing that we're doing, which is just an easy, thing that we felt like we could do right away is our first week of registration is going to be open for people who identify as female or by Bach. [00:18:29] And That is just one way. So like they get first dibs on all the spots and so if it sells out in that first week and all of our women, all of our writers are women or athletes of color that then that's great. And so we didn't, we don't necessarily have a set number of spots set aside, but we are trying to create opportunity where If you want to be able to register, you should have hopefully that time to be able to do we are, I guess I shouldn't say we aren't setting aside any spots because we are also partnering with a couple of organizations. One of which is an organization based here in Denver called ride for racial justice. And we have a number of Athletes from them that are coming, that we've committed to and helping provide resources for to get to get them to come to our race and just be able to participate in something like this. [00:19:11] And there's that, and we're working with a couple of local, like women's teams to provide spots for. And we really just want to create. A space where people feel welcome and are able to to join, if they still want. [00:19:25] Craig Dalton: [00:19:25] Yeah. I think it's just important to model that I often find myself lacking [00:19:30] the right words. [00:19:31] I have the sentiment and the feeling, but I often find that I struggle with how to make the sport more inclusive, but it all starts with efforts like this, where you're just opening your arms and saying, Hey, we can't solve a lot of the problems that make cycling a difficult sport to get into. [00:19:47] I E like affording equipment, et cetera. But what we can do is say, if you can get over that hurdle in some way, Everybody's welcome. [00:19:56] Gavin Coombs: [00:19:56] Yeah, definitely. And that's part of the reason too. Why lie? We wanted to. We're trying to set up our race and the feel of our race, and try to toe that line between like just recognize yes, they were high level professional athletes that were probably be at our race and that's great. [00:20:10] And we want to encourage that and we think that's good for the sport, but we also want to be able to create a space where people can just come and have fun and enjoy their time out in the mountains, push themselves and challenge themselves. But they can also do it on. Whatever bike they don't need, a $6,000 gravel bike. [00:20:27]They can come on, there are some bikes we would probably discourage, but you don't need to gravel specific bike and necessarily and we don't want it to, we wanted to create just the whole event, have a feel of. It was just open and welcoming to whoever wanted to come and do it. [00:20:41] Craig Dalton: [00:20:41] Yeah. It's important to just with gravel ride, what you've got, find out if that sport is something you're interested in. If you have an old mountain bike or even a road bike, you may have some issues here and there, but just go for it. The community and the infrastructure of these events are going to try to support you with whatever bike you show up on. [00:20:57] Gavin Coombs: [00:20:57] Totally. Yeah, absolutely. [00:21:00] [00:20:59] Craig Dalton: [00:20:59] So the other big issue with an event, your events, July 31st, 2021 is obviously COVID safety. We don't know where we're going to be as a society or where Colorado is going to be as a state. At that point, obviously things are trending in the right direction and I probably wouldn't have had this conversation if your event was in. [00:21:20] June, or certainly may, because I really have strong concerns that those events just aren't going to be in the best interests of our country. But why don't you talk about how you're going to approach COVID safety and what it's going to be like during the race? [00:21:34] Gavin Coombs: [00:21:34] Yeah, absolutely. So that is obviously our number one concern. [00:21:38]We wouldn't in your you're, we wouldn't be having this conversation if our race was any earlier, we. We feel like we're going to be, we're positioned that to be in a really good space. I think in terms of vaccinations, just on a national level we're really optimistic that things are looking are trending in the right direction, at least. [00:21:57]And so we feel good about it. We are very confident that our event is going to go off in person. And that, it's going to resemble. A quote unquote, normal bike race. Now that being said, there are certainly going to be some changes. There are a lot of local restrictions that we have to abide by. [00:22:18]Probably the biggest one is just going to be limiting the size of the event based on the town that we're in and the, just the general area. We're never going to be, several thousand people we don't have that desire to have, a [00:22:30] 3000 person race. But I think we will be probably limited a little bit more and the numbers that we're going to be able to have and, the powers that be aren't even giving me a number yet. [00:22:39] So I don't know exactly what that, that. Final number is going to be a registered, but so that's going to be the number one thing is just going to be, it's going to be a smaller event. We're not going to have a mass start, so it's not going to be all two or 300 people or whatever. [00:22:52]On the start line at once, we're probably going to be starting in waves rolling out waves every minute or two for probably a couple of hours, honestly. Everyone will be required to wear a face mask which, makes sense. Unfortunately, if they feel like most people are used to now and not during the race, but while they're at the start finish area at aid stations when you're, in line for the port-a-potties or whatever, like you have to have a face mask on. [00:23:15]And fortunately we don't have to require that while riding which is a big plus and so that's a pretty common thing. And then and we're going to be doing all this social distancing stuff and having, hand sanitizing stations and, a ton of porta-potties that we'll be rotating through. [00:23:28] So there they stay clean and just even for, we think we're still going to be able to have like our vendors and sponsors have tents set up we're going to have a one-way traffic flow and, in. Yeah, Mark. And that's six foot social distancing, kind of guidance. [00:23:41] And so we still feel like, because we're because of the timing we're going to have, it's going to resemble, a typical bike race with kind of the same stuff that people are getting used to now, at least with the face masks and the hand sanitizing and, keeping your distance from each other. [00:23:54] Craig Dalton: [00:23:54] Yeah. I think that makes sense. A lot of times when I talked to race organizers, I'm sympathetic because a lot of the [00:24:00] responsibility actually is down to the writers because you can set the stage. You can provide all the materials and hand sanitizer stations and rules, but writers really need to take to heart that if we're going to continue to have these events, we just need to be buttoned up. [00:24:15] When we're in the start finish area, we need to take. Maybe be overly precautious, just to make sure that events can be successful and are pointed to as, a super spreader event. God forbid. [00:24:28] Gavin Coombs: [00:24:28] Yeah, definitely. And, like just start finished areas as clearly the easiest example of what's going to feel a little bit different. [00:24:36] And so ours will look like we'll have, cones on the ground that are spaced six feet front and back and side to side. And you got to stay at your cone with your mask on. And then we're gonna, shuffle people from, One group will go off and then we'll move that the next group up. [00:24:48] And so it'll be, logistically it's not super easy and it's going to feel a little weird probably for most of the writers but it's something I think that it's worth it. I think, people are excited to get back out there. Yeah, we've seen that with other events and  Steamboat gravel is sold out in two hours in lie. [00:25:04]People are excited to get back out and, participate in these events again. [00:25:08] Craig Dalton: [00:25:08] And yeah  at the end of the day, I think the start line experience is such a minimal part of the overall day. I will say, I think we are all missing that finish line, have a beer and taco kind of experience that. [00:25:22] Yeah. Yeah. It'll be back. It may be different this go around, I think we'll get there and hopefully sooner rather than later. [00:25:30] [00:25:29] Gavin Coombs: [00:25:29] Yeah. We're still have. Some festivities, most of our post race activities will take place actually at a brewery in town. That's separate from the start finish area. [00:25:39] And that it will still be all outside and plenty of space, at that specific location. And unfortunately you're right. Like we're not going to be able to, to. Even, we still haven't even fully decided what an award ceremony is going to look like. [00:25:52] And just because we can't really have people gathering and that makes sense. Yeah. So some of those logistics are still, we're still waiting to hear, to get some more guidance and, there's even different guidance from County to County and, we're just Trying to figure all that out with everybody else. [00:26:05] Everyone's trying to figure it all out. [00:26:07] Craig Dalton: [00:26:07] Yeah. And then it definitely. So just so that when we send this out to your registration, registered riders, they get a little bit more detail on equipment. Can you drill into it? You've you mentioned it a little bit, that you felt like some of the sections could require, a pretty lightweight gravel bike, but others are more intense. [00:26:25] Where do you find the sweet spot would be for tire size, for example? [00:26:30] Gavin Coombs: [00:26:30] Yeah. We definitely have some of that drilled into a little bit on our website. So anyone who wants to check out Dedman gravel, we do have some equipment recommended. We strongly disagree, courage like a gravel slick. [00:26:42]I think you got to have something with some tread on it is definitely going to be beneficial. We're recommending A minimum tire width of about 35 which is certainly on the small end of gravel tires, nowadays. And that would be, I know people who have written parts of our course with a tire size like that. [00:26:58]And it's not always the most [00:27:00] comfortable, obviously the bigger tire you have, the more comfortable a ride you're going to have. And like we talked a little bit about before it's not. This is not like an all-out speed kind of race. Having it better, having a little bit larger tire, that's going to give you a little bit better traction and stability and some, some little rougher areas. [00:27:19] It's probably going to be beneficial. Even if you lose a tiny bit of, top end speed, because you, there, aren't going to be many sections where we will have a lot of top end speed. And just having something a little bit bigger is probably better. We're not going to be out there measuring tire sizes. [00:27:34] And if you choose to run yeah. 35 something smaller than a 35 a slick kind of road tire and you flat five times, like that's on you, we want you to be safe and be smart about it. But we're not going to also can't really be out logistically. [00:27:48] Can't really be out there policing everyone's tired choices. [00:27:51] Craig Dalton: [00:27:51] Yeah. Not at all. There's guaranteed to be some good ones and some bad ones. Now, in talking to you, it sounds like when you started this event, you had a multi-year horizon and vision for the event. I know for a lot of listeners and people have pinged me on just understanding as a, kind of a, someone who created an event financially, how much do you need to put on the line to get an event off the ground? [00:28:17] Gavin Coombs: [00:28:17] Yeah. So that's a great question. And that can, that varies. To a huge degree. And it really, I think ultimately you got to start with what type of event do you want to have? So are you looking [00:28:30] more at a grassroots local sort of just fun event or are you looking to put on like a, world-class like. [00:28:37] Big time event and super professional or whatever because there's probably, a hundred thousand dollar difference in there. And yeah we're a little bit in the middle, we want to certainly have that hometown feel, but also put on a really high level event to give everyone, an idea and to be totally transparent our budget's going to be around $50,000 which is not like. [00:28:57]No, certainly I don't want just have $50,000 laying around myself. There's been some financial commitment from us personally to get the ball rolling and so we feel like and from what I've heard from other race directors that I've talked to, you could probably bet on somewhere between 40,000 and $60,000 as like a for a small to medium-size event. [00:29:18]It would be about what your budget is. [00:29:21] Craig Dalton: [00:29:21] And do you, and is there a vision as a race organizer that, perhaps it's obviously not year one, but over time that you can break even with event registration fees, et cetera. [00:29:32] Gavin Coombs: [00:29:32] Yeah. So certainly, it's a fine balance of. We wanted to price our event in a way that was not exclusionary for anyone. [00:29:41]But obviously we still have to cover our costs in order to continue to be an event. And so we, we feel like we struck a pretty good balance between, sponsorships that we were able to bring in. Plus registration fees that we are, we're expecting. And as of now, I can say we're looking pretty good and at least [00:30:00] staying in the black a little bit for our first year, which can, which I know is hard for a lot of first year events than so I feel like because of that, I feel like we've struck a good balance between registration fee prices and sponsorship dollars that we were able to bring in. [00:30:14] And obviously the better we do, the better event we can put on next year and,  continues to build on itself. [00:30:19] Craig Dalton: [00:30:19] Yeah, I appreciate, I appreciate you being transparent on that because I, putting some real numbers against it, it starts to make a lot of sense. I think for athletes coming in right. [00:30:26] It's pretty easy. And I haven't looked at what your event registration fees are, but just for simple math, if it's a hundred dollars registration fee and you have 300 riders, you can then generate $30,000, which still hasn't taken care of all the expenses, so to speak for the event. [00:30:42] And that's maybe at the outside, that might be hard for a rider to recognize, like how much is actually on the line to put off a great event. [00:30:51] Gavin Coombs: [00:30:51] Yeah, absolutely. And, you definitely you're a hundred percent, and it is hard. It's obviously sponsorship dollars come into play in that and help make up that difference. [00:30:59]And and it's not, we're not really making a lot of money, no one at least at races, like our size, no, one's like getting rich off of this, we're doing it because one, we love it. I love doing this stuff. It's super stressful. It takes up a ton of time and work, but we love it. [00:31:13] And so that's why we're doing it. But almost all of our money goes to Paine police officers to be out on the course and providing food for the athletes. And there's a lot of things that cost a fair bit of money.  And so it's not that like we're making a ton of money on it? [00:31:28] Craig Dalton: [00:31:28] No, exactly. Like I imagine [00:31:30] when you chop up that hundred dollar entry fee, and again that's just my made up number. You're talking about 85, 90% of that likely going to just overhead costs that have already been spent and day of event, experiential things like, food and safety things like the police officers. [00:31:47]Gavin Coombs: [00:31:47] Yeah, totally. The margins are pretty low. And it does, and we want to put on a good event and so we want to make sure everyone's having fun and and all of that, but, we also don't want our entry fees and just so you know, you're so our. Our long course that are 60 mile course is is a hundred dollars starting off with, for registration. [00:32:05] And then our gold course, which is like a medium distance is 80. And then the short course is 35. And so we try to keep our. Yeah, price is reasonable and approachable. While still being able to, cover the bills. And that's why I think too, when you know, so many races being canceled and obviously certainly no one anticipated COVID just decimating the race season. [00:32:26] And I it's I've certainly gathered a new appreciation for race directors, like not being able to give back a hundred percent of the money, cause so much money is spent upfront that, most of your registration fee is already spent, months before the race. [00:32:39] And so it is hard for, especially for a new or small race, we rely on those, that money each year. We don't have a huge, war, chest of money sitting around that we can survive another year without. [00:32:51] Craig Dalton: [00:32:51] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You wouldn't fall to any event organizer who lost a ton of money in 2020 for not [00:33:00] wanting to get back in the game. [00:33:01] So I, I think it's always been part of my mission at the gravel ride podcast to interview race and event organizers, because I think. You guys are definitely putting yourselves on the line every year to put these events, whether it's financially, emotionally, and certainly all your time and dedication that it's important for athletes to understand and just give a socially distance high five to the next event organizer you get in front of them. [00:33:26] Gavin Coombs: [00:33:26] Totally. Yeah. And it's actually, I feel like driven more of a comradery even between, event organizers is, there's, I know there's a couple of groups of, some events that are really large in Colorado that are working together to even help, lobby the state in their local municipalities to like, let's get some clear coverage on this and so everyone's trying to, everyone's trying to work together because ultimately, people realize that. [00:33:47]If we can work together as race directors and not as competitors necessarily, then you know, it's going to be better for everyone. [00:33:53] Craig Dalton: [00:33:53] Yeah. And at a statewide level, just being able to provide economic opportunity for these rural communities, I think is a very noble and important thing to be doing. [00:34:03] Gavin Coombs: [00:34:03] Yeah, absolutely. [00:34:05] Craig Dalton: [00:34:05] Yeah. Gavin, thank you so much for giving the overview of dead man. Gravel I'll have links to the event and your social media handles in the show notes. And it sounds exciting. I can't wait to continue following it. [00:34:17] Gavin Coombs: [00:34:17] Yeah, thank you for having me and for giving us the opportunity to share about our race. [00:34:22] Craig Dalton: [00:34:22] My pleasure. [00:34:22]Big, thanks to Gavin for joining the show this week. [00:34:26]I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about the [00:34:30] dead man gravel event. And in particular, I hope you walked away with a little bit better understanding about both the time and financial commitment. These event organizers have to go through in order to bring you to these types of events. Next time you get in front of an event, organizer, give them a high five. [00:34:48] Let them know that in addition to paying for the event. You really recognize the amount of effort they put in [00:34:55] Because for most organizers, these clearly aren't big money-making events. [00:35:00]So that's it for this week's episode of the podcast. I appreciate you joining us. If you're a new listener. Welcome. If you're a frequent listener thank you it's great to be part of your life each week If you're not already a subscriber please go ahead and hit the subscribe button that's a big deal for us in the podcast community as it's really a big signal that what we're doing is taking hold. [00:35:24] Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.

Our recording software decided to mess with us this week. It took four recordings and sixteen tracks but we did it, it's done. Please excuse any weird areas (four of them) where it sounds like we quickly jump to something else, lol. Anyway, it's the usual mix of not talking about wrestling until we talk about wrestling that you know and love, including two challenges to Goldbergs 24/7 Worst of The Year title. We picked our winner in this week's Wednesday Night Scuffles between NXT and AEW Dynamite before our usual quick chat about WWE Main Roster stuff. We close the show as we always do by picking our Best/Worst Match, Best/Worst Segment and Wrestler of the week. “Perséphone - Retro Funky (SUNDANCE remix)” is used with permission from Left Hand Music. The song can be found here - https://soundcloud.com/sundancemusic/pers-phone-retro-funky

JT and Wenin discuss the round 20 team announcement carnage See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

(How's that for an 'Accidental Partridge' episode title?) A taster before his main episode, I talk to ex-Swindon Town midfielder Craig Easton about pre-season. We talk holidays, fitness, transfers and friendlies from the perspective of a footballer. Lovely stuff. Thanks Craig! More of him next week. This episode is sponsored by the STFC Official Supporters Club, SUH-WIN-DON!

Episode 103 Thanks Craig! May the 4th turns out to be lack luster in 2020, Thanks RONA!Download the PODCAST directly........ HERE or from iTunes using the link in the upper right hand corner.

Welcome back! We are back at it with the remote podcast! Forgive the slight echo and dog barks. (Thanks Craig). Join us as we discusses a wide array of topics such as Trump Bucks, security clearance, and working in stressful situations.

Did you know that I was inspired to do this podcast by an old friend? As we all know too well this time of year, sometimes inspiration falls flat before the perspiration part even gets started, if we haven't put ourselves around the right kind of people - people who will nudge us in the direction of completing the things we said we wanted to. My old buddy Craig Johnson from Wild Ass Seats is that guy. Ever since I've known him he has been a guy like that. I talked with Craig this time one year ago as I was thinking that a podcast about dealership issues, including the real conversations that do occur or maybe more importantly need to occur in and around those dealerships. He said "YOU SHOULD!" to which I probably replied something like "Well I didn't mean that I should do it!" - but the words spoken cannot be taken back. Here I am with 6600 plus listens by folks like you and growing every month. Craig held me accountable much the same way I now do to folks responding to episodes or ideas for future episode topics when I say "maybe you and I should just discuss that on an episode" - Thanks Craig for setting an example. Those willing to speak out loud the ideas they are passionate about are the ones who will be given to opportunity to be held accountable. That's a great thing! Craig's business at Wild Ass Seats is finding a way to make customers comfortable - but I realize even more now that he many times has to do that when they don't realize that being uncomfortable for a moment (introspection, analysis, planning to remedy) can lead to better things and more fulfillment in the long term. I'm very fortunate to have friends like Craig and I'd encourage anyone who reads this to take this new year threshold to move yourself in the direction of friends who will make you better and you can commit the same to them. You didn't have to do it on New Year's Eve, New Years Day or anything like that - just make the change, do better, as soon as you know better. (That's NOW, if you are keeping track!) Check them out: Wild Ass Seats website here. Wild Ass Seats Facebook here. Wild Ass Seats Instagram here. And - The real fun side of Craig on his TikTok page here. *************************************************************** As always I'd like to say how much I appreciate ever listen I get to this podcast. Thank you for listening, sharing and rating the show! Feel free to email me directly at: dealershipfixit@gmail.com The dealership fiXit podcast exists to tap dealers into high performance ideas! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dealershipfixit/message

Craig is well known for his work as a business owner and tattoo artist. He has found a new calling as how he describes it as "Shinetoligist" for STEELBOUND BREWERY AND DISTILLERY in Ellicottville, NY. We traveled to Ellicottville to experience it for ourselves and it did not disappoint. Craig's able to use his creativity and knowledge thanks to owner Bill Bursee who had a vision to make something unique. We believe that these guys have something special and you should go and check it out for yourselves. Thanks Craig and Bill we had a great time and we wish you luck in all you guys do! Dont forget our sponsors FIRST IN BUFFALO 391 Abbott RD. Buffalo NY and BOTTLE ROCKET BEER RESERVE 2182 Seneca St. Buffalo NY

A conversation with gravel guru, Yuri Hauswald of Gu Energy Lab looking at nutrition for big rides and gravel bike suspension.   This week's tech corner sponsored by Thesis covers the range of suspension options for gravel bikes. Yuri Hauswald Instagram Gu Energy Labs Tech Corner sponsored by Thesis Automated transcription (please excuse the typos!) Welcome everyone to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast we've got Yuri Hauswald from Gu Energy Lab. If you followed the gravel scene at all, you've probably seen Uris name come up from time to time. Yuri is a past dirty Kanza champion and you'll find them all over the world racing his gravel bike and advocating for people to get outside in his capacity working for Gu Energy labs. Yuri's got some great tips and tricks around nutrition and hydration that really came to bear in this year's dirty Kanza as well as some great insight into suspension for gravel bikes and when we're going to see them start to have some impact in the market. But first we've got this week sponsored tech corner with Randall from thesis bike. Thanks Craig. So today we're going to talk about suspension on gravel bikes. Tech Corner with Randall from Thesis: Today, we’re going to talk about suspension on gravel bikes. A gravel bike, for me, is a bicycle that performs at a high level on everything from road with a set of road slicks to borderline cross-country riding with a set of knobby 650Bs. For gravel bike suspension, what we want is comfort and control while still maintaining the performance of the bike in all the conditions it’s going to be ridden. So, in order, the first thing I’d be looking at is my wheel tire package. What I want is a high volume tire with a supple casing, set up tubeless on a rim that’s wide enough to support that tire at low pressures without the tire squirming around. The next thing I’d be looking at is seatpost. A traditional seatpost can give you some flex, but it’s pretty limited, so from there you might look at a suspension seatpost. But really, if you’re adding that weight, you might as well add a dropper post. A dropper, again, is going to take your weight off the front wheel - which means off your hands - and put it more over the rear wheel, while at the same time giving you more distance between your butt and your saddle so that you can use your legs as suspension. That is going to make a considerable difference in the amount of shock absorption of your overall system. Next up: touch points. Cushy bar tape and a slightly cushier saddle than you might run on a pure road bike are going to take a lot of the edge off, they add a trivial amount of weight, and they’re relatively inexpensive to add. Now, at this point is where I would stop, but some people might want even more cushion. For them, I’d recommend a suspension stem. What I like about a suspension stem is that it doesn’t compromise your steerer tube or the front end of your bike, and it’s entirely non-proprietary, so you can swap it in and out of any bike. If all of these things aren’t enough, what you might be looking for is a drop bar mountain bike. This means a suspension fork up front or even a rear suspension. However, keep in mind that while that sort of bike is fantastic on the dirt, it’s going to be a bit compromised on the road because it’s going to have some slop and extra weight in the system that are going to take away that snappy feel that you’re used to a road bike with road slicks. What’s great about a gravel bike is the ability to ride at a high level on any sort of terrain, whether it be road or dirt. So my take is: start with your wheel tire package, add a dropper post, add some cushy touch points, and go have a fantastic ride. Yuri, Welcome to the show Well thanks for having me, Craig. I'm stoked to stoke to be on right on. I've always wanted to ask you this question every time I've, I've seen you, but can you describe your background as a cyclist? Like how did you get into the sport and then what ultimately drew you to the gravel part of the market? Yeah, that's, that's a good question cause I didn't, I don't have like sort of the traditional cyclists, uh, introduction into the sport. So, uh, I was a stick and ball kid growing up, you know, soccer, baseball, football and Lacrosse. And then I just, um, Lacrosse is the sport that took me to college. I played collegiate lacrosse a cow, um, and was the captain of the team and MVP and this and that. So that was like, that was my sport all through high school and college. Um, and so I had a good, like endurance engine from all the running we had to do. Uh, but I wasn't riding a bike and I actually didn't discover the bike until I went and taught at a prep school back east in Pennsylvania. This was 93, 94, 95. Uh, and some of the folks I taught with were avid mountain bikers and, um, they started taking me out on rides and I was on a borrowed gt like NASCAR in cutoff jeans and Chuck Taylor's, no joke, total hack. Uh, but I loved it. I loved the adventure of it. I love the camaraderie of it, um, that, you know, exploring new places. We're riding out in like French Creek, uh, park out there like Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, places like that. Really, really technical stuff. So I was constantly wrecking and breaking parts. Uh, my first bike actually was a specialized stump jumper and I got it because one of my students worked in a bike shop and, uh, hooked me up with a little bit of a deal as his teacher, um, on a mountain bike. And then it just went from there. Um, I, I, I truly fell in love with the sport and the community around it. And, uh, when I moved back to California in 96, uh, is when I really started getting into the racing and, and starting to work my way up through the ranks. And was that on the mountain bike primarily or did you drift into the road as well? Uh, when I first got into riding, it was only mountain bike. I didn't touch a road bike. I think I got my first road bike. I know when I got my first road bike, it was a giant. Um, and it was in 96 and my first century was the Santa Fe century because I was working. Um, I had started my master's through St John's on in literature and, uh, I was living in Santa Fe. Uh, the friend had some dudes who just opened up a bike shop and then one thing led to another. And once I finished my summer of, towards my master's, I started working in the bike shop and became full mountain biker bag, uh, and gave up on my master's and started riding bikes and then started teaching elementary school actually. Um, so yeah, that's how I got into it. And then on the mountain bike side, you started to get drawn to, to the, sort of the more endurance events. Is that right? That's true. That took us, it took a number of years that probably took seven, eight, nine years before I realize that, uh, I wasn't, you know, that good of a cross country racer. I was decent, you know, I mean, I, I worked my way up all the way to Semipro, which is a category that doesn't exist anymore. Um, but that was sort of the stepping stone between expert and pro because that was such a huge gap back in the day to go from being an expert to pro. So they had a semipro category and I made it to that category, but I, there was no way in hell I was gonna ever get out of that category because I was just packed water. Uh, and um, it was actually in 2003 that I did my first 24 hour, um, event as part of a four man team. Um, with mark, we're uh, another buddy of mine, Glen Fan, he's a shop owner up here in Santa Rosa and a gentleman named Kirk Desmond. We did the 24 hour four man national championships that were held at Laguna Seca and we did the geared category, but just as sort of our U to everybody, we did it on single speeds and we ended up winning. So we won the four man national championships in the geared category on single speeds that year. So that was my first introduction to like, you know, back to back hours of, of going hard for 24 hours. And then it wasn't until buddy dared me in 2006 to do my first, uh, 24 hours solo that I really sort of discovered that I have the ability to sort of be that diesel engine and just pedal at a relatively good pace for long periods of time. And, um, I did multiple years of Solo, uh, 24 hour racing and had some, some success with that. And that has actually what allowed me to turn pro. Uh, but you know, when I say that a lot of people think, you know, the, the endorsements and the big money checks started rolling in. Right. And I got to quit my day job. Not True at all. I was really, really nobody. Um, it was just three letters on my license that, um, meant a lot to me. Um, and I still was teaching and you know, traveling during the summers and living out of my car and following the normal circuit and racing as much as I can. But I think it was probably around 2007, 2008 that I started doing more of the eight hour, 12 hour, a hundred mile mountain bike kind of races and um, and kind of figuring out that that was more my jam than the short XC stuff. Yeah, I imagine you see a lot of parallels between the type of community that was evolving around the 24 hour scene back in those years with what's going on in gravel today. Oh, definitely. Yeah, definitely. The, the 24 hour scene was super familial and supportive and, uh, there was a tight knit group of us, uh, that we're, we're pretty close and that's one of the things that when I discovered dirty cans in 2013, that was the first year I went out there, uh, is what really attracted me to gravel was, you know, Midwestern hospitality, the grovel family. Um, the embrace of that family is warm, it's genuine, uh, and it makes you feel welcome. And, you know, it was, it was that and you know, had been obviously pushing your physical limits in, in new terrain and, and a new sort of discipline of racing that really, uh, attracted me to, to the gravel scene. And I've been, you know, an avid gravel fan ever since 2013. Yeah. It seems like some of those early events, they really set the marker from sort of alter endurance perspective of gravel and subsequently many events have kind of rolled that back to make them a little more accessible. With your 24 hour background, obviously like going into a 200 mile event wasn't completely foreign, although I'm sure it was really hard that first year in 2013. Where do you, where do you think that mix in gravel events is gonna land? Do we have room for the ultra endurance side and the shorter events? Uh, I do, you know, I mean, you see events, you know, offering up, you know, gravel events off, some offering up in, you know, multi distances to kind of appeal to a lot of different folks. Something like a Rebecca's private Idaho, which has, you know, three or four distances, the big one, which is, you know, a hundred miles. And then there's like a, I think a 25 mile, and then there's sort of a tweener distance of 60 miles. So, uh, you know, and then you saw that dirty Kanza two years ago, uh, offered, you know, the super me, uh, you know, the DKA Xcel, um, and, and also has multiple distances underneath the 200, the 100, the 50, and I think they now have a 25 a as well. So I think there's plenty of room. Um, so to offer a lot of different distances because gravel appeals to folks who are wanting to get off pavement, you know, and um, get onto this sort of the quiet back country where you don't see any cars for days kind of events. Um, so I, I think there's, there's definitely room for growth, for events to have multiple distances and that appeals to a lot of folks. Yeah, it's been interesting to me as I personally got drawn into the sport. I was an observer from the side about events like the tour divide and these sort of long distance, multi-day bike packing style races. Um, and I never actually did one of those, but I got drawn into the sport just because it was aspirational to be out there having such an adventure. And in, in my life I tend towards more of the shorter events just because I don't have the time or the physique or the commitment to kind of train up to those 1214 hour events. I really prefer the six hour long events, but I totally get your point. I think there's room for it all. And in the lifetime of a gravel cyclists, hopefully we all get the opportunity to push ourselves to something like dk 200 because I think it's just this huge monumental life milestone that you can take away from having achieved something like that. Oh, most definitely, man. I mean you, you talk about, you know, monumental like life achievements. I feel like my finish this year, while my slowest, possibly my worst finish ever, um, was the most rewarding. Um, because I got to earn the coveted gravel grail this year, which means I finished five, two hundreds of dirty cans. Uh, uh, I also struggled mightily with the heat this year and was showing signs of heat stroke at the last aid station at one 50. So, um, I was really pleased to get through this year and get that grail and, and not have to return again to do another 200 if I don't want to. Well, you were certainly not alone from all accounts. I can hear that people were struggling with that heat and it's hard enough an event as it is. You probably had an experience that was similar to sort of many of the mid packers and the tail end experience every year. Uh, possibly. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I passed so many people sitting under trees myself. I was under a tree at times fixing a couple of flats. Uh, so yeah, I mean the, it's funny Kansas, the weather always has a way of humbling folks and keeping you honest, whether it's, you know, the wind, whether it's the humidity, whether it's the heat, whether it's rain and mud. Um, mother nature always seems to have a, have a hand in how things shake out. Uh, out there in the Flint hills. Yeah. I imagine you got to try to control the things you can and just accept the things you can't in an event like that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I know how to sort of mitigate having had heat stroke a few times. I know how to, how to try to keep it at bay a little bit. So I had a, um, my pit was prepared for me when I came in at one 50 with ice and I was wearing sun sleeves, so we shoved ice bags onto my wrist cause that's one of the spots to bring your core temp down and know I saw my back and I had a frozen camelback, uh, waiting for me. And um, yeah. So they were able to sort of patch me up and push me along my way and I didn't lose too much time, you know, maybe three minutes or something like that. And that last pit, uh, but those last 50 miles were really, really difficult for me. So did you roll out of that last pit with the ice bags kind of just strapped to your body wherever they can fit? Yeah, so, uh, we put ice inside pantyhose and we tie them off so they make nice little porous ice bags that melt on you. And so we shoved two into the sleeves that I had on my arms right on my wrist. Uh, Maya camelback had a, a reservoir that had been frozen so the water would slowly melt and hopefully some of that cool heat would go through on my back then we had multiple cold towels and other ice bags shoved around my neck and down my jersey. And that was about it. A kick in the ass and get Outta here, let's, you know, knock out those last 50 miles. So that's, that's how I dealt with it. I over hydrated to be just because I knew that I needed to keep the fluids going in. Um, and I was using, um, our goos liquid rock cane drink mix because I have a hard time dealing with solids or gels in the heat. So I was going for liquid calories. Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you about, you know, in the things that you can control, nutrition is obviously one of them and it's an area where you have a lot of expertise from goo. Can you walk us through how you approach nutrition for a 200 miler on a hot day? Yeah, totally. I'd be happy to do that. So I mean nutrition, your nutrition plan, I mean everyone's nutrition plan is going to be unique to their system. So I just want to put that disclaimer out there right now that what works for me, you know, may not work for everybody. And also, uh, since we're talking about disclaimers that, you know, I am a goo employee. I've worked for them for six years in the office and I've been at Goo athlete for 14 years. So, obviously I'm very biased, but, uh, I wouldn't be using their products if they didn't work for me. Um, so for me, uh, you know, obviously like the week leading up to an event and you want to be hydrating, sleeping well, mitigating your stress as much as possible, you know, having with meals just so you're topping up all of your glycogen stores and, uh, making sure you have those, those energy reserves ready to be tapped into you come race day, uh, with an event like 30 cans of that starts at six in the morning. I don't typically eat breakfast cause that would mean I would have to get up at like three if I wanted to eat like a proper breakfast. So I think I got up at four 30 this year and had a half of a Bagel with a little bit of avocado on it and that was it. Um, my usual cup of coffee two just to, you know, get things rolling. Uh, and then as far as nutrition goes, I only had one, um, solid bit of food that would, could be considered, you know, normal food throughout the day. Um, and I relied on our rock cane gels, which have three times the branch chain amino acids are rock cane drink, uh, our electrolyte capsules to help with, um, the humidity and all the, you know, the potassium and sodium that I was losing. Um, and then our rock cane BCA capsules, which help with mental acuity and they buffer muscle fatigue. So I sort of, um, shoot for, uh, 200 to 250 calories per hour. And that could be a combination of, you know, Gel and the rock cane drink in my bottles. Um, maybe some of our choose, which is a chewable form of Goo, but I think I only had one sleeve of those, um, throughout. So I basically for 13 hours was only using our rock tane drink, which is 250 calories per bottle. And our rock cane gels. Uh, and one bit of solid I had with that mile 68 station, I had a, um, a Hawaiian done PB and j little, you know, little square. Uh, but that was about all I could stomach solid, you know, solid food wise. Um, and then it was just tons of water trying to, you know, eat every 20 to 30 minutes. But it was hard for me to keep track of time because at mile 40, somebody wrecked me out and it snapped my Garmin off my bike and I had to put it in my pocket so I couldn't look at time, distance or the turn by turn directions. So I was, I was riding blind actually for the whole day pretty much after mile 40, trying to stay in groups. And um, actually I tasked, uh, I don't know if you know Spencer Palisson who used to work for Velonews, but we're in a group for a long time and we've written a bunch together. So I asked him to tell me every 20 minutes, like 20 minutes has gone by and blessed Spencer's hard. He'd be like 20 minutes, dude. He would just shout that out when we were in the group. So I knew I could eat or drink. You see that 20 minutes theory. And so we did that for many miles out on the prairie. So I had a couple other little little curve balls thrown at me, um, during the day that sort of threw off my regular, uh, you know, fueling strategy. But I was all, all liquid calories and Gels, um, along with some castles. Um, and then like the old, I had low middle sip of flat coke at the one 58 station, but I was afraid that it was going to upset my stomach cause I was already dry even coming into that, coming in to that aid station. So I was worried about like too much sugar or anything like that, but it tasted really good. So I just a few sips of that to see if it could like, that'll may sound like a tad. That's interesting. I don't usually think about the liquid calories, but it makes sense to kind of take a little bit in there and then supplement it or really supplement your, your, your good nutrition, um, the gels with the liquid as well each hour. Yeah. I mean liquid calories are awesome, especially in the heat because they're super easy for your body to digest and process. Um, you're not getting, you know, like cotton mouth trying to chew on, you know, some form of solid food. Uh, I find it just works really, really well. I mean, case in point. So our raw cane drink was, I think I was one of the early testers of it, probably back in like 2009 or 10. Um, but our head of r and D who's a former Olympian, MAG DBU, she won western states, the big iconic a hundred mile run in 2015 she ran for 19 hours all on rock chain drinks. So 250 calories per hour. That was her plan. It was super hot that year and that got her through. So I know. And, and, and plus, like I said before, like I've, I've been using our products for, for, for over a decade. And so my system is really used to that and, and I have a routine. Um, so for folks out there who are listening, you know, needs, they need to get, pick and choose, find what products work for them, train with it, race with it, and refine their nutrition plan for their, for what works for their system. Uh, but for me, like I said, it's a, it's our gels and our drink and some of our castles and maybe if it's not so hot bits and pieces of, of solid food, but when it was as hot as it was out in Kansas, like solid food just does not sound palatable to me. Um, and so I just stuck with in liquids and gels. Yeah. I think one of the interesting things that writers need to sort of internalize is there is a hard cap as to the amount of calories your body can absorb in an hour. Yeah. So 350. Yeah. So you're going to sort of waiting an hour and a half to binge at an age station is really going to put you in the hurt locker pretty quickly. Yeah. Because then all of your blood is going to go right to your stomach to try to process that. You've shocked your system because you've just overloaded it. So, um, I have a, have a phrase that I actually stole from my friend Rebecca Rush. I call it the sip, sip, nibble, nibble, plan, right. You're just constantly taking in little the drip drip of nutrition, right? Whether it's your fluids or your gels or whatever it is, but little bits of it, you know, every 20 minutes, um, is way better than like you said, just throwing a whole bunch down. Um, and hoping your body can process that. Yeah. Slow you down. You know what I mean? At the same time, because you know, when you throw all that, all those calories into your gut, your soul, your body's going to try to process that, which means blood's not going to your muscles, which you need to, you know, keep peddling your bike and things can spiral out of control. So I like to adhere to the sip, sip, nibble, nibble, nutrition explained. Yeah. And to remind yourself, I think one of the tips that I employed when I was doing iron man was I just had an old Timex watch and I set an alarm for every 20 minutes to say just eat and drink. Remember that no matter what. Yeah, totally. Uh, you could do that. Yeah, I do that on my Garmin sometimes, but I'm like, I've been doing this for so long, it's just like ingrained in me. I also typically shove a couple of gels right in the cuff of my shorts. So they're like, you know, right there on my quads. So I sort of see them when I'm peddling. Um, it also makes, makes the gels like more liquidy cause they get heated up on your leg and it's just that reminder that, oh yeah, I've got a gel sitting there. I better eat that now. And then you know, I reload it. So I just constantly have these gels sitting on my legs while I'm pedaling that remind me to eat. It sounds silly, but it is a good visual reminder that you need to eat. Yeah, no, I think that's a great tip. And the other thing that I saw a lot of on bikes at dirty Kanza are the Bento style boxes. For sure. Those are, those are, those are awesome. I haven't found a Bento box though. That doesn't rub my legs when I get out of the saddle sometimes, you know, I find that, um, when I get out of saddle, my legs will hit that. So I don't typically ride with the Bento box. But that's a great, that's a great tip too. You know, I wear a camel, that chase vest, which has stowage right on the front chest straps. So your food is right there on your chest too, which is a nice reminder to eat and you can segment it, you know? So like for me, I'm kind of Geeky or I have these little systems that just keep things square for me when I'm not thinking right. Like the right side of my chest is, is like all gels. The left side of my chest is like chews and maybe a bar, which I had bars in all of my chase vest, but I never touched a bar for 13 hours. Um, so there's just little things and like speaking of Geeky things, I do like aisle my rock cane bottle, which is it, which is my drink is always on the is is always on the cage. That's on my seat tube. So I don't even have to think. I know I reached down to the my seat tube cage that that is my calories waters on the down tube, you know, just little systems that I have in place that have worked for me that kind of keep things straight. Yeah. I think they're so important. I mean, I failed to be able to do simple math eight hours into an event. So just sort of having everything where it needs to be, so I don't have to think getting, getting that reminder that it's time to eat and drink and knowing exactly where to grab. It's just one of those things that you can control, you can train for that's gonna make you more effective. Yeah, exactly. And, and, and, and at the end of the day it's less thinking that you have to do because I kind of go into, I call it sort of robot mode where I turn off all my non essential functions with me and it's really like, I don't think about too much, I'm just paddling, focusing on my breathing, my eating and having, you know, my food where I know it exactly needs to be is one less thing I have to think about. I reach into this pocket, that Gel is going to come out, I reach into that pocket, you know, maybe something solids gonna come out. I grabbed that bottle. I know it has calories. Like just, yeah, it just makes it more, it's like, I dunno, simpler. Um, when like you say you're not thinking straight after eight, 10, 12, whatever hours. Yeah, absolutely. Well, transitioning a little bit, I've, I've wanted to talk to you, I saw you down at seawater and I know you had the opportunity to ride the nine or full suspension bike down there and spend some time on it here in Marin county. I'm curious to, to sure. To just get your thoughts about suspension in general and where we're going to see it. Is it going to start having an effect in the racing? Will we start seeing pro's moved to suspension simply because it's faster. You spent a lot of time on a lot of different parts, different types of equipment. What are your thoughts about suspension in the gravel ravel game? Um, well, so just a couple of disclaimers here. Just so you know, everybody's clear. I am sponsored by Laos, which is the Icelandic company that has pioneered, you know, the front suspension fork of sorts for gravel bikes. And they have, uh, they have, um, a bike also specifically designed for gravel. And yes, a niner, um, is about to release MCR, the magic carpet ride, which is a full suspension gravel bike, uh, with a fox front fork that has about 40 millimeters of Daphne and the rear is about 50. Um, so I've been a huge fan of, of the Laos front fork, um, since I got introduced to it probably about three years ago. It was a game changer, um, on many, many levels. I mean, probably the most beneficial one is that it dampens, you know, the impact that your hands, your shoulders, your upper body is taking. Um, when you're rotting, you know, for 10, 12, 13 hours over the slinky hills in, in, in Kansas. So it keeps your upper body fresher, um, less fatigue. You're also able to corner descend better because you're not getting bounced around so much in the front end. You, you can track better with, with the front fork and not four cows, about 30 to 40 millimeters of dampening. Um, the biggest thing I noticed with riding the magic carpet ride is the descending, I mean, you can, you can rip the dissents on a, on a full set suspension, gravel bike for sure. Um, and then the dampening effects too, just as an aging endurance athlete, like anything that can take the edge off the terrain, that'll allow my body to be fresher over 200 miles or whatever the distance is, you know? Yes, please. I'll take that. Uh, you know, I don't need to get, you know, smashed by a really hard stiff light bike. Um, at this point in my career. So I think you're gonna start seeing more, um, suspension bits, uh, enter into gravel. I think you're already starting to see it with some, you know, folks doing like envy doing specific gravel bars that maybe have a little bit of, I have those new g gravel bars that have a little bit of, you know, dampening in, in the way that they have done the carbon. We've, I think, uh, Louth has a similar bar, uh, the whole full suspension thing. I think nine are sort of on the front end of that. Um, we'll just have to see how well it goes. Um, I've been enjoying the magic carpet ride for sure. Uh, I noticed a huge difference like when you're trying to motor through really chunky stuff, it just, it just takes the edge off. You reminds me of when you see a Modo rider like ripping through like the woopty whoop sections and they're just like skimming across the top of all those bumps. I feel like, um, you hit a certain speed on the magic carpet ride and it does the same thing with chunky terrain. You can just really sort of blast through it at a nice high frequency and not get bounced around all over the place. And I had a few opportunities to sort of test that on some group rides and noticed a huge difference. Um, you know, for full disclosure, I've only probably put three to 400 miles on that bike. Uh, and so I'm looking forward to getting some more miles on it, um, later this summer. Yeah. It'll be interesting choice for consumers to try to figure out like, am I really, is that the bike for me or am I looking for something that's more on road and off road that can do fairly capable off road but can also, you know, be my road touring bike or whatever. True. Um, so then maybe, you know, a traditional bravo bike would just allow front fork is, is the option for them because that front fork will allow you to, you know, to get off road. Yeah. I think a lot of it will be dependent upon what people, you know, riding tendencies are on and what they're looking to do. But, uh, the magic carpet ride is awesome for just taken away a lot of the, the, the vibrations and the big hits that you take sometimes when riding on gravel roads for hundreds of miles. Yeah. It was interesting when I interviewed Louth they were talking about riding it on the roads and I couldn't help but think about some of those roads in Sonoma county were having a little bit of front suspension might be helpful for sure. Yeah, it makes a huge difference and you know, there's not a huge weight penalty. I think that what you gain in, you know, comfort and uh, speed and cornering and stuff like that outweighs any weight, this advantage that that fork might have. Interesting. Well, I know you've got a busy calendar coming up and a bunch of great gravel events. One of the ones I want to highlight now, it was on a recent episode of the gravel ride podcast was the adventure ride revival ride and Marin, Tom boss mentioned your name and said, hey, if it wasn't for Uri, we really wouldn't have been thinking about this at this year. So I'm excited. What's going on with that ride. Oh, that was so I'm blushing. That was so nice to Tom boss. Thank you, Tom. I've known Tom for a long time. That's awesome. Well, adventure arrival is a collaborative event between Moran County Bicycle Coalition and the nor cal high school league, which my wife is the EDF and both both programs have teen trail stewardship programs that they are, uh, promoting. And one of the best things about this ride is that the registration fees are going to go help support these, uh, team trail stewardship programs so that we're able to develop the next generation of stewards who are going to be maintaining, hopefully creating new trails. Particularly, you know, in a zone like Marin where, um, trail access trail creation is, um, kind of a contentious, you know, topic at times with folks. Um, and so we came together. A group of us, uh, is working closely with, uh, Matt Adams, one of the owners of Mike Spikes. They're a huge supporter of this event. We put together really rad route that is, uh, incorporates a little bit of pavements and fire road, maybe a little bit of single track, um, that highlights some really cool zones in Marin. Uh, and it's going to be based out of Fairfax. It's September 7th. Uh, we'll have great food, beer, music, uh, but people can know that like their registration dollars are going to benefit, uh, you know, things that will help you know, our future as cyclists. Uh, as people who enjoy playing in the outdoors. And, you know, it's possibly, you know, creating, you know, like kids that might go work for, you know, the park system or you know, other groups that are all about trail advocacy. So I'm really excited to be a part of this event. So goo will be one of the nutrition sponsors, but it's super fun working with passionate folks like Tom and Mike and my wife and Dana and other folks, um, to, to, to bring an event like this to life. Cause it's the first of its kind in Mirena gravel, you know, ride kind of, I wouldn't call it a race per se. Um, but yeah, it's going to be a great day. September 7th, if you haven't signed up do it people. Yeah, definitely. I'm excited about it being obviously here in mill valley and in Moran County. I'm really excited to get athletes from other parts of the bay area and hopefully other parts of the country to come in and sample what we have because I do think it's an amazing area and having covered the scene for, you know, as long as I have, I get jealous that other parts of the country have these marquee events and we've yet to kind of establish one in Marin county. Yeah, it's true. You know, it's tough. I mean, we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, but work that also sort of, um, you know, restricts what we can do too because there's so much private land and there's so many restrictions on who can use what trail and this and that. Whereas, you know, you look at somewhere like the Flint hills of Kansas and you have, you know, this grid network of thousands of miles, right, of, of empty gravel roads. You know, you look at Rebecca's private, Idaho's same sort of deal. Uh, so yeah, it is cool that we're finally able to pull something like this together, get all the right permits, the permission. That's where, you know, Tom's expertise comes in, you know, having worked for years with, with advocacy and other groups and stuff like that. So yeah. It's cool. Yeah. Hopefully we sell it out and it's an event that, um, continues to grow in, in years to come. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Tom was describing how he, I think he had to work with three different land ownership organizations to get the root knocked out this year, which I mean, for the average race promoter would probably be prohibitive to even pull it off for sure. And then, you know, and then there's certain groups that get their noses bent, you know, that were doing this or they weren't involved. And it, yeah, you know, it can be complicated, but, uh, hopefully at the end of the day people see that this is all about the kids really, um, and our future and creating stewards that we'll want to protect in and, you know, expand the growth of, of trail access here in Marin and maybe that will ripple out into other parts of, of the country too. Um, so yeah, stoke for adventure revival on September 7th. Yeah. Well thanks for all the time today. Your, I appreciate it. I appreciate your years of advocacy and participation in the gravel community. You've really been a, just sort of a good steward for the gravel brand, if you will. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I was an accidental, uh, grappled, devote t I mean really like I said, 2013 I had no idea what I was getting into when I went out until my first 30 cans have no clue whatsoever. I went out there because we were [inaudible] as a sponsor, um, to check it out and I fell in love with it. So, um, yeah, I'm proud to be part of the crew that's helping push it here in California and you know, also seeing northern California athletes like Amedee, Rockwell, like Alison Tetrick a do really well at, you know, these iconic events like dirty cans and stuff like that. Makes me really proud. Let's, let's keep, let's keep singing. It's thanks and praises. Yeah, absolutely. Well good luck and everything you've got upcoming and if I don't see you before I'll definitely see you in September at a venture or revival. Awesome. Thanks Craig. Been great chatting with you. Big thanks again to Yuri for coming on the podcast this week. Yuri has been an amazing advocate for the sport of gravel cycling and he's always been super approachable. So when you find them out there in an event, go up and give him a high five. I don't know about you, but I took away some really helpful tips from Yuri this week in terms of how to handle the nutrition for long events. The value of having a system for where you put things. So you just don't have to think and the value of having a timer to remind you to eat and drink and to know what you're going to eat and drink. I think all of these things add up and they're in the category of things you can control when preparing for a big event. So that's it for this week. Big thanks to our sponsor thesis spike for the Tech Corner, and another reminder to just hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app as we're doing a bit of planning for the upcoming year, and we'd like to know how many of you are out there listening. As always, feel free to hit me up on Instagram or Facebook or shoot me an email. craig@thegravelride.bike. We look forward to hearing from you. Until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.

Guess who's back!? Back again. Surprise episode out of left field. Will our heroes be back for good? or will they get lost in the cosmos. Find out about E3 excitement, Halo nostalgia, Video games, Drunken Halo death, and MORE!! Follow on FB.com/pigspod *Thanks Craig for recording/editing the audio!

Friend of the show Craig Cohen recently had the opportunity to speak with CJ Ramone and wanted you all to hear it. Thanks Craig! Check out CJ's new solo album The Holy Spell that comes out next week.  https://fatwreck.com/products/the-holy-spell  https://cjramone.bandcamp.com/album/the-holy-spell

Craig is on with Jack Heath as they talked about the presidential candidate who is trying to fend off the unemployment riots. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles  --- Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 02/25/2019 Presidential Candidate And Unemployment Riots Craig Peterson 0:00 Good morning, everybody. Very, very busy putting together all of this course material. It is really kind of fun. And it's fun helping out all of these people who signed up. We're covering a bunch of things. This last weekend. We spent the whole weekend and module last week, but in together a whole set of modules real, it's one module, but it's multiple sections in the module on securing Windows devices, Macintosh devices, mobile devices, using your free tools and installing the top notch security tools, what you should use and when you should use it. So it's been a whole lot of fun. And no, we're not taking any more people into this class right now. But it's fun. I'm feeling alive. Again, this is really quite neat. A lot of work but you know, it is a whole lot of fun as well. So this morning I was on with Mr. Jack Heath, and we had a good little chat and we took a political angle to this whole presidential race and technology and what is happening out there hearing what's happening with stop and shop here in New England, which is a New England grocery store. Is this going to impact the whole country? Again, something here in New England getting pushed out, we got a presidential candidate and Volleyed. This is really something so here we go with Mr. Heath. Jack Heath 1:30 Alright, joining us now on the Auto Fair listener lines. Our regular contributor. Our Tech Talk guy, Craig Peterson joins us in the Auto Fair listener lines. Good morning, Craig. Craig 1:37 Hey, good morning. I don't know Jack if you heard about this 44 year old democrat who's running for president. And he's got a real interesting technology angle to his campaign. He's trying to fend off what he's calling the unemployment riots of that he says are on the way he said, we're in the middle of the third inning of the greatest economic and technology shift in human history is named to Andrew Yang. And he brings up an interesting point about jobs and technology and automation and where everything is going. He's trying to provide a soft landing for truckers and manufacturing workers who he believes are going to be out of work, frankly, pretty soon here. Jack. Jack 2:21 It's interesting you say that Craig early early morning I was listening and watching or reading a story that's I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe, stop and shop unionized workers are potentially looking at a strike because they are in the middle of a deal. But one of the workers interviewed when asked what's their beef because they are I guess, in the retail grocery world, some of the higher paid but for example, deli workers and others, they're talking about that Stop and Shop and baggers and you know, cashiers there's so much replacement with technology, that's one reason why they're looking at possibly striking that they're, they're sort of taking their jobs and replace it with technology. Justin 3:03 I don't use those automatic checkouts. Because I feel like it's eventually that's all there will be. And if you know, I don't like if I'm running my own groceries out, you know, do I get a check at the end of the week? You know, do I get to fill out a W two? What's going on there? Jack 3:15 No, I it's funny. I liked I like to go through the human part. But But that's an interesting thing. So this person saying that we're going to see a lot of displacement and that's been talked about. Craig 3:26 Yeah, and but you know, it's always been talked about. We were worried about what would happen if all the people took care of the horses once the horseless carriage came in, but you know, Justin, ultimately, where this is going and Jack and everybody is you're not going to check out yourself. You're just going to walk around the store, pull things off the shelf and walk out of the store, because it's all going to be automated. We are. Jack Unknown 3:48 That's what Amazon's trying to do, right. Craig 3:50 Yeah, exactly. And we're talking about nearly 10,000 of the 15,000 members of the Union there at Stop and Shop devoted to the would strike because of that. So it's a difficult thing. We've always had this with new technology. I don't think it's going away. And frankly, Jack, I think it's interesting that it's entered into the whole presidential race.  Jack 4:14  Interesting. All right. Well, and you know, the other thing I was thinking of you on this morning, Craig Peterson with Tech Talk is, you know, again, another big another big story is Karen Curtis with a local news talk, radio station and Florida pelt. Palm Beach has joined us saying for Robert Kraft, the Patriots owner, it's a misdemeanor in Florida what he's charged with, but it's a PR nightmare. And the social media coming out of this on Friday over the weekend. And I looked at some of the Florida, the Jupiter and that area, new sites. The social media is where the real fire comes from these stories. Craig 4:48 it does in it. And that's impossible to crouch. It doesn't matter how rich you are, you know, you can't go pay off some local reporter to try and keep it down or maybe work with the local police department. Once that word gets out. Jack on the social media, there's a lot of people that just love to tear other people down. There's no way to stop it. But you know it it is a small misdemeanor, frankly, it's illegal, it's a crime, etc, etc. But normally, something like this would not get a whole lot of attention. You know, you mentioned earlier that the PR is where he's really going to get nailed here. But when it comes to social media, it doesn't matter. You know, we've heard just a rumor of a rumor and it spreads across the country versus the old days where it took something really substantial before there. There was much talk in the media. Jack 5:40 Before the newspaper was read are delivered. might have been a few weeks before you'd hear something or a few days now. It's a few seconds. Thank you, Craig Peterson Tech Talk. http://CraigPeterson/.om. Thanks Craig. Craig 5:52 Thanks, Jack. Craig 5:53 All right. That's it for today. I will be back tomorrow with of course, Jim Polito. I always have so much fun on with him, and will will also on Wednesday. Be back with our friends in Maine. And then Thursday and Friday. I've been trying to do my Security Thing podcasts. But I'm so busy with this course. I've had a little bit of trouble with that. But I'm going to really try and do it this week as well. And today if you are an FBI Infragard member I have webinar for you this afternoon. So Craig's keeping busy plus I was approached by a CEO group here, mastermind group of some pretty big companies to speak to them, maybe do a half a day for them on some of the security stops. I gotta get a proposal together for that and more. Anyhow, I will talk to you guys tomorrow. Always make time for this. I think it's important. So take care. Bye bye. --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Message Input: Message #techtalk Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Rodeo Adventure Labs Website Trail Donkey 3.0 A Slow Company Blog Post Rodeo Adventure Labs Instagram The Gravel Ride Instagram Bike Index: Free Bicycle Registration Welcome to the show today. Thanks Craig. I'm excited to be here. I'm really stoked to get into a little bit more about Rodeo Adventure Labs and the new Traildonkey because I think it's a really exciting looking bike and the company has a really interested in the background. I'm excited to get our listeners to learn a little bit more about what you guys are doing. Cool. Yeah. Look forward to giving a little bit of background and explaining what we're all about that for a little bit of context. What's your background as a cyclist? Aside from the writing around the kindergarten. I'm sorry, the, the neighborhood, you know, all the way back until I can't even remember. I started getting really into cycling and mountain biking probably in about junior high school. Uh, and when would that have been? The nineties, I guess the early nineties. And right about then I think mountain biking was sort of coming into the mainstream a lot more. It may have been a big thing before then, but I was only just now old enough to sort of do it on my own. So I had a paper route all my brothers and I did and we would deliver newspapers on our mountain bikes and then immediately spend all of the proceeds of our paper routes on our mountain bikes. And we just, you know, I started with a fully rigid giant. Oh Gosh, I can't even remember the model. It had like marbleized splatter paint and in really, really low end Shimano on it in part by part. I just started buying handlebars shifters do railers cranks wheels. I just became really obsessed with the bike, was super fun. I wanted to upgrade it. And then I wanted to get into racing. Um, we had, I lived in Washington state near Portland, Oregon. There's a series of mountain bike races on Mount Hood, uh, that were downhill races. And back then downhill was very different than the modern day version of downhill racing. It was more like ride your bike, your mountain bike, maybe even fully rigid mountain bike down a fire road as fast as you can. And it was, it was Kinda like a fitness thing and it took a little bit of guts, but it wasn't anywhere near, you know, drops skill, bigger things that you see nowadays. So yeah, I, I started racing downhill. Did, you know as a junior did some NORBA a national races when I could get my parents to drive me out there. We used to, my dad used to drive us up into the hills in the logging roads in Washington and Oregon in our van, me and my brothers and he was just drive us to the top of the mountain and we would bomb the fire roads, logging roads all the way down to the bottom, maybe pick us up and shuttle us back up to the top again. And I just love mountain biking. And then suspension, you know, caught on Meg, 10 meg 21 and then full suspension and like, you know, I got, you know, I just kept iterating with the sport. Uh, I was never really that great at it, like once, towards the end of when I was mountain bike racing, the sport started getting more moto and I realized like, I can't get big air, I can't do big drops, I'm scared, uh, and I think I throttled back a little bit and then I took a break for awhile where the job became more important. And uh, I moved to La around 2000 and is at the time I was in Hollywood it was difficult to mountain bike in la because you had to drive for a while just to even get to the mountains. Uh, so for there there was a pause and a. and then I actually saw eco challenge on TV. I don't know if you're married eco challenge. It just blew my mind that people were just just, you know, seven days in the middle of nowhere. I'm crossing, you know, islands somewhere off in the South Pacific. And I thought that looks like a really fun sport. I know I can at least ride a mountain bike pretty well. So I, I kinda got into that sport more than just mountain biking by itself and it was big in California. There were know sprint level all the way up to expedition level, um, adventure races happening quite often in that state. So that got me back into the sport and got me a Kinda a motivated to get back out on the bike and then learn how to trail run and paddle and rock climb and all the other things. Um, I did that for awhile, uh, in, in cycling was always the best discipline for me when I was out adventure racing. And then, uh, eventually I kind of realized like it's just really difficult to be good at three to five sports, uh, and I, and it was also again, difficult to get to the good mountain biking in California for me living in sort of right in the middle of Hollywood. So I actually bought a cross bike when I lived in La and I thought, well I don't want to be a roadie for sure because roadies are super lame and I'm definitely not wearing Lycra and um, but if I get a cross bike then it's not a road bike and it's still kind of cool. So I bought a cross bike, puts like tires on it and immediately started doing road road group rides with a bunch of people and realize that the sport wasn't laying. I had a lot of fun. There's a lot of comradery there and I could do it from my doorstep instead of no driving for 45 minutes or an hour, whatever it took to get across the San Fernando Valley to the Saint Gabriel's to the Santa Monica Mountains. Um, and you know, for awhile it was just me on the cross bike with slicks. And then finally I kind of upped the ante to get a real road bike. I'm in my mind was just blown and how fast they were and how efficient they were. And I just kind of shelved the mountain bike. I think logistically it just wasn't easy to do a for a long time. It just sat there and I did a little bit of still continued mountain biking in Orange County with friends, but we got really into road biking and then got into road racing and racing and I loved all of it. It was like this whole new thing to learn how to do and you definitely went fast and it was definitely like a dog fight and uh, especially headed, headed back up to Oregon and Washington and got into more. Cross racing is just such a big deal up there and so much fun and, you know, still road competitive road racing for a long time. I only really ever just kinda got up to the acat three and I, I don't think I ever really had any aspirations beyond that with life getting increasingly complex and how many kids but enjoyed competing a lot. Uh, and uh, started sort of exploring be roads and logging roads on my cross bike while I was there because I lived right at the foothills where the cascades sort of lift up and uh, never really got into it that much. It was always just a bit of a novelty if I was cross training you're training for a cycle cross that would hit some local local parks and hit the single track trails. How a lot of fun doing that. Then we moved out here to Colorado just for really a change of weather and scenery. Um, and it was just back to just road racing. Like I had my best road racing ears ever out here when we moved to Colorado in 2011 and I train harder and more disciplined than I had ever done it. And then, um, I guess things started just getting too serious in my local team, even though we were amateurs, were really structured, had like recruiting policies and in minimum race policies and started to feel a little bit too, you know, rule it too many rules for an amateur sport that was supposed to be fun. Uh, and through a series of events, um, decided to part ways with that team, uh, and that's about when Rodeo started. Uh, and about that time we were just continuing to play around on our cross bikes more and more aggressively. So that was 2014 and um, and yeah, I guess that kind of brings, brings us to the genesis of Rodeo labs. That's a great overview. It's amazing how we were living parallel lives because I came into the sport of mountain biking with a similarly paint speckled trex 7,000 model. Yes. In about 1989. And I remember my first mountain bike race, I signed up for all disciplines on that plan. So I rode observed trials, Downhill slalom and cross country because I figured that's what you do if you were attending a race weekend. Yeah, yeah. Oh Man. I remember dual slalom, which is that even a thing anymore? I don't know. I think it is. I think it is. And then it was fun. Yeah. That was a great sport. I was never good at it by the way. Yeah, me neither. Like clear. I clearly like cross country and the technical stuff was really my forte, not going super fast at all and I jumped. I like you jumped into the road racing scene. Not as much it sounds like as you did and actually later got into adventure racing scene. Oh cool. Do you have small. We were out there at the same time. Yeah. I tended to race in northern California, which was a lot of fun, but to your point it was really eye opening just to the notion of going out for an adventurous experience. Yeah, and I think that for me is what has resonated so much about the gravel scene because it became less so about beating the guy next to you and it became more about the adventure and much like those early days of mountain bike racing, you went out there to explore new terrain, so the fact that you got in a car and someone was putting on a race three hours away in a place you'd never ride it, never written before was just this great opportunity to go explore. Yeah, I, I, I feel like the adventure isn't, was probably responsible for a lot of my mindset nowadays. I just remember like we did a race in Downieville, um, before I knew that Downieville was even a thing. Um, and I just remember one night we were on this kind of like single track trail along kind of a knife edge ridge. I don't even know where it was. I'd love to go back and find it in a full moon and I'm hiking trail running, whatever it was with my team and I just thought I wish cameras, digital cameras were good enough to capture this moment, which, you know, if you cut cut to now they are. But even back then I wanted to, I was seeing all these places that adventure racing would take you that, that weren't on the normal beaten path and thinking like, how can we bring this, how can I bring this back and show people what I saw while I was out there. I just couldn't believe what's out there that you would never see if you didn't have a reason to go. So that got that. That was a formative sport and a, you know, whatever it was, three to five years of adventure racing definitely reshaped how I think. So having all those options, variances is a long way from launching here on bike company. How did read a of adventure labs come about? Uh, well. So when, when I left the team that I was racing with the road road and I guess cross racing team that I was racing it didn't really know what I wanted to do next. Like should I just join another road racing team and kind of keep doing what I was doing and I think I just realized like I had been on instagram for a year or two or three by then and I was just kinda watching how like a lot of the local team mentality was race locally. Go try and find a bank to sponsor you are a dentist office or a car, a car dealership, uh, and then put their logo on the Jersey and then try and coax your friends and family to show up and watch a race. And it seemed, it felt small. It's not bad. I get it like I loved, I loved it at the time, but when I was getting into social media I realized like we can cyclist can find each other on here and talk to each other and we can, I guess, interact and build a community here. And I think I realized like we could start our own amateur team. That's what Rodeo started out as, was just a big group of people who wanted to ride bikes together without having any rules. No recruiting policies, no race minimum snow. You have to ride a road bike or a cross bike or mountain bike. It was like anybody who wants to wear wear this Jersey anywhere you are in the world. Um, I put up a website about a, a, you know, a Wordpress template and wrote some core values and the about page just like, this is literally only going to be fun and that's enough. That's enough reason to be here is just to have fun and yes, take a ton of pictures and show other people what we're doing. And that was it. That was, that was all Rodeo was supposed to be. It was kind of like, if we could get 10, 10 of my buddies to do it than we would have enough people to get kits made a so we could all be on the same team, but there is no membership fees or even an official roster. It was just really loose knit, let's just go have fun on bikes, uh, any way that we want and there's no right or wrong way to do it. Uh, so I thought it would be small and I thought it would just be us, but I knew we could at least reach a lot of people with what we were doing because of essentially really instagram and, you know, I guess having a website and a blog, but it just, it just blew up and took over my entire life. Like people would write long emails saying they really loved what we were about. And finally somebody saw the sport the same way they did it. And why did it need to be so serious? I was really caught off guard by that because we weren't really recruiting like the guy in Belgium. Uh, but, but he wrote us and said, can I be on Rodeo? And of course I just said, sure. Like, yeah, I guess I guess to be on our team it just means you own ar kit, uh, so uh, or even if you don't and you just want to like share photos with us or write something on our website, you can be one of us to like, I don't really need to sell you a kit, but we sold a lot of kits that year for, for someone who had no real goal or plan for what we were doing and I think it was like 350 kits or some number, which blew my mind. I realized like, wow, there's this thing here. Um, and, and I came from a, like a design and branding and advertising background. And I think when I put the site up it all looked bigger and more organized and professional than it was. And I think people kind of expected it to be more than it was. So they took us seriously and like rodeos doing is really interesting. We want to be in part of it. So all of a sudden there's a bunch of people around the world wearing our kits and stoked on what we're doing and you know, we're just taking a lot of pictures and our audience is growing and we're having a lot of fun, but it started to take like 20 hours a week or 30 hours a week. I'm like, just answering emails, talking to people, going riding, taking pictures, making a video, whatever it was. Um, it was, it was too much to just be a hobby at that point. You know, after a few months I realized this is eventually going to take over my life and either this is just a really irresponsible hobby or it needs to end up going somewhere. Um, so I think I just started to think about if it's going to be more than a hobby than what is it. Um, and I had started working on the trail donkey right when rodeo launched. Uh, I just, you know, we could kind of maxed out what we could do on a cross bike. We were taking him to all the local mountain bike trails, the really technical trails that are pretty challenging I think, and we were writing all of it and doing it on cross bikes, but, but you know what, that, that 32 to three or cassette isn't, isn't really ideal for getting up a 25, 30 percent single track trail and cannot leave her brakes are not good for descending and 32 millimeter cross tires aren't, are not compliant enough, don't have enough grip. Um, all of these constraints started to crop up and I, I realized like I want to just, I want a different bike that I have. It's not very different than what I have, but it doesn't, I don't know. It doesn't exist in the way that I want it to. And, and I think maybe I could have looked around and found somebody making something like I wanted. But having just launched Rodeo and decided like I don't want to join another team. I just want to make my own. And, and I, I think I just decided like, I don't want to buy somebody else's bike if it exists. I just want to make my own. So I found a completely generic Chinese frame, pretty sure it was on Ali Baba and, and said, Mike, can you modify this frame and like add ports for a dropper posts and, and um, and, and then paint it like our kit, you know, so I mocked up the paint and then I needed a name. Uh, so I, I, I was Kinda, I thought like this needs to be self deprecating, like we need to have a sense of humor with everything that we're doing here because it's not that serious. We're talking about adults doing amateur sports in their free time. So my inspiration was just the guide donkeys that you see in the grand canyon that either carry gear or people kind of up and down those single track cliffside side trails. Uh, and you know, they're just trail donkeys and I thought that's kind of our bike. Like I get that it's not a good mountain bike or a good road bike or a good anything. It's just like this really humble little animal that gets you to the top or the bottom of the trail reliably. So I made it for me, I'm, I made one, uh, and then I told my friends that I was working on it and for other people, you know, in the inner circle wanted one. So I said, all right, hold up, we'll just make five. So we did five and then we just, we just wrote them for the 2014. We just wrote them a lot and took a lot of pictures and we were showing people everything about what we were doing. Like here's this frame we found we're going to paint it, here's how we're going to build it up. And then I was like, I'm going to take it to a mountain bike race. So I wrote, you know, a story about how that went and it was all very all on the table. Like I didn't, I wanted people to know, like the successes and the failures of what we were trying to do, which was essentially just have fun and experiment. And people started asking if they could buy them. And uh, and definitely the answer was no because I was like, I'm not starting a bike company with a generic Chinese frame and, you know, a paint job, like I just didn't want to be a sticker company. I didn't want to be at decal company that, you know, it, it just doesn't feel authentic to me. So, so I had no interest. I had a good job and a good career and I didn't. I knew that like starting a bike company was going to end in, you know, financial disaster, uh, because even the good, you know, a lot of really good cool by companies that I admire don't make it. And that to me it was just a word of caution about, you know, even if you do this you're probably going to fail. So maybe maybe don't do it, just do it because it's fun. But once you get to 20 or 30 hours a week and it's just eating your life and you're having a ton of fun, you start to think. And then people are asking, you know repeatedly if they can buy it and you're like, maybe maybe. I started a team, but maybe we accidentally made a brand and a company and I can do this for a living instead of it being a hobby. Uh, so there was this really big pivotal month or two where I sat down with sort of business type friends and said, look at what it looked, a lot of breakfasts and lunches and coffees of liquid. Look what's happened with Rodeo and here's where it is. And I either need to put the brakes on it and kind of like, not kill it, but just like, you know, get back to the fact that I'm a grown adult with a job or I need or I need to like push all the way into it and turn it into my job, uh, to justify being able to do it as much as I was spending doing it. So everybody said like, wow, it looks like you've really built something special in. You build something people are paying attention to and you don't even have anything you know you're trying to sell. And when you're starting a company, let's just say we had come out of nowhere with a bike, getting people to pay attention to the bike probably would have been a little bit difficult or a product, but we had a culture and a community and the story. And then we also had this bike over here and I think I, I think I thought I'd done the hard part actually, of creating something that people are interested in. And um, now they just want to buy it. So it seems like I have a better chance of success of this because there's already so much interest. So we decided to go for it. Um, we being my wife who gave me her support and understood that the chances of failure were really high. Uh, she just said, you know, if you don't do this, you're going to always wonder, like, if you could have done it, uh, and if you shut it down, you're always going to be kind of disappointed that you didn't take the risk to try and will probably fail. But in two or three years you can back to your career. You know, I could probably pick up the pieces and do what I was doing. So is a good time of my life to have like a career wipe out and still be able to recover. So, um, so we went, I went for it and we started developing, you know, trail down to. But I, you know, again, going back to that, like I'm not putting stickers on other people's stuff. I really want to own what we sell. So we started from scratch and redesigned the entire bike, which by the way, I didn't know anything about that process but I, I, I just networked and connected with people who did and told them the bike that I wanted to build. Um, and we've made, you know, a list of goals and specs and functionality and geometry and all the other things about this is what a trail donkey, this is what I want the trailer to be. You tell me if I can't do any of this stuff and I'll push back because. And we developed a really good rapport with a core group of designers and engineers and manufacturer and took 18 months to, you know, develop the bike. But in the meantime I kept doing my day job. Uh, that was where income came from. Rodeo was not self self supporting until probably 2017. Uh, so there was an intermediate period where you're kind of in this weird, I still do this for a living, but I'm starting a business over here. I'm trying to launch this bike in this brand. Uh, so that, that kind of took me through, takes us through the, just the basic development of the bike and turning a team just to a fun party team and do a brand. What did that, that's amazing journey just from an entrepreneurial perspective and, and I just sort of hit it at the right time where you could take inputs from social media channels and have this wonderful experience of bringing like minded individuals from around the world around this basic community that riding your bike off road and getting dirty is fun. And this is really cool story. I like that suit you. It sounds like you've come to 2017 at this point and you've taken a lot of inputs and notes about your original trail donkey and put it into trail donkey to when you ultimately had that design baked. Did you go out there and accept preorders from the community at that point or did you bring some inventory in first? No. Well, so, you know, there's no massive pile of capital behind any of this. Uh, so, you know, our first production run was 25 frame sets and I thought if we can pre sale, you know, a certain number of those, it'll pay for the whole order. Um, because I didn't have the money to pay for all of the trip. I had paid for tooling, which is absurdly expensive and all of the engineering and testing. But okay, now it's time to go into production and I don't have money sitting there. So, so, you know, I don't know how many followers we had on instagram and online at that point, but let's just say it was 5,000 people, you know, we said, all right, here's this bike that you've watched. You know, it went from not existing at all, all the way we showed them the prototypes and all of the rides that we were doing on it. And, and you know, we took it kind of all over, you know, we took it to Moab and white rim and slick rock and Belgium and Perrier Bay. And um, as just a part of our story as much as it was testing the bike out and some people knew what the bike was and they saw it a long time before it was finished. And so finally I said, all right, this is it. We're taking preorders. And then you just sit there and you wait and you're like, is anyone going to buy this bike? Because a bunch of people, as you know, online will be like, oh my goodness, got a habit that things so beautiful that things fire and then, but who's really going to open their wallet and buy a bike from a company that has no history and no, like, you know, street cred, you know, like, are we going to be around next year? Do we have a warranty? But people did, enough people did, you know, I think there were probably like 15 or 20 people that just stepped up straight out of the blue, you know, some of who I knew and some I didn't know at all and just just said, yeah, I'm in. I'm in for a two point. Oh. And then, you know, uh, it was so grassroots. I had a local shop that I worked with a elevation in Denver. They, you know, they were as much my advisors as they were people that I was hiring to build the bikes. And it was like, all right, we've got frames coming in, uh, I need to figure out a system for inventory and build sheets and parts tracking. Uh, and it was not elegant at all behind the scenes. Like I really worked hard to be careful and it's very important to me to deliver what I was promising people. But learning how, again, I didn't come from the industry. I didn't really know any of that at the very beginning. Any of how a bike gets created and then assembled, parts are accounted for. All of that had to be created on the fly as we went. So we learned as we went. But you know, the, the frame showed up. We had parts, uh, we build bikes, we delivered them. And I think the one thing I never doubted was that the bike was good because, you know, I'm not a professional writer, but I'm, I guess I'm pretty good at riding bikes and I wrote this thing for almost two years before anybody could have one. And I just trusted my instincts that, yeah, we built a good bite and if we can get these things, you know, designed, engineered, manufactured, tested, landed, built correctly when people finally get the bike, I think they're going to like it when people did. Uh, and we, you know, we sold all of the bikes that we made a and then we sold out and then we realized we should have been making more. Um, and so, you know, there was tension go on availability, you know, there's no debt involved in Rodeo. We don't have bank loans and financing, uh, we just do things, cashflow. We grow with the profits that we made on the last round or whatever. So you know, we took the profits from the first round and frames and ordered the second round of phrase and told people, yeah, you know what, it's September and you can't get your bike until December, but we've got, you know, we're going to make more. Uh, and it was just, I guess a repeating cycle and people trusting us that we were going to make them a good bike and take care of them. And you know, a lot of the earliest customers of our bikes, you know, I don't know them super well, some of them, but I would consider them all like family in a way because they, these are people that spent let's just say four to $7,000 on a bike across the country from a company which just know, again, street credit or track record and they just, I still can't believe that they couldn't touch it. They couldn't see it. He couldn't test ride it. But they trusted us. And on the flip side of that, we took care of them and built the bike. And you know, we delivered, we've always of done that. Yeah. I think that's a, that amazing. Yeah. Relationship in ECOMMERCE, it's journey I've personally experienced as well. Just the notion of like building that trust, getting customers to open their wallet and give you money and then feeling an obligation to make sure the product that you're putting out there is the very, very best that it could possibly be in and really exceeds their expectations because I imagined from there you started to see, okay, now I've got 25 of these trail donkeys scattered around the country. More riders are actually putting eyeballs on them at events and local rides that the trust factor has begun. Begun to build a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it just, it just builds slowly over time. Uh, and, and you, it's funny how your notoriety or your, your profile grows. Um, you know, a lot of people who buy our bikes when they go out and do a ride or a gravel event or whatever it is, you know, there'll be in a group of people and someone will look over and say, oh my goodness, that's a Trail Donkey roughly animal. I'd never seen one. Do you like it? Oh my goodness, you know, there's like, you know, people that, someone, the guy next to me freaked out when he saw the trail dog. He wouldn't stop talking about it for 15 or 20 minutes. And he was like, you know, I didn't expect that. And so, uh, you know, yeah, they do. They get out there in the wild and word of mouth is, is a really big deal. Um, yeah, I'm, you know, we don't, we don't send bikes out for review, generally speaking. I think we sent one to men's journal last year, um, but other than an then we, we sent a frame to a bike rumor as well, but there isn't, you know, we don't send them to all the magazines. We don't send them to all the online sites. Uh, and so whereas our reputation, our reputation comes from the people who actually own the bikes. Um, and if they, if they don't like the bikes, people are gonna hear about it. Uh, and we're gonna hear about it. Yeah, I think it was a lot. I think it was a lot like that early nineties mountain bike period that you were describing where, you know, you bought the eastern hyper light bar and some Ringle flash, flashy ringlet hubs and you'd go out there and people are like, oh, those actually ride as good as they look. I gotTa have my purple neon hubs. Right. Everybody knows the Kooka cranks break. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. Can destroy you. Absolutely. And then so, so now it sounds like trail donkey three is coming very shortly. What was that step change to the next iteration of the model? So, you know, Gosh, we launched our bike. I think people could finally get one in the latter part of. Yeah. I'm, I'm losing track of my timeline a little bit here, but I think when people could finally get one in 2016 at some point and right about that time there were a bunch of other bikes landing and I think open is notable and worth mentioning because they, I think we kind of arrived at a similar time, but they went a little bit further and sort of what they wanted out of the bike in terms of aggressive specs in terms of bigger tires and clearances and things like that. And uh, our bike wasn't built to that spectrum but we wrote it to that spectrum and I was always really stubborn. Uh, I don't think to a fault, but maybe to a fault about like, no, we can do everything we want to do on this bike the way that we built it and we're not going to chase competition and try and play the arms race of having the best features were, you know, unless the, that evolution is driven by our writing and where we're taking the bike. Um, I really do believe in like at some point we'll be ahead of the curve and in some point maybe we'll be behind the curve if the curve is whatever is trendy, but if we, if we genuinely ride the bikes super hard and take some really cool places and do read things on them, then we should decide how the bike should be designed in the buck kind of stops here with me. But then also kind of a close inner circle of other people who've had the bikes in neuron. Our test team, you know, is the bike do what we needed to do. So it, the bike was what I wanted it to be all the way through most of 2017. I was as I was happy, like we were making a good bike but I finally we went on this trip to the San Juans and a w, the San Juan mountain range in Colorado or just kinda like more brutal and more severe and steeper and everything about them is bigger than the other writing that I've done in Colorado. And I remember I was on I think 38 millimeter g ones on 700 seat wheels. But then the other guys on the ride, we're on donkeys but they were on 47, 6:55, 47. And every time we hit descent they dropped me like a rock so hard and I was getting kind of beat up, uh, on these descents in the. And then they were just letting go of the rigs and ripping down the hill. Uh, so then on day two of that trip I took one of those bikes and I wrote it and I thought, wait a minute. Like I think the bike might need to evolve because I want to come back and I want to ride this stuff. This is the most interesting writing maybe that I've ever done in my life. And, and I finally come to the point where I want more out of this bike. And when I got back from that trip, I rewrote like reprioritize, like, what do I want the trail, I don't qtp and I, I got with, you know, the engineering team. And I said, it's time to evolve. And that's when trail donkey three started, it was probably, you know, August of 2017, uh, and, you know, we, we didn't need to throw the whole bike out, we only needed to iterate the parts that needed to be, to be pushed. So priority one was we'll priority one is always durability and strength. But then priority two was we want more tire clearance out of this bike. I want to be able to run bigger tires and do more aggressive a terrain on it. And so the rear triangle, the bike needed to be completely random, re engineered and then we needed a new fork to, uh, to match those specs on the front end. So, uh, you know, I had one guy working with me at the time and he and I, you know, got down and cat and just roughed out the basic ideas and basic concepts of what the redesign would be. And then I pass these along to the, you know, the engineers and we all put our heads together and we started hammering away. At first, you know, you start with your written, your sketches and then your cad. And then you have to check everything in cad, you know, does it line up and then you, at some point you have to commit to tooling, which is always horrifying because it's so expensive, you know, like with steel you get it wrong, you can just make the next one different. But with a carbon, you know, you did, you designed the bike, but then you design the tooling. The tooling is like a, it's almost like a machine. It's got sliders and different pieces that need to interact and put pressure on your, your lay up in the correct way. Um, so you have to design that and then pay for it. And then at the very end of it, you know, you put your fabric in, you know, your carbon and your residents, your lap a bike pops out of the mold. Um, and then, then you get to find out if your ideas were good or not at the very end in a way, uh, you know, you think they are, you have, you know, you have some experience to work off of, but you don't really know until you finally get your first prototype. Uh, like is this bike going to be any good or did I make the right decisions? Or I did, I just fully missed something that I should have noticed. Uh, which by the way, I've done where you tool an entire frame and then you realize like, whoops, like we should've done this better and you either, you either stop and go back and retool and spend many thousands more dollars or you kind of just say, we can't afford to catch that one on this revision. We'll, we'll do that next time. But on trail donkey three, I don't know, I mean I'm biased, but I am pretty ecstatic with just we made the bike that we wanted to make and it does exactly what we wanted to do. I'm in it. Donkey two's good. We still have a few left and there are some people that only only really need that much bike. And um, we're still pointing people in that direction. When they get in touch with us and say, I want a three, we'll say, hey, we still have some twos. You're going to save money on to and you don't, you don't need to run at two point one and you're not 250 pounds, so your frame doesn't need to be a bit stronger so it saves some money just by normal gravel bike. But um, for the way that we're writing and the core group, the three point zero is kind of that answer to that question of where do we want to go next and what kind of writing do we want to do now. So now I really appreciate the honesty of it, your journey. It all makes sense and it's logical and you know, in many ways that journey from kind of the carbon smaller tire clearance bike to the carbon fatter tire clearance bike is something I think a lot of gravel riders go on because like you, I started on the sort of cyclocross side. So my first gravel bike was 700 see wheels and probably couldn't go more than say a 38. And what I quickly recognized with the type of writing that I wanted to do and the limits I wanted to push that moving to the open in my case and a six slash 50 b one nine tire was just opening up the things that I wanted to ride. That was gonna push me to the place I wanted to go from an adventure perspective. Yeah. I love that. You know, with a new, the newer frame, of course it can, it can let you do more if you choose to go there. I try to remind myself that most of the people who are buying a gravel bike right now are doing pretty much straight average gravel riding that gravel road gravel path, a hitting a little bit of pavement in between. Like there aren't a lot of really, really, really aggressive gravel riders in of the main customer demographic. Um, but, but if they do want to go there or they find out they're having a lot of fun on mainstream gravel and they want to push themselves a little bit harder, it's cool that, that, that option is open to them. Uh, and it's their decision I think. I think right now there's, there is a specs, armory, arms race where everybody is assuming like more is better. And I think, you know, when people talk about gravel hype and you know how hot it is right now, if, if anything is doing a disservice to the category right now, it's everybody is obsessed with bigger and bigger tires all the time. When for a lot of writing that's just a bad, bad spec decision, you should scale it back a little bit and make your bike a little bit more efficient. It doesn't need to be a monster truck all the time. So you know, yeah. I think as I've, as you've seen, there's gravel bike is a super broad category. You definitely had your kind of tore divide rigs that were essentially dropped bar mountain bikes. Yeah. Occupying a little bit of airspace in the category. And then on the other side of the spectrum you have your all rode bikes that's just slightly fatter tire available road bike essentially. And, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, it's something that I try to tease out every episode of this podcast. It's just, you're going to sit somewhere on that spectrum and it may change over time and you know, the important thing is getting out there, but everybody's, everybody's neighborhood is different, right. I'm, I'm interviewing some people from, um, New York later this month and, you know, I suspect what they're going to tell me about their gravel is it's, you know, short, steep climbs on fire roads. But, you know, it's, it's wide open. But you compare that to the San Juan Mountains. You need a totally different bike to obtain the same level of appropriate performance. Yeah. Yeah. Or at least. I mean, I would, I would say, uh, you know, the San Juans force us to change our gearing. Uh, so, you know, we ended up with a full mountain bike gearing drive train and then we got to upsize our wheels. But the platform of the bike is, is unchanged. You know, you just, when we engineer our frames and design, we know what they should be just like that's just, that's the module, that's the foundation of the House that you're building and then how you sort of decorate the rooms and that that's always going to vary from person to person. But um, you know, we were going over to crow a 10 for the Cro, 10 buck 50 race in North Carolina. We were there last year where you to go back this, that, that gravel race is like a 25 mile an hour, 150 mile, like drag race. It's mind blowing how fast it is and you know, they put, you know, 50 tooth one buys on their, on their gravel bikes with 35 millimeter slicks. And I think, wow, that is a really different bike than, than writing up. Know 30 percent grade on baby heads in the sand won. But all you really need to change between those two bikes is a, you know, your friend Shane ring and your tires. Um, and you know, that that's the component change that we made there. So as long as your basic frame module is capable of kind of either end of that spectrum, you're probably, you probably bought the right, you've got a good bite, a capable bike. Yeah. And that's where I'm at personally. I think I want my chassis to be as flexible as possible. So if I want to go bike packing on it, I've got all the appropriate islets. If I want to race it with the dropper post, I can rock or anything in between those, those endpoints. Um, yeah. It gets me super excited about owning the bike and looking at it in the garage and thinking about whatever the next adventure might be. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's fun. You know, the, the bike kind of opens up like you get to reinterpret your local terrain. I think that that's the biggest virtue of any of these types of bikes is that I used to just go on road rides and I used to do the same route three times a week, four times a week. And now I, you know, I can write up the road at downtown Denver and then hang a left and beyond some single track for five or 10 miles and then catch a gravel road and then another street and then back onto the bike path to my house. And I just like made up a new ride and had a totally fresh experience. I think that that's, that's why I think that's where the category is growing and it's going to continue to be super healthy is because that's just fun. Uh, and when you can sell a bike and just tell people we make a fun bike and then they buy your bike and go out and have fun on it. You've, you've, you've made a promise and then you've made good on the promise. Um, you know, it's come full circle. So it's cool that adventure bikes, you know, sell and they make an honest proposition as opposed to like maybe a road racing bike where it's like, Eh, you know what? This isn't really gonna make you approach. You are a writer. Um, but an adventure bike or a gravel bike is gonna make you, you know, that writer and you're going to go out and have fun doing it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know I've taken up a fair amount of your time, so I want to say I appreciate what you guys are doing over there. Is there, how's the best way for customers to find out about what you guys are doing? Well, definitely our website, um, Rodeo-labs.com, uh, and that kind of has the overview and it has the long form journal entries about what we do. And then, you know, on instagram just at Rodeo labs were, were active on Instagram, we'll post two or three times a day sometimes. That's kind of the most in the moment, you know, what are we up to place to see? Okay. So those are the two avenues. Great. Well, I'll put links to those in the show notes and I definitely want to encourage everybody who's listening to go over to the website and read one of the journal entries entitled Rodeo is a slow company because I honestly think it's a manifesto for why gravel riding is so exciting for everyone who's participating in it. And I was struck by one of the things you wrote which says which that die, if correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't want to be faster. I want to be happier. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that was just an amazing sentiment and it just, it just gave me goosebumps because it really underscored why I got into gravel, why I got into podcasting, because it is, it's just the most fun I've had in a bike in a long time. Cool. Well thank you for reading it. Uh, appreciate the feedback there. No worries. Thanks again, Stephen. Thanks for the invite. Craig was great talking with you.

Craig is on with Jack Heath as they discussed the Super Bowl and the technology behind it. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles  --- Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 02/04/2019 Super Bowl Technology - Why Are Advertisers Wasting Their Money Craig Peterson 0:00 Hey we want to welcome everybody Craig Peterson here. Of course living in New England the Patriots are our team. In fact that you know, we take it kind of personally here, but it wouldn't. Interesting game wasn't it. And I talked this morning with Jack  Heath, a little bit about some of the tech involved. And if they had just an amazing opportunity here to use some of the world's most advanced technology to really connect with the consumers. They didn't. It was to me, it was shocking. It was shocking. They they had some 8K broadcasts and other things. But why didn't they use the tech they could have used to engage the audience and the looks like from all of the social media online that that that's just playing right. That's a good observation. I think I got right again, hey, this week. Make sure you keep your eyes out today. Tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday day I have some of my best ideas. Some of the best training in the industry available for the SMB marketplace. small medium business. This is of course, all about security. It's free stuff. I will have an offer at the end of all of this for people who are interested in taking it further. But this is my best stuff. It's going to be available for you. It is not a pitch fast. Believe me make sure you sign up just visit http://CraigPeterson.com right now. It is right there on my homepage. You can sign up right there. And I you know I'm putting a lot of work into this. This is taken a few months to put together I've got some amazing stuff. I've got a whole package of stuff for people who might have been hacked or want to know if they've been hacked. All of this stuff is going to be included so make sure you visit http://CraigPeterson.com. And here we go with Mr. Heath Jack Heath 1:56 Craig Peterson our tech talk guy joins us I believe in the Auto Fair listener lines. Craig you know so much of this now is an online game versus you know the other way the people get the information as we get into this post Super Bowl Monday morning. Craig 2:13 Good morning Jack. The technology that was there at the Super Bowl this year was just absolutely incredible least behind the scenes you had 4000 miles of fiber cable in there you had over 2000 strands of additional fiber 330 recording channels with their plane watching if you came it was just incredible 16 cameras there were a number of augmented reality sensors in fact sick network cameras where they're tracking the AR graphics they were used you know all of this text is just incredible for a game that I'm looking at all of these means that we're social media was an absolute bore and one of the ones I love the most about it was Yahoo Sports and they posted a picture on their Twitter feed of just a piece of paper that said Patriots and Rams three to three and they said our graphics team fell asleep it was it was quite an interesting game that dichotomy with all of this great tech with the new TVs there was an eight k broadcast from the field it was absolutely phenomenal you could watch multiple angles on some of these newest TVs you could do automatic replays that the tech was just incredible Jack But the game itself on much show so sure it was so great I thought kind of the highlight was Spongebob coming out but he was only there for about five seconds. Jack 3:47 And then yeah Tony Romo trying to call a game. No it. Yeah, they look at all the matters is a W but I guess Justin and Craig Peterson, Justin and Craig. I guess if you're just if you're in a neutral state if there is such a thing because there's so many anti New England patriot fans. But if you're in another market you're watching that game just for the pure football entertainment with the NFL being all about offense I guess it kind of was you know, not as exciting Craig 4:16 Yeah, that's absolutely true. It wasn't I don't think it was a Saturday night and I'm not a big football fan I got to admit it but you were mentioning the ads as well and how expensive they were and social media definitely had a winner the number one ad from all of the means of repost it and comment was one of the Bud Light ad that was the one that was tied in with the HBO showing the dragon for the final season of Game of Thrones. That was a huge winner last night and probably can continue to be that second incredible series. But you know, from a business standpoint, you know, I talked to Jack up in new business for years and in entrepreneur started a few different businesses over the years and, and you look at how much is spent on these and you really have to wonder what they get out of it. Now Budweiser, I get it right if they've got a name they're building a bit more of a name but there's no call to action there there's nothing that these commercials were doing using technology that would have gotten people kind of offer their seats and doing something making a positive step to get their product or anything you know that type of interaction interactivity where you can have an ad and your your clients can or prospects can they can buy your product right then and there it's not there yet it isn't radio on like on the I heart app, you can advertise to people and they can just shake their phone and it'll connect to the website that that type of interaction again, will not seen on TV we are seeing on radio with I heart and I think it's just showing the the lack of connectivity that I think is really starting to go on now. The TV guys just don't get it and they're wasting their money. My opinion, right on spending other $5 million for a 32nd commercial. Jack 6:22 Yeah, I haven't checked the ratings course knowing when you know, you're gonna have high but nationally haven't checked them. But one of the headlines I saw overnight earlier this morning was the last great live TV event. Craig 6:35 Yeah, yeah, that's probably not too far off from the truth that just keeps going down and down. Jack 6:42 All right. Craig Peterson, excellent stuff. A high tech look at the big game. Last night from Atlantic. Craig Peterson. http://CraigPeterson.com. Thanks Craig. Craig 6:50 Hey take care. Bye. Bye. Again. Guys. Don't miss my series. This week. We'll be doing different ones. This is the one that's really going to teach you about the basics. What do you need to do for security, whether you're Soho, small, medium business. Okay. I've got some great things planned for this year. And I appreciate your signing up http://CraigPeterson.com. Take care. Have a great day. be back tomorrow with Mr. Polito.  --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Message Input: Message #techtalk Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Jack is on with Jack Heath discussing the stock market drop, the most recent hacks and how to stay safe online. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles  --- Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 12/10/2018 Stock Market Drop - Staying Safe Online Craig Peterson 0:00 Good morning everybody. Craig Peterson here. This morning I was on with Mr. Jack Heath covering big chunks of northern New England. And we talked about how to keep your data safe online. whole new thing I've got a product coming out it's going to be free. Make sure you go to http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe, and I'll send it to you soon as it's done. We're working on it. Some of this stuff just takes too long as far as I'm concerned. Anyhow, we also talked about the big guys why the stock markets falling. It was actually kind of a pretty good conversation this morning. And hopefully I'll have my voice back by the end of the day today. I've got a couple of meetings, going out meeting with some companies see if I can help them a little bit, too. So here we go with Mr. Heath Unknown 0:49 is now on the NFL Western allies. Our Tech Talk guy Craig Peterson. A couple things caught my eye, Craig, and you can tell us what you have on your docket. But I know you're not the stock market guy. But markets have been going down. And some of the big tech high tech giants aren't doing so well. And performance. But it's an interesting time of year because so many people are shopping both online and at stores. But Good morning, Craig, what's catching your eye? Unknown 1:12 Yeah, a couple of really good points right there. These massive giants are starting to kind of make you fall a little bit to their knees. We've got Apple and Facebook and of course, some others who are really facing some hard times. Right now Facebook seems to have kind of an internal rebellion going on where a number of their employees have gotten pretty upset with the way things are going over there with people's privacy and other things. We've got Apple now who has made some great deals if you want one of these new Apple iPhones like the XR now's the time to buy it, you can be getting a few hundred dollars off with the trading of an old phone is it it's really again, this cycle is that the business cycle, got to remember that back in the 70s of course idea on the King of the Hill, Microsoft kind of still is the king of a number of hills with Vollmer gone, they're improving, but it's a cycle and like everything else, although there are a lot of people find things this season these companies that are currently at the top of the heap Jack, they're just not going to stay there forever. Unknown 2:25 Yeah, interesting. And a lot of you know ongoing concern about shopping aware protecting your online purpose purchases, some porch thieves It's a whole new industry when you know and you see people so many deliveries now package sits on the porch of someone's home or apartment, a condo for the day. And people are just literally driving around snatching gifts and boxes right off a porch. Unknown 2:50 The Amazon has a new feature people might have noticed, if you are buying stuff online with Amazon, they now allow you to put a code in with your so what they'll do is if you have one of these little lock boxes on your porch, or maybe even a code to your front door. One time use code is the way to do this. By the way, people they will deliver your package but they'll open your door, put it right inside or open the little lock box, put it right inside. Because you're right. A lot of people are stealing these things. Be careful. You also have the ability with Amazon to say here's our launcher to put it so you can give them a code for the garage for instance, they'll put it inside your garage door or stick it in the shed. It's a problem people are spending a lot of money and they aren't getting stolen. And you know you talk about the online shopping I you know I do a lot of stuff with the FBI in there in regard program which I really advise business people to look into. If you're involved with security Look at him for guard.org but the FBI has been wanting asked about the more than $12 billion that has been stolen from businesses out there this time of year so watch your emails everybody if you're shopping online whether your home user whether your business they are trying to commit fraud in the online world to criminals are hacking into folders a big article in USA Today that I have up on my website talking about this one guy who again he was using an Android phone and I people against that but when he was at an airport his phone got hacked right into the criminals ended up draining their he's checking account and make us to email in order to do some of this stuff so there's a great article on how Google Voice being a victim of this latest whole series of cyber crime Unknown 4:49 yeah I don't know how you totally avoided Craig I don't think you know i mean really it's it's it's it seems that every every month every week there's a different scam a different way and Unknown 4:58 I got got to tell you Jack. Sorry to interrupt you real quickly. But I'm excited about this one. We've been working for the last week on what you do about it because there are new hacks. The Marriott hack, the Quora hack over the last couple of weeks, but announced so I'm putting together something right now jack again free to anybody who asks And what it is is what to do about it. Because now thanks to the new tax law that President Trump signed into effect there are ways for you to freeze your credit unfreeze your credit at the three out of five Americans have never even checked their credit report so how do you do that? What does it mean and it's beautiful because it lets you stop the bad guys before they do anything to you so you can just send an email to me@CraigPeterson .com more than glad to send this to you when it's ready this is going to really help you out and help you sleep at night because once you've done these things you cannot have your money stolen out of your accounts that it's going to be really good when it comes to your credit your credit card to everything you track so just me@CraigPeterson.com Unknown 6:09 and there's still think it's worth getting in. Is it a good preventative? Even if it's not complete? You know, some some of the security or the Unknown 6:16 you know, you're the credit score folks, but like I know one was hacked, but what about Lifelock for example, that's that's name has been around. It's not too expensive. We stay alert you if there's some activity be on your credit card, you think that's worth having? Unknown 6:28 Well, they do and they can be they do alert you but the problem with those Jack is it's after the fact the bad guys already did something with your identity. They already open new accounts with your identity, etc. So there are ways to stop them from even doing that. And now it's free for the first time ever. So that's why I'm so excited about Unknown 6:49 Thanks Craig. You know, all right. Take care guys. Unknown 6:55 By the way, you can also just text me anytime. 855-385-5553. 855-385-5553. Have a great day. Bye bye. --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Message Input: Message #techtalk Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Do you know your SmartTV is tracking what you're watching and the video games that you play as well? Learn more about how to stop this from happening from Craig as he speaks with Jim Polito about SmartTVs, the Russians hacking our power grid, and how he is finally able to sit on his back patio and enjoy it. Find out more on CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: How to Stop Your Smart TV From Tracking What You Watch Russian Hackers May Have Penetrated US Electricity Network and Could Turn Off Power, Officials Say --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 08/07/2018 How To Keep Mosquitoes At Bay - Russian Hackers In Our Power Grid - Stop SmartTV Tracking   Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey good morning everybody. Getting ready to do my rest of my day today. It's been a real fun time lately. You know shutting down some of the bad guys I guess. I guess I shouldn't be happy about that but I am. I love it because all of these poor people write these business people who've been building their businesses their life savings tied up in it and they get stole and being able to help them out in fact we've got a new client that's an attorney who's hired us for an insurance company because a company did fall prey to one of these hacks while in this case it was a business email compromise and about hundred thousand dollars in cash was stolen. It's absolutely incredible and so now you've got all the insurance guys fighting with each other as to who's going to pay what for what. But being able to stop the bad guys before it even happened that makes my day. And even if I have to come in afterwards and clean up and make sure it doesn't happen again. Wow. In fact I found out this week because we were of course we're working with some of the top people in the industry when it comes to security. But I found out this week that we are the only company that they are aware of who has not had any of their clients hit by ransomware. Isn't that amazing. So that made me feel really good. None of my clients. Wow. How long has it been now. Twenty five years. I think that I've been very focused on security. We haven't been hit by anything at all or our clients and none of them hit by ransomware. [00:01:37] So I guess that's really good I should feel good about myself. That's kind of my goal in life right now is to stop it right here I am staring down retirement trying to figure out what should I be doing here when I retire and came to realize that in fact I can help other people who are just like me who have their businesses who have been building their businesses who really want their businesses to survive and do well and be a retirement for them and maybe even pass it on to the family because my business is basically a family business as well. So that doesn't make me feel really good. And we've picked up from 1 to 3 or 4 6 6 new clients in the last month. So it's been a very busy time anyhow. Today this morning I got to speak with Jim Polito one of my favorite appearances on radio and this morning with Jim we talked about how I am now able to go sit on my back patio and enjoy it. How's that for a change. We talked a little bit about the Russians and what's happening in the power industry with them and kind of you know what we're doing to defend ourselves. I think that's a really important thing frankly for everyone to understand because these Russian hackers you know could be devastating. And then how to stop your smart TV from tracking what you're watching and the video games you're playing. So all of that and more with Jim and here we go. [00:03:05] Here is our good friend and his weekly segment that is very very popular. He is our tech talker to tell you about my friend Craig Peterson. Good morning sir. [00:03:21] Good morning. Do you like this weather. [00:03:24] Well I know it's basically killing you. You may have to be hospitalized if it gets above 60 degrees. Craig Peterson goes in the shower. [00:03:35] I've been inside for the most part. But you know what I did this year Jim I did something I've never done before and I've been talking about it forever and ever never ever. And that is we we have a patio out back here. The house it's really nice it's all nice. [00:03:50] Brick patio and we've had it now for probably 15 maybe 20 years and I never go outside because I get eaten alive. Yeah. [00:04:01] And I I've been debating back and forth. You know I've the technology out there and I've tried a few things like those little things that make sound just keep mosquitoes away and they didn't seem to do much good. But this year for the first time ever we bought mosquito magnet. Now I didn't want to buy one because the mosquito magnets to read about them online and they fail. You know actually yeah it's somewhere item right. So it is good for three out of maybe five years and it's not cheap it's a few hundred bucks. But I put one out at the beginning of June I think it was and I followed all of the directions right as to be downwind and everything. And I did all of that. And I this year for the first time ever have sat outside on a patio in the evening even when the mosquitoes are usually out and I haven't had any problems. [00:04:58] It is called Hundert if not thousands of flies will the beginning yeah and hundreds and hundreds of mosquitoes. This is the first ever cell technology that's been around for a while but I've been reluctant to use. I got to say wow I am impressed. I know there is no light. It's not like Jim. I don't get paid for mentioning things on the air. No I know that. Yeah but I was just really impressed or a little word of advice if you've got the same problem as me and you maybe you want to sit outside in this weather I don't get it. [00:05:35] But it may be one side. This thing has been amazing. [00:05:40] What's the name of it again. [00:05:43] It's called a mosquito magnet magnet. And they were bought by another company a few years ago and so I wasn't sure you know what to call it going to be like. And you put an LP tank on it. But you know have your barbecue. Right. And a little 20 pounder and that lasts about three weeks and it goes through. I wanted to doing this and basically burning the gas to make carbon dioxide which is what makes you scratch them. [00:06:12] Yeah exactly. And then there's a little you and you've got to do this. I try it without. But there's a little scent packet that you put inside of it and it's bait and it really drives him right to it. So the carbon dioxide brings him in from a distance. They get close they smell the bait. They go in for the bait. And then there's a slight vacuum that's running all of the time and they get sucked into it and into the trap. [00:06:40] And you have to keep it running at all times. Just keep it. You do. OK. So that will clear your area because what you're getting around do is you know that you know you want to clear your area. Mosquitoes aren't going to travel very very far. Their life cycle is not long may need standing water to breathe right and like. So you basically set that up and you cleared out the Peterson backyard. [00:07:08] It takes two or three weeks and it Yeah it's pretty much cleared out and you're right. Mosquitoes who knew this right are territorial and so they don't go very far. As you said and they don't has been it has been a life changer Jim and it's ending with a blackflies. [00:07:26] Early on in the season you know and I get these welts from back blackflies to yeah almost like a bees thing. [00:07:35] So it was wonderful wonderful wonderful. So next year I think the Peterson family may get one for the front yard as well walk out the door and you get eaten alive. The front door right now I can sit on the patio. [00:07:50] I like that. Craig some see look at that and doing an endorsement even though he's not being paid for it and giving you advice so always giving us advice. I want to ask you about something important here. Russian hackers may have penetrated the U.S. electricity network and could turn off power. I read a little something about this but I want to get it from you which basically means talk about war you don't need a missile you won't need a tank you will need a gun. All you'd have to do is come into the United States and shut off all of our power. [00:08:27] And believe me that would be a lot worse than dropping an atomic bomb on a major city and harder to trace right away with this. This is a report that came out of the Wall Street Journal last week. And there have been debates you remember of course the 1984 blackout. I mean had 2004 back to back in the 80s up in Quebec. [00:08:51] But there were questions whether or not that was a hacker and most of the security community we seem to think that in fact it probably was a hacker and they didn't mean to bring down the electric grid but that's what happened. But right now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that a group who is known as dragonfire energetic bear now interject has been doing all kinds of nasties lately but they've gained access to many of our power grid centers. Now they're talking about hundreds of them that they have gained access to and they're using the standard tools that you know were constantly seeing in businesses these spear phishing e-mails business e-mail compromise right watering hole attacks and they're tricking victims into it. But it is absolutely crazy what they're able to do out there and what could happen that they really could turn off the power. I got a grandkid here. [00:09:48] Hi Susan. [00:09:52] I like that shirt and R2 D2 shirt on here. CATHERINE Not me. That's pretty cool. [00:09:59] So so yes think about all of the people who are who are dependent on electricity of days like today. And you know with the heat we really have death. [00:10:09] If we don't have air conditioning we get the heat waves all the time. [00:10:14] So look you know you use. You can make a living out of going to companies and saying here here's what you need to do to protect yourselves. Please give me some hope and I know in other industries you haven't been able to do that. Give me some help that they're really working on this to try to reach. [00:10:34] Yeah they really are from this particular problem. They really are working on it. There are all kinds of controls that electrics that are electronic that are all over the place. These are called skater's systems and they are upgrading them. They are adding security to them. The plants themselves are upgrading the systems now. You know I work with the FBI and the unforgotten program right which is an infrastructure program they have and I I know myself because I've run webinars for the FBI on this topic. So all of these guys are very engaged in this and I think this problem is going to be pretty much fixed within the next year or two. But you know opening salvos of war could well use this type of stuff with a hack and they shut down power grids they shut down power acts. I mean that water facilities and stuff but you know they could do an incredible amount of damage to us. We have to use these types of techniques against other countries before we certainly use them with Iran in their centrifuge programs. This is the future. However this problem is being actively worked on. [00:11:46] So that is good news which I agree with Craig Peterson. Craig I just want to get something very quickly from you before we have to wrap up. How do I stop my Smart TV from tracking what I watch. And why do I want to do that. [00:12:02] Yeah most aren't aware of that but if you have a TV that has built into things like maybe Netflix Hulu or whatever yeah you and I have most of those TVs including Sony for instance. They're running Google's Android operating system in the TV. OK. And that's a problem to begin with because we know about Android vulnerabilities but in most of them I've got it up on my Web site. You can go there all of the major brands are covered by the TVs smart TVs don't just know that you're on Netflix. They don't just know that you are playing a video game on an external box right so you've got your x box or whatever it is they actually watch the content they can figure out what game you're playing and are streaming to the TV. So they've got all of this information but you can go in on all of these TVs and turn it off. You have to go to your setting and use the user agreements and other things all the details are up on my Web site. But you should opt out of it. Now in some cases you're going to have to turn off the smart TV function which I think is a great idea. [00:13:13] Anyways I use always an external box like a little rogue who use my Roku you don't use the stuff that's already embedded in the TV. [00:13:24] Exactly because when was the last time that this software update on that. Did you ever apply a patch to your TV. [00:13:31] No. No. Actually now that I think of it. No I have not. [00:13:36] Who does is right. And most of these TVs people don't even hook up to the Internet or they may so the quick and easy workaround. [00:13:44] Pull the plug on the TV spots on the Internet side. [00:13:48] Ok but then all of your special smart TV functions are going to go away if you do turn off the internet on it by using the external box that gets updates that you know is safe and the safest by far of course is the Apple TV although it's the most expensive as well. [00:14:05] You said that. See this is all great stuff. We have from mosquitoes all the way up to your smart TV and you can get more of it. Well right. Because next Tuesday our friend Craig Peterson will be back. [00:14:19] But if you text my name to this number 855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553. [00:14:33] Craig Peterson will send you a weekly update after his segment with all the information we discussed. Plus a whole bunch of other stuff. And then when there's some type of hack some type of a big problem guess what your friends list and he will send you that information yes and sell your name. He doesn't pester you. It doesn't do anything like that. Standard data and tax rates apply. This is a great thing to get on board with Craig as usual a great segment and I look forward to talking with you next week. [00:15:03] Hey thank you. Take care camera. [00:15:05] All right. Mosquito Magnet mosquito magnet. [00:15:09] No money has exchanged stands but Craig Peterson brought to you by the mosquito man. Thanks Craig. We'll see you next week. All right. Don't go anywhere. Final word when.  --- Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating! Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year!  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

  How big can companies get?  Listen in as Craig, Ken and Matt discuss how big some companies have gotten and what eventually happens. Do you want a plastic gun?  Yea, No!  Craig dispells the hype and hysteria on Plastic guns and why it is a big nothing burger.   Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com   ---   Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 08/01/2018 3D Printed Plastic Guns.  The Future without Google and Apple. Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, Good Morning everybody! This morning I was on WGAN and affiliate stations in the state of Maine with Ken and Matt and they were getting kind of teased because some people are saying they're just a comedy show, in fact, it was, I think, a sheriff in northern Maine that said that you guys are just a comedy show, because they were they were talking about a body that was found with a knife in the chest. So, they were postulating that it was murder, right? And, so the sheriff said, "Well you can't say it's a murder, just because there was a knife in the middle of his chest." And, so he said they're just a comedy show and don't pay attention to them. So, this morning I was kind of teasing them because we talked about two very, very, serious subjects, but I had to rib them here on the old comedy show thing. So, this morning we talked about these 3D printed guns. What's the technology behind this? Where is it going? How is this going to change our lives? And, frankly, will it end up changing our lives? Apple just received a trillion dollar valuation. What's happening? I discussed life after Apple and life after Google. Have you thought about life after Google? What's that going to mean to everybody because we're counting on it right now, right? Everybody uses Google. Number one search engine by far in the world. I think I kind of surprised them with my answers, there. So, anyhow here we go with Ken and Matt this morning you're going to love this, I think.  [00:01:29] All right Craig Peterson back again as he is always is at 738 on a Wednesday. Craig, How are you this morning?  [00:01:36] Hey doing good. Hey, why aren't koalas actual bears? Yeah, they meet all the qualifications. That's a dead joke. Well, this is a comedy show, was a comedy show, and I have to start with that.  [00:01:51] Well done. And, in fact, because of that I've got a special sound effect for you.  [00:01:57] Well done sir.  [00:02:00] So, so, I just got news and I want to ask you about this because Apple's approaching a value of one trillion dollars  [00:02:10] Wow, isn't that amazing? To get right down to it. Trillion here, a trillion there, right. Many governments don't have that kind of value. [00:02:20] Yeah, it is absolutely amazing. They are well on their way to being just an absolute record breaker. But, we've seen this sort of thing before, right. We've got Google out there who is just incredibly valuable. Google has become a verb, but I don't think Apple's a verb, yet. It's still a noun, but Google has become a verb. We're all using it, like 95 percent of searches worldwide, are done on Google. Then there was IBM in the 70's, of course. I've got to bring them up, Microsoft, Microsoft was so not afraid of Apple. They went ahead and helped to fund Apple. They invested in Apple back in the day. Nowadays, of course, IBM is nowhere near the powerhouse it was. Microsoft is nowhere near the powerhouse that they were, and Apple and Google are both going to end up going by the wayside. It's just it's inevitable, and when you're talking about Apple and the trillion dollars worth of value it is just crazy. But, think about Google here now, we can see maybe somebody taking over from Apple, right. Matt, you use a Samsung phone if I remember correctly. Correct. And, a very good possibility that Apple just isn't going to be in the lead. But, can you imagine Google not being here any longer? [00:03:47] Well no, but you know in 1998, I didn't really imagine AltaVista being gone either. So, you never know. [00:03:53] Yeah exactly. So, what will the world after Google look like? How about right now? Right now, you if you wanted to find out what book Ken Altshuler had written, where would you go to find his books? You'd probably go to Amazon right. Or come on his show or comedy show.com. Amazon is the place to go, Right now. It is the search engine when it comes to books. It's become the search engine when it comes to trying to find things for your home. When you're talking about smaller items. Amazon is already taking over from Google. The whole concept of e-commerce purchasing, online. So, Google is already starting to fall by the wayside. Look at our mobile devices whether it's an Android or an Apple device. Who owns the advertising on that? It isn't Google. The ads in our online or smart mobile devices, just aren't working anymore. So, it's not going to be long before Apple goes by the wayside because there will be something better. Steve Jobs is the guy that drove all of the apple products that have become what we're appreciating and loving today. [00:05:11] He's gone. What's going to continue on? Apple's already been stumbling. Google is already stumbling out of first place. It is really not first place when it comes to going online to buy something. We've got a huge Chinese outfit that's out there, called Alibaba, who is competing with Amazon to become the world's biggest retailer. You know Ken that what this boils down to is the companies that we know today and just count as part of our lives. It's just, just so inevitable that they're not going to be here forever and are going to go by the wayside. And, even though Apple's looking great right now and you know, already, I love their products right. We are the only tech, my company is the only ACN, the apple consultors network, the official Apple business guys, here in the Northeast, Framingham, is the next closest one to where I'm at right now. So, it's a different world. It's going to change. And I hope you're making some money off of these stocks but don't count on them always, being in this envious position that they're in right now  [00:06:24] At least we'll always have 8-track tapes at least we have that. [00:06:27] And you can listen to those forever. They just keep replaying it until you play them the fifth time and then they break. But that's a different story. [00:06:35] Craig is on our tech guru joins us at this time every Wednesday for an eye on technology. Craig, I know this isn't you know this is not on our list of stuff to talk about today, but I do have to ask you about this whole printed gun thing, and the 3-D printing industry in general, right. I mean it's sort of a new concept to a lot of people, who are following this, and you know, the blueprint. Yeah, yeah, it's been on the news about 7000 times this morning. So, you know I don't know exactly what I'm asking you here outside of perhaps just what your thought is on the whole 3D printing craze, in the first place, and what you think the future of it looks like when laws are trying to, you know outlaw certain objects, like a gun, or restrict them in some way. But, anybody could simply print anything. What does that mean for the future? [00:07:21] This is huge for the future. Imagine the day that instead of having to go to the car dealer to get the part that you just broke on your dashboard, because you were laughing so hard listening to WGAN comedy show in the morning that you can just go and print up at home. This whole thing with these printed plastic guns is a complete misnomer, right now. It is hysteria that just absolutely crazy. Here's what happens right. Your standard 3D printer that's out there is printing something with plastics. Well, consider the quality of a piece of lego. So, if you have a gun that you want to fire, do you really want to barrel, breech, etc. being made out of Lego. The answers no. You can make anything that would fire, once. We learned that from the original Star Trek series, you know it's going to blow up. It's not going to fire very well and it's not going to be accurate etcetera, etcetera. You need metal you need a barrel you need a breach to contain that explosion that happens when that the primer goes off. And, then the main powder goes off, to push that projectile which is also metal down the barrel and out. So, what we're talking about here, in reality, are what is called, the lowers of the gun. So, the parts of the guns that are already being made by manufacturers out of plastics for lack of a better term, but be made out of plastic, those parts you can already print. You cannot print a gun that's going to be an effective long-term, here.  [00:09:06] If you have a machine shop, however, you can make a gun. And part of what's going on here is they are selling basically a small metal machine shop as well, along with this. So, going forward. Let's talk law right now. We have the same problem we've always had with technology and that is the laws are always staggered behind. And, we all know that. The laws are going to take a while to catch up. And, whenever they do these preemptive type laws without understanding where the technology is going they always mess up. So, I'm a little worried about that. But for now, anyways guns that are quote printed at home unquote are not a huge, huge, deal you can already make some of those lower pieces out of a piece of wood if you're good at woodworking, OK. So, let's not go crazy. But your bigger question, Matt has to do with where is it going right ultimately, Right? And, ultimately we are already seeing Houses, printable houses being made. In fact, there is a company that makes the machine right now that can be taken to a place, say where there was just a massive hurricane they need to build hundreds of thousands of houses. You set the machine down and it has arms that go out and build all of the walls up and can actually build a structure there, in place. Now, that's not terribly efficient. But, there are other printers that will print your house you've seen modular homes before, of course, where yeah they come out and the walls are all there. They just basically put it together like legos on site. [00:10:50] While there are companies that are already doing that with printable houses. So, they'll print parts of the structure in order to get them out there. Where will we be 10 years, 20 years from now? We already are seeing many of the UPS stores with these printers, there. Right now it's kind of a fad, a cool thing, people are printing fun little keychain things. But ultimately, almost everything's going to be printed like this. You know car dealers will not be what they are today because we're going to have direct to consumer car purchases. And, if you need a new part you are going to take it to a car shop, so that it can be fixed, but they will be printing parts right there. And some of those parts will be metal parts because, in 10 or 20 years, we probably will be able to efficiently print metal that can withstand forces. I don't think we'll be printing engines or gun barrels anytime soon. But, the basic parts of your car that are metal will be printable, right there in the shop. It is really going to change almost everything in our lives, particularly since we already have some leading-edge technology that can print electronic circuits. So, think about that, you could put potentially print, an entire computer in another 10 to 20 years right there, maybe even in your home, and have very specialized equipment. So, it it's kind of cool. I'm excited for the future here, but for now this whole gun thing is a substantial amount of hysteria. [00:12:32] Our tech guru, Craig Peterson who joins us every Wednesday at 738 Craig Peterson dot com if you want to get all the information firsthand.  [00:12:40] Thanks Craig, talk to you next week. Hey, gentlemen take care.  [00:12:44] And by the way, Where do generals keep their armies? Where? In their sleevies? Sleevies? Sleevies? Armies, his arms, where does he keep his arms. Sleevies? For a comedy show, you guys are a little slow on the uptake. [00:13:04] The problem may be we may need to find another tech guru too,  OK. [00:13:16] Hey, hey, hey, wait-a-minute guys. What did you think, I write Dad jokes. I get it, but I felt that one was kind of funny. Anyway, let me know what you think. [00:13:26] Any time, any questions 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. Take care guys. Have a great one.   --- Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating! Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year!  --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Craig joins Ken and Matt talking about what a 30-second change to your computer can do, and why is it important to have the right DNS settings. Do you know what Incognito Mode actually does?  Craig explains to Ken and Matt the way it actually works and what it does and does not protect you from. Find out more on CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: This 30-second change to your computer settings is the easiest way to stop hackers --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 07/11/2018 30 Second Free Security For Your Computer and Incognito Mode  Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Good morning Craig Peterson here this morning I was talking with Ken and Matt about a couple of different things but primarily this morning we went over a 30-second change you can make to your computer. Why is it important to have the right DNS settings. The bad guys they've got a lot of nasty software out there. They're being very successful getting that nasty software onto your computers my computers. Well, not so much, actually knock on wood. But, here, here, we talked about what you can do a very quick and easy change. I have some software that costs me money that I charge for my clients. But this-this is free and it gets you about 90 percent towards safety. So, here we go. [00:00:52] I've had an iPhone phone since the first phone, when you had the iPhone one, and I had the first I thought I skipped every other. I mean I wouldn't get the thee and the five and the seven sure. Yeah and I think great Craig Peterson would have to agree with me that the iPhone is the greatest invention ever in the history of humankind. Would you not agree with me, Craig [00:01:15] Well I may put fire, maybe the first maybe wheel and then maybe the iPhone. Yeah, so you know it's a funny joke the other day on Facebook somebody said you know my teacher told me in high school that you know you guys have to do this in your head. You know the math in your head because you're not going to have calculators everywhere you walk. [00:01:34] Yeah, sure sure sure showed them. Because Craig because Matt's wife asked me what photo I have with I like an iPhone, 10 of course because why would anybody not have the iPhone 10. But, I still think the iPhone is still I think the best you can take a mortgage out for that phone. No, I'm out there. Do you pay fifty dollars a month forever for the rest with the rest life contract? But, you could upgrade. Know it doesn't. It doesn't matter what you pay because the person who dies with the most toys wins. [00:02:07] So, it doesn't make that's true. I did not get the iPhone 10, Ken. I'm stuck with the 8 which by the way looks like are killing off next year the gonna to change the iPhone line. They released this is like the first time I think they've ever done this. Apple decided they would give mock copies of next year's models to the press. So, it looks like the 8 will be dead as of next year. And the reason I didn't do it is I don't know. I love tech. And obviously comes this way Matt I think you might be but I'm cautious with that right. Yes. Like when we're talking about the iPhone 10 you've got that whole new sensor. [00:02:50] And, I don't know with facial recognition of the facial recognition it recognizes me no matter what you do but I'm sure the NSA also loves that because they've got it stored in a database to find me no matter what. Are you kidding me? [00:03:05] That's a lot of people are confused about that Matt. When you're talking about whats stored where Apple is way different thing Google is with Android. None of that information like your thumbprint if you use the thumbprint scanner on your iPhone or the facial information none of that ever leaves the phone, right. [00:03:25] See it's encrypted. [00:03:27] Yeah. It's sort of encrypted on the phone and what's called the secure enclave. And, in fact, I don't know if you've heard about who's who you have had there. [00:03:37] There are two paths replaced on their iPhone because they cracked it and then there are some leaders stopped working and they had to take it into Apple and that's because bottom line Apple doesn't want anybody messing with that secure enclaves stuff. And if you change the screen and you got that from the reader there is a potential that you might damage it, slightly because it's packed in elephants snot which is kind of a technical term so, that if anybody did come up with a less gross a technical term, perhaps I just believe that. [00:04:15] I mean what's that movie with Will Smith. And you're thinking of Enemy of the State, that they could fight back with everything they need to find out about you. [00:04:24] That movie really good movie. So, why Chapman why hide anything. [00:04:30] Just a total mind you bought the building because you made a phone call. Right, exactly. [00:04:36] He was the guy who going to watch the watchers. Who's going Yeah? [00:04:40] So, many great guys who watch the watchers of the watches and the watchers and watchers. So, that's the most serious things hacking. Now you've got 30-second change your computer setting. The easiest way to stop hackers. [00:04:56] Well, this is really, really, kind of cool it's up on my website but if you're going to have to find out more because there are instructions, right. But, here's the bottom line. Cybercrime has become huge, right now and it's expected to cost us worldwide here, more than two trillion dollars next year very, very, big deal. [00:05:21] Ok. And it's hurting little businesses, its hurting big businesses it's hurting you and me just regular consumers as well. [00:05:29] So, I have a product that I use and it's from Cisco it's called umbrella. And I've been using that with my clients for a long time. And what umbrella does is, if your computer tries to go someplace on the Internet. The first thing that has to do is change the name, into an address, right. You guys know that you put into a web browser something like tune-in for instance Somby go to tune-in radio to listen to the show while you're on the road for that. That doesn't mean anything to the Internet, that name. So, there's something called domain name service but it takes that name it converts it to an Internet address and then it goes to the address, it's just like if, I dropped a piece of mail in the post office and I said deliver this to Matt Gagnon, they wouldn't know where you live right. [00:06:22] Well, probably not. We may not but you never know. [00:06:28] He is. Well the NSA was supposed to try. So. [00:06:33] So, the question is and if that's the case, how does this really interfere with hackers, Right? [00:06:41] Because if you could stop the hackers from sending their post office stuff home right if you could stop them from mailing all of the stuff they stole home. That's half the battle and that's what this is all about. That's what umbrella is all about. It's not an expensive service, but I found a really great article on Marketwatch. So anybody who wants to can read this can go through the steps and what it does is, it showing you some free services that are kind of like Umbrella. [00:07:16] They're not as good, but they're quite good. It's 90 percent effective at stopping some of these pieces of ransomware is 90 percent effective at stopping all of the malware. Because, one of the things that these pieces of malware do when they get onto your computer, one of the first things is they call home and say hey I got somebody, what do you want to do now. [00:07:41] And, so they call home. They now can get the command and control information. OK. We're getting encrypted and it actually has to have a key so that they can now extort money out of you, if that doesn't happen they can't do any of this. So what this does and this is it really is a 30 second changes as Ken mentioned. What it does is it stops any software on your computer, legitimate or otherwise from going directly onto the Internet, and all it does is say, Hey listen before you go anywhere we are trying to figure out what the address is of the place you're trying to go to. Ask me, don't ask somebody else. So it asks that software and my customers cases it just you know umbrella and then umbrella's Whoa. Wait a minute. That is. Known Chinese or Russian or wherever it may be hacking group. We don't want you to go there. So it will now change and it will pop up a little screen that says this is dangerous, you can't go there if you're going on our web browser. But, if it's software that's trying to track your machine, 90 percent plus of the time is trying to phone home and it will be stopped. So, Ken I think this is one of the most important things people can do. It's very, very, simple. There are some free services out there that do a very good job at it and it's going to help to stop you from becoming a victim. [00:09:12] We're talking to Craig Peterson on our tech guru joins us for some tech updates every Wednesday at this time. Craig final question for me before we let you go here today the Incognito browser. What does it exactly do if people have never used that particular feature on their web browser what is it you you're actually accomplishing. [00:09:29] Well that's a great question. But, here's the bottom line on Incognito mode. All major browsers have a method they might call it private mode that might call it incognito which is what it is called over on Google's Chrome. But, the idea is it gives you some, Anonimity, a lot of people have been thinking the wrong way about all of this. There was a survey that was just done a little bit of a study. Most people got it wrong. So I'm glad you brought it up here's the bottom line. When you go into incognito mode on your browser it really doesn't hide much. It'll clear your cookies, when you're done. But, let me tell you when you'd want to use Incognito mode and when you wouldn't if you are trying to do something that you really, really, really, don't want anyone to know it's a new business deal or maybe you're trying to collude with Russia. Do not use Incognito mode, because it doesn't protect against anything where it comes in very handy. Let's say you share a computer you right there in the studio you Matt and Ken you share a computer. [00:10:40] Danny uses that computer from time to time. If you go online and you start searching for a great present for a well for Ken lets say and now can use his computer what he thinks going to happen advertisements and so can begin to see that you were searching for a new table saw for him at his house and these you say, oh I know what I'm getting from my birthday. Right. That's when it comes in handy because those cookies don't get set, the advertisers don't know what you've been searching for. And you can safely browse online for your spouse or friend or whomever and not worry about getting all of those ads popping up on your computer, incognito mode does not protect you in reality 100 percent from advertisers it certainly does not protect you from bad guys. It's just a handy little feature to have. Firefox is the best at incognito mode, among all of the major browsers and the epic browser E-P-I-C is absolutely the best if you want to maintain some online privacy. [00:11:49] I'm kind of sad that you told him what he is buying me for my birthday. It's kind of sad sad that on our tech guru joins us every Wednesday 738 go to his website Craig Peterson dot com. Thanks Craig we'll talk to you next week. [00:12:04] Hey gentlemen take care. Have a great day. [00:12:05] Thanks a lot Craig, I'm going to take a quick break here. [00:12:07] You think you're getting me a chainsaw instead of a tablesaw. Just curious. You know you seem like the kind of guy I like to work with Sand's builds on this stuff. You see these hands these hands. --- Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating! Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year!  --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

This morning Craig and Jack had a very short discussion about the Tesla Car that caught fire and the safety of litium batteries. ---- Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 06/19/2018 Tesla Car Fire and Lithium Ion Battery Safety Transcript: [00:00:00] Hi guys. Craig Peterson here, this morning I talked a little bit about the Tesla, the guest who was on the radio before me didn't quite get it right. I guess what else is new, right. Not understanding some of the technology, and there's one thing I forgot to mention that I will add to the end of this recording. So here we go with Jack Heath. [00:00:26] Great Transition To Craig Peterson our tech talk guy his show airs on the weekends Tech Talk with Craig Peterson. You know I thought of you, because you and I have talked a little about a good light Ford f 150 and all the people that talk about gas and oil and all that stuff is the problem. These batteries tell you and how they're discarded probably are bigger, bigger, threat to the environment than gas and oil.  [00:00:49] Good morning. You're absolutely right about that when we're talking about the Tesla, we're talking about a car that relies entirely on batteries. It is using batteries that, frankly, are not only dangerous when they catch on fire, but if you're in a car accident. Do you remember the issues that we've seen in phones, as well as these cars, is that those particular batteries, they tend to have a lot of power stored in them, so they can deliver the power very quickly, and that means they're going to heat up a lot, which is a real problem, frankly. When you mention like the F 150 Ford, compared to something like a Prius even the Prius is only good for about a hundred thousand miles before they recommend you replace the batteries that are in there.  [00:01:39] The Tesla has the same sort of a problem and creating these batteries is very, very, dangerous.  [00:01:46] There are all kinds of chemical processes, so you're right. When you're talking about what is greener, today anyways, the greenest cars out there, are the cars or trucks that will last 200- 300 thousand miles and that burns gas and they tend to also be the safest still. Remember, I spent 10 years in an emergency medical services responding to the scene of one of these vehicles, can be very dangerous for the occupants and the rescuers, especially if you have to cut into the car. [00:02:23] Interesting. Great stuff. Craig Peterson, check him out. Craig Peterson with an O.N. on Peterson dot com. Thanks Craig.  [00:02:30] Ok, so here's the part I did not mention, and that's what happens when they try and cram me in to a very short segment this morning. That's one of the shortest I've been on, it was only about a two-minute hit on the radio. Just because there's a bunch of stations, Jack doesn't mean I shouldn't get more time, anyways. Here's what I didn't mention, and we were talking about Tesla. We're talking about the safety of the vehicles and in reality, the crash tests have shown the Tesla to be one of the safest cars out there. In fact, it even broke some of the testing equipment they had to change the nature of the test so that they could really kind of score Tesla at all, frankly. So, it's not that Tesla's aren't safe because they are, frankly, they tend to be very safe. We were talking specifically about the batteries, and the safety of the batteries. Now, you might remember if you listen to my radio show on the weekends or maybe on the podcast, you might remember that the guy that invented the lithium ion batteries out of the University of Texas. He's, what is he now in his late in the 70’s, I think, he might even be in his 80’s. He's come up with a new type of battery, a lithium glass battery that can be charged, like that. You know a matter of a couple of minutes, and that does not have these discharge problems that the lithium ion batteries have, and that frankly is where all of these problems are stemming from, is the rapid discharge. Then things heat up they catch on fire and then you've got a lithium fire which could be just totally, totally, nasty.  [00:04:08] So, hopefully that technology progression progresses along, and of course I'll keep everybody up to date on that as well. And we've got a few other things brewing that we're going to be announcing, fairly soon, so keep an eye out some more insider stuff. We're almost done with that site. We have some people we've given away free insider memberships to. And that gives them access to some of the special reports and some of the other things that we are doing here on the radio show. And then we're putting together some, basically a kind of a threat matrix, right. Some threat and analysis when it comes to security, for people who are in business. People in business who are responsible for the security, and even a little bit of training, which is now required by law and regulation. Depending on the industry you're in, you may have a huge requirement. If you’re in a normal business, you realize you actually do have a requirement for security training for your people. So, we're going to be doing some of that as well. So, keep an eye out for that, and have a great day we'll be back with you tomorrow. Bye-Bye.   --- Related Articles: Tesla goes up in Flames in California --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:  www.twitter.com/craigpeterson  For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553  

In this episode I have a chat with the dynamic and totally awesome Craig Rodney about Instagram, social media, photography and everything in between. You can find Craig online at: Website: http://www.craigrodney.com/ Craig's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/craigrodney/ South Africa on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southafrica/ Thanks Craig. Look forward to our next catch up! * * * My name is Gerry van der Walt and I am a specialist photographic safari guide, educator, public speaker and co-founder of Wild Eye. Through Wild Eye I have created a vehicle which merges the raw beauty of traveling in some of the worlds most spectacular wilderness areas with the ability to not only capture these moments on camera but also teaching and inspiring people along the way. I look forward to changing the way you see the world! * * * Links and Social Media: Wild Eye: www.wild-eye.co.za/ Website: www.gerryvanderwalt.com/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/gerryvdwalt/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/gerryvanderwalt/ Snapchat: www.snapchat.com/add/gerryvanderwalt/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/gerryvanderwalt/

Episode Links: DZ Nuthouse Gravel Camp Crusher in the Tushar Dave Zabriskie Instagram Ryan Steers Instagram The Gravel Ride Instagram Topanga Creek Outpost The Mob Shop 3T bikes  "I've been able to find things that people that have lived here their whole life, It's amazing, like I just feel like to explore, so I'm finding some roads, dirt stuff that's blown people's lunch that have lived here their whole life." Dave Zabriskie, Former Professional Road Cyclist So that was former professional road, cyclist, Dave Zabriskie, talking about some of the secret trails he's found down in the Santa Monica Mountains near Los Angeles. I've got dave and his business partner, Ryan Steers, who's a former professional mountain bike racer on the podcast, the two of them partner for a gravel camp in southern California, which sounds really cool. I was excited to talk to the guys just as they've both come from different sides of the sport, which I think is pretty typical for a lot of us as a lot of mountain bikers coming to gravel and also a lot of roadies, but this is an opportunity to talk to two guys who have done it in the professional ranks and hear what they have say about gravel. So with that, let's jump right in. All right. This week on the podcast we've got Ryan and Dave. Ryan and Dave, thanks for joining us. You're welcome. Right on. I always like to start the conversation by, by finding out how you guys came to gravel cycling. This is Dave years ago. Actually. I built the, before they had gravel bikes, I'll build a mountain bike or rigid and then I just put dropbox on it and I took that to Europe because a, I wanted to have some adventure in between the racing and the regular road trainings. It was something I've been toying with for quite a long time. And then, uh, it was pretty cool and they started a couple of people that seemed like a, it almost seemed to me like the touch around the crusher was this event that came along where you had a mix of surfaces and he was like bringing whatever bike you think of work. It kind of seemed to me that they started building bikes for events like that, which kind of turned into the gravel thing. It's been cool for me because it's something I've been doing even before gravel bikes. Yeah, I think you're right. I talk to a lot of guys who are sort of banging around on it with events like that are out here in northern California. The grasshopper series has been around for 20 years and it really wasn't until the last five years that the bikes were really suited for what that race course was offering. That's super cool. How about you Ryan? So you got a little bit different background, not on the roadside per se. Yeah, I've always been a mountain biker and I was uh, working at his shop. Was that maybe four or five years ago when the first gravel bikes really started to come out? I think it was like the salsa warbird that we were carrying and I had no idea what to think of it. I thought it was just something people in the midwest it on gravel roads and then flash forward two or three years later starting to do the Belgian waffle ride and ride my road bike a lot on the dirt and trails. We were doing basically everything on the road bikes with 28 and you know, after like five or six slots, you're just getting a little frustrated and then finally realized that there was some proper bikes coming up that could handle everything around here in Los Angeles, there's a lot of single track and trails and fire roads, so just got drawn into gravel by the ability to connect to everything. It's cool because you can go out for a ride and you know, red fire roads and trails and have what would be a pretty, a pretty boring mountain bike ride. Actually be a really fun ride on a gravel bike. Started to do some of those events to Belgian waffle ride. They've talked me into the, the crusher or a couple of years ago and yeah, I got hooked on that and the whole atmosphere that the gravel races bring was a really attractive. So it drew me in. Yeah, absolutely. Were there things you can point to on the bike that really made the difference? Yeah, the tire cleaner or being able to run [inaudible] sorry, go ahead. The tubeless technology as well as just the riding a road bike on that stuff. You'd be flattened all the time just to be able to tie everything together now like you can still on that [inaudible] but I have you can go out and pair ass on the road all day and then if you see a trailer you can hit that and feel pretty fast as well, like a. So it's just fun to tie it all together. But I'd say the tires is tires. It's probably been the biggest improvement I think is really interesting. Platform. Are you running 700 sees on there or 650b? Yeah, just stick with the 650. I thought about putting some 700. Then I kind of like the cushiness those six [inaudible] so that I don't notice too much of a loss. Yeah. How about you Ryan? What? What's, what's your equipment look like? Yeah, I'm on the uh, I'm reading the giant tcx set up with a, got a 48 on the front and the 38 and the rear, which is pretty nice around here. A little traction when it sandy, but then also roles pretty fast on the pavement. I set up a lot. And is that a 700 seat will set? It is. It's a 700. Yeah. It's um, like a, like a little more aggressive. Ryan's eight feet tall. I'm six and a half feet tall, so a hundred milliliters of expose posts. So I get, I get like an inch of travel on post. It's pretty sweet. It looks like you're on 24 inch wheels. Exactly. Yeah, right at 29 and everyone's like, is that a [inaudible]? 50 a 27 [inaudible] 700. I found myself in dance camp. I've got an OPEN with 650 bs and I tend to just leave those on there even though I have a 700 seat we'll set kicking around. It's part laziness and part in northern cal. Like the trails are fairly rough. I think it's, it's similar to what you guys experienced down there to like a fast fire roads, some single track here and there, but we have decent amount of steeps here. So I find having that v tire volumes just preventing me from flooding and makes it a really fun bike to throw around. So I got a controversial question for you. La Sucks for cycling or false. I think the whole intent is the, uh, the irony, right? Yeah, absolutely. I was telling Ryan, you know, I'm, I'm lucky enough to be married to a woman who hails from Topanga, California and still has family down there. And previously I probably would have answered yes to La sucks recycling. But after spending a decade visiting Topanga, I've just fallen in love with the riding down there. I think you guys are really blessed. Tell us a little bit about the various bits of terrain that people not familiar with the La area might not be aware even exists for gravel riding down there. One of the most famous trail that connects Santa Monica go about 70 miles north to the Santa Monica Mountains. Uh, and that's pretty fun. A lot of that is about lions carefully, but there's an unlimited number of fire roads just all through Malibu that, uh, you can link up. And then over, I live right by Chesboro and there's tons of fire roads and writing. So once you start connecting the fire roads and single truck, I mean you can rod from Santa Monica to see me to Malibu with hardly touching any pavement in between. It's pretty cool. Yeah. How about you, Dave?  I've been able to find things that people that have lived here their whole lives are like. And how did you find this and what is it like? It's amazing. Like I just like to explore our area, so I'm finding some roads and dirt stuff that blowing people's minds that have lived here their whole life. Topanga towards Malibu along the backbone trail. When I wrote it over the holidays, I was just shocked at how much open space there was, the views you were getting there and the fact that I didn't see anyone. 14,000,000 people in Los Angeles County and you run it on a weekday and you'll maybe run into one or two cyclists or a jogger is empty. Yeah. You guys are lucky to ride out of that area. I think it's really something special when I haven't seen down there, and correct me if I'm wrong, is a lot of gravel events, whether they're rides or races right in that area. Is there a reason for it is it's sort of a, you know, as Dave mentioned, private land that you end up getting on? Yeah. I'm not sure there is a few. Like I think they're just more uh, like you'd have to live here to know about. Um, I'm not sure they're trying to bring in people from all over the place. OK. So more like sort of shop based rides that are pretty big but not necessarily broadcast. Yeah. Like there's one in Ohio, the mob shop they have, they have some good events up there that are really cool and then a federal or his work has really cool events. There's one in redlands coming up but never run out of stuff to explore down here. Like it's just so gigantic. I've done the gravel mob riding. Hi. The last couple years, and I love that one and another, another area of the country where it's like spectacular, 60 mile loop or whatever it is, great trails, which combined like fun fire roads, both climbing into sense and then a shot of Tequila before that last, a single track to set. I think it was a nice touch. Our area is really focused on the road riding out here and just on the pavement, so I think we're just. We're trying to get people off that more. There's so much more to see than than the roads, which is a shame that most people don't get off of them, so we're just trying to bring people onto the dirt a little more. There's a lot out there. Yes. You guys are clearly who are big advocates for gravel cycling. What do you see are the hesitations from people, whether they're in the road camp or the mountain bike camp to try this new part of the sport out? I mean, if you're a real, real hard-core Roadie, I mean just the thought of getting your shoes [inaudible] sometimes it's scary for me. It's pretty a simple. I just don't want to deal with cars, those fire roads or they're a lot safer, so that's kind of what draws me to it as I don't have to look behind my shoulder every two seconds, but I mean, some of these guys, you just have to, uh, introduce them to it. Like I've done a few group rides where there'll be a really short, smooth section and I take the train to take them on there and they get pretty excited and then they wanted to kind of get interested like what bikes that I get, what's, how do I do this, how do I do that? It's just kind of getting somebody toes wet a little bit and then they see the light. Yeah. It seems to be a common theme with people I've talked to. It's like once they give it a try, they get over to get over that fear of getting off road. If you're, if they're on the road side, all of a sudden they realized for all the benefits you just described, that it's really the place to be. If you've got this kind of terrain in your backyard, getting lost out there too, so you're not really going to get lost, but if you take a wrong turn, you could end up, you know, down at the beach and then find yourself three hours from where you thought you were going to end up the wrong side of original line and all of a sudden you're nowhere near where you think you're going to be. Exactly. Bedside in Malibu. Yeah, I think you're right. You know when you guys were mentioning, you know the idea of getting lost and how gravel riding, there's this sort of adventure when you're getting out there. I think that's one of the things that's creating this big opportunity for events and otherwise group rides just because it's nice to have someone show you some new terrain and it really adds to your repertoire if you learn some new trails, really one bike. That ties a lot of things together. When I got the bike, I didn't think I'd write it as much as I have been. Really replaces almost everything to do jumps. I've been doing them all my gravel bike. If you'd been looking at my instagram so it can do everything. What, what did we decide on? Is that getting Rad are getting stoked? Yeah, and I mean it seems like the sort of emerging gravel cycling scene is also opening up some post professional cycling career opportunities for some of your former co-workers in the Peloton. I think that sort of visuals of adventure really makes sense for a lot of the cycling brand. So if you've got a guy who's got no reputation or history in the sport and then he's out there getting out there in the woods and testing the equipment. Uh, I just think it's sort of a natural tie in for a lot of these bike brands to want to stay affiliated with them when they get to sell on other bikes to buy company. Love it because it's, you know, not many people have and gravel bike yet. So they're excited to get people on gravel bike out and you know, most people have a mountain bike or road bike and you know, who doesn't love to get a new bikes. Exactly. Although the dirty little secret is, is as you sort of alluded to Dave, once you get one of these gravel bikes, you find out you can ride on the road and the dirt just as well, and you might start shelving your road bike. Yeah. Hey, so you guys are starting at a really exciting new project in the next couple of months. Um, with the gravel camp. Can you guys tell me about what inspired that and what it's all about? You have to commit yourself to gravel because it's, it's kind of a therapeutic. Uh, I mean it has been therapeutic for me. It's very, uh, I've always been crazy, but, uh, this has helped me from going insane type of things. So we're just inviting people to come, uh, commit themselves to our asylum, which takes a place here in the Santa Monica Mountains. And uh, hopefully if they commit themselves hard enough, they can come out, uh, you know, a little bit of sanity or maybe less. We're not quite sure what will happen yet. So it's a, it's a three day adventure, right? It's a Monday to Thursday gravel camp. Uh, we're doing all the meals at Publix for, we'll stop on a long ride, one day includes lodging, support, snack food, and we're going to show people some of the stuff that the Santa Monica mountains has to offer. It's a without the fear of getting lost or not knowing where to go and, which has been fun without a lot of funds coming in from out of town, but we've been taking around and showing them and just kind of blowing their minds with what's out here and like kind of help foster the idea of how we should really just get people out and from what we have in our backyard here because it's so amazing. And a lot of people go to Spain and do these big, uh, trips with the similar terrain and weather that we have here. And it's, you know, we're close to lax. It's the weather's nice or in southern California. So it's got all the conveniences of a big city and not that far away for every one that's easy to get to. But uh, they're, you're gonna feel miles up in the mountains. That sounds great. What are those rides going to look like? So if I'm, if I'm training and trying to get myself prepared to join the asylum down there, what am I, what do I need to get in my legs to uh, survive those three days. It's definitely not a race pace type situation. So I wouldn't say it's something everybody could do, but I'd say most everybody could do. There'll be plenty of regroup. It'd be pretty casual pace. If you want to push yourself, you're free to do that on the uphills, not the downhills. Our goal isn't to split up a group and making everyone kill themselves. It's the nature and find cool things and have good adventures and have good times. And what does that Queen Stage look like in terms of mileage and elevation gain? Malibu there that we've got set up. It's Kinda the best of everything that Malibu has. Often I'll do creek state park through a blend of some really fun page sections and that's going to be. We will leave early, but it's probably going to be 70, eighty miles and probably close to 10,000 feet of climbing with a lunch stop thrown in the middle in Malibu at some. A, a beautiful little place kind of up in the woods there. So was going to be support and regroups and everything, so it's not going to be a death march by any means, but it'll be a long day with a lot of climate within general. You've got to be. There's some 3000 feet to the top from the ocean. So just to get over there, some pretty good climbs a built in. Yeah. There's no way to avoid that coastal range if you're trying to get out of there. We got free helicopter service. Cool. For all guests. I'll guess a, you're just responsible for calling nine one one on your own and then you guys are going to go up into, uh, into Topanga. It looks like one day. Yeah. Topanga is pretty close to publish work, so it's a pretty easy job up there. But then once you get into Panga, you've got a really spectacular view. The downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica and it's a really pretty place to ride because you can see so much to the urban area below you, but there's tons of fire roads and trails up there and then like, think we're going to have to throw in a fun little coffee. Banana bread stopped. It's a Topanga Creek outposts of a little hidden gem bike shops up in Topanga that, uh, has done a lot to foster the cycling community up there. Yeah, absolutely. I actually credit Chris and his instagram feed for kind of getting me into the sport in many ways. Great job of getting people on the bikes. He's so welcoming to everyone that wants to ride and they do a Saturday morning ride for all scale levels. It's, I mean, I credit him with show me, get me into racing and showing me all the trails up there. There's a ton of hidden stuff that they're uncovering every week, which was really cool that you can have a bike shop in Topanga and do a ride every week until, you know, six, seven years later be finding new trails. It's really neat. Yeah, I think for anybody down there in that region, region or anybody visiting, hitting that Saturday ride is a real special treat. I found they've been inviting to me in any bike I've shown up on. So I've showed up on a mountain bike, have borrowed a bike, a fat bike from them. I've written a cyclocross bike on, on that Saturday ride, and across the board of the 20 or 30 riders that are out there, you're going to see almost every genre of bike represented every Saturday. And somehow I don't manage this to all work together. Anything else that our listeners to know about the gravel camp, how many people are you accepting and what are the dates for the upcoming camps? The first one we're going to keep really, really small to a handful of people ideally to probably 12 or less to keep it, to keep it around 10 or so routers. We don't get to split up and we'll have a couple other ride leaders as well surrounding them to keep the group together. But the goal is to keep it small and intimate. And you know, we did a, it's hard to keep a bunch of people together. We did a group that, I guess it was about 50 and things get a little more, uh, more spread out in hard to wrangle. So we want people to have fun and enjoy themselves but not be afraid of getting lost or missing a regroup or anything like that are getting left out in the woods through the mountain lions. And what's the website that people can check out to find out more? Yeah. The first one is uh, gonna be in April from the sixteenth to the nineteenth. It's Kinda, we sandwiched in between those and wall fluoride and Sea Otter. So if you're doing any of those events, it's kind of a fun stop in between. My legs are going to be pretty cooked on that first day from Belgium waffle run, which is also a blast, but definitely not uv. So yeah, April the first one and the website is these net house.com. You can go check it out there and he's got the details and a bunch of photos too because I think those are way more, were more valuable than writing things about the route and then people can look and see, see where they're going to be riding a big selling point. Yeah, absolutely. And I know you guys are active on instagram. Where can they follow you there? Uh, we've got the house accounts and then David got his accounts and I'm at our steers, the letter r and then s, t e r s I just did a sweep posts with some old action figure, a founder of a Kevin Costner if anyone wants to take a look there. Yeah, we've got a couple instagram accounts. You have to follow it. And one is very mysterious. That makes me, it makes no sense. Right on guys, I've appreciate you joining me on the podcast this week and uh, you know, I wish you all the best on the camps and I hope they're filled to capacity and hopefully I can come down and pedal with you guys sometime. Thanks Craig. See at the Mob Shop probably right on, So that was a blast. Talking to Dave and Ryan. I think their gravel camps are going to be really a lot of fun. The Santa Monica Mountains have tons of trails, just looping between Malibu and Topanga and Calabasas. Definitely join them for the camps. Follow them on instagram to check out some of those trails are followed them on Strava. I highly recommend checking out that part of the country and that's for us here at the gravel ride. Definitely follow us on instagram at the gravel ride. You can shoot me a note at Craig at the gravel ride that bike, or follow me on Strava. I'd love to get your feedback, ratings, etc. 

Episode 251 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast. Download MP3 -  Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS! Featured: Street photographer, Craig Whitehead In This Episode If you subscribe to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast in iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review us and help us move up in the rankings so others interested in photography may find us. Show Opener: Street photographer Craig Whitehead opens the show. Thanks Craig! Sponsors: - Get 1 month of Format's Pro level online portfolio platform for FREE at Format.com/petapixel - Get FreshBooks cloud accounting FREE for 30 DAYS by entering PetaPixel in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section at FreshBooks.com/PetaPixel - More at LensShark.com/deals. Our 2018 sweepstakes: The PetaPixel Photography Podcast 2018 Sweepstakes! We're giving away a choice of camera + Tamron 24-70mm G2 and a bunch of other great prizes! Stories: Adobe once-again addresses Lightroom's performance issues. (#) Shutterfly acquires Lifetouch for nearly 1 billion dollars. (#) Reuters makes a surprising error despite 166 years of experience. (#) A recent Nat Geo editor is the next to fall. (#) Fujifilm takes control of Xerox and why this is important to photographers. (#) Details on our camera, lens and more giveaway. (#) My other podcast with Brian Matiash, the No Name Photo Show. Connect With Us Thank you for listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast! Connect with me, Sharky James on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (all @LensShark) as we build this community. We’d love to answer your question on the show. Leave us an audio question through our voicemail widget, comment below or via social media. But audio questions are awesome! You can also cut a show opener for us to play on the show! As an example: “Hi, this is Matt Smith with Double Heart Photography in Chicago, Illinois, and you’re listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast with Sharky James!”

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The Worry Stone, FER PROM presented by PABST BLUE RIBBON, Nerves Setting In, Foreign Exchange Students, The Creepy Dance, Purging of the Poetry, Fixing Hair, The Nightmare Dream, WoC, Bike Stations, Pokemon Dating, FER BREWERS CUP, NINKASI and BRIDGEPORT, Thanks Craig and April!

Here’s episode 79 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast. You can also download the MP3 directly and subscribe via iTunes or RSS! Leave a comment in this post, or use our voicemail widget for feedback/questions for the show. In This Episode If you subscribe to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast in iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review us and help us move up in the rankings so others interested in photography may find us. Photographer and Lensbaby founder Craig Strong open the show. Thanks Craig! Canon super sizes by patenting a 1000mm lens. (#) Calumet Photographic and Bowens Lighting are acquired with plans for expansion. (#) The British Journal of Photography raises a ton of cash to keep things going strong and serve its digital audience. (#) A top photojournalist and his interpreter are killed in Afghanistan. (#) Sony Artisan of Imagery and host of "The Photo Show" live on Facebook, Brian Matiash, features the PetaPixel Photography Podcast calling it "One of the best photography podcasts I've ever heard." (@ 19m26s) Yet more in developments in the Steve McCurry saga as photos are alleged to have been staged. (#) Connect With Us Thank you for listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast! Connect with me, Sharky James on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (all @LensShark) as we build this community. We’d love to answer your question on the show. Leave us an audio question through our voicemail widget, comment below or via social media. But audio questions are awesome! You can also cut a show opener for us to play on the show! As an example: “Hi, this is Matt Smith with Double Heart Photography in Chicago, Illinois, and you’re listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast with Sharky James!”

This week we welcome Craig Schneider back for the biggest smoke ever on DogWatch Cigar Radio. The three of us exchanged cigars this week so we each have three cigars to review making for a total of nine reviews of 6 different cigars (do the math yourself, this one confused me). We also have mail from Palio contest winners, a request from a listener and a question for our team of experts. Cigars of the Week - Cigar of the Week: Bob – E.P Carillo Golosos Cigars Ring Gauge: 60 Length: 6.5 inches Shape: Toro Gordo Strength: Medium E.P Carillo Golosos Cigars - The creator and the man behind the famous cigar brand La Gloria Cubana has launch a new personal project and another fabulous cigar The E.P. Carillo. The filler in the EP Carillo cigar is a well aged 5 year old Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers that is bound and wrapped with a 3 year old Ecuadorian-grown Habano wrapper. This cigar is a medium bodied cigar that is characterized creamy flavors, and rich notes of pepper. Cigar of the Week: Dale - Mi Tierra Habano Ring Gauge: 60 Length:4.5” Shape/Name:Parejo - Grand Mi Tierra cigars are Dominican Puros, made from tobaccos grown on a single farm. Michael Munoz is the brand face of the line, but the cigars were developed in a joint venture with Jose Blanco. All the blend tobacco has been aged for 3 years and is covered in a silky Habano variety wrapper. A complex cigar with more spice then one might expect, especially right from the start. Rich and bold full flavors that keep the cigar very interesting throughout the experience. The body of the smoke is medium, and the strength level is above the typical Dominican profile. Cigar of the Week: Craig - Anonymous Ring Gauge:56 Length:6.375” Shape/Name:Parejo - Sublimes (roughly - Little short, little wide) This large cigar has a rustic Mexican San Andreas Seco skin on a body of tobacco coming from all one country. It brings a slightly sweet demeanor to the table with an interesting spicy core. It was released to slightly negative fanfare and never received the due I feel it deserved. In my opinion, it did not take off as a cigar enjoyed by the masses. That explains why I may like it, as my tastes tend to lean away from the trends of today. Strength, but with balance; the only way I’ll take it. Rearranging show dates! We are moving the the Nov 4 show to November 5 as Liz and I will be traveling that evening. _______________________________________________ We get Mail: Sometimes it takes a while.... Liz, Below is a copy of an email I tried to send on 15 JUL 11. I continued to listen to the podcast wondering if you ever received it. Bob & Dale, Thank you! Thank you for the selecting me as the May contest winner of the magnificent Palio cutter. I received it in the mail about two weeks ago and have used it for every cut on my cigars since. I was just getting ready to buy one when I listened to your podcast and heard I was selected; now I’ll have to buy a carbon fiber cutter. You mentioned on the podcast that you believed I was military and you was absolutely correct. I am a sergeant First Class in the Army stationed in Germany and recently returned home from Afghanistan. I am very new the good life of cigar smoking but thanks to your podcast (and the power of the internet), I have become educated quickly. Once again thank you for selecting me, for an incredible radio show, and for your support of the uniformed services. Keep up the great work! v/r SFC Tim Delaney More Mail: a call to our listeners DJ Shalifoe is looking for any retailers that still have pre-General Cigar CAO La Traviatas in stock. DJ writes: The old pre-GC Traviatas come with the CAO branded Boveda pack in the box whereas the post-GC CAOs do not. I'm partial to the Divino and Animados vitolas in either natural or maduro. The reason I want the older ones is that I find CAO cigars under General's ownership to have fallen off the cliff, so to speak. If any listener knows of a retailer with pre-GC Traviatas, send the info to theshow@cigarmedia.tv and we will pass it along. More Mail: Listener feedback John Magrisso to Liz after she followed up to see how he liked the Palio cutter he won in June Liz, I received the Palio cutter sometime at the very end of June and shot Bob an e-mail when upon its receipt. I've been very happy with it- it has lived up to all the accolades given on the show each week! As to the show, I've been listening for a number of years now, and though I'm not the most vocal listener, I look forward to it every week and thoroughly enjoy the sense of community it provides us cigar smokers (especially living here in Massachusetts, where I'll get dirty looks just for smoking on my own front steps)! So thank you all! John Legislative Update Venezuela has annulled by decree an anti-smoking law, which prohibits tobacco use in public places and offices a day after enforcement. Venezuela's Ministry of Health announced its new decision just a day after the anti-smoking law was printed in the Official Gazette. According to the new legislation, smoking was banned in public spaces, cafes, public toilets, dining halls and joined buildings. The new law was planned to be implemented after three months, said a Press TV correspondent. Get the full story Craig: Funny how Venezuela’s ban comes right on the heals of their dictator’s struggle with cancer. Wait... I’ve read this again. So they’re annulling the legislation? Craig’s Esencia Contest #1 - Adam Zed Esencia Canonazo Cut - took off just the cap to produce a good draw. Not tight, but almost perfect. Pre-light aroma - I don't do this anymore as the smells might get mixed when I have a lot of singles in the same area. Apperance - Nice color, firm but not hard body. The cap was almost invisible, it was so well placed and pressed into the crown. Smoke time - 2 hours on the nose Drink - Pepsi and ice. Also a bottle of water if I want to cleanse well. Light - Toasted end with triple torch until an ember appears then draw a couple times with a little bit of heat to the end of the cigar. I decided to break this stick into quarters instead of the typical thirds...no reason, just thought it would work, and it did. First few puffs ( I don't use these to determine the whole first quarter ) - Big kick to the back of the throat. A lot of black pepper that I get from Nica tobacco. Very heavy. First quarter - After the first 4-6 pulls, the cigar settled down. I immidiately thought of Illusione MK. Smooth ! The back of throat raspiness went away immidiately. Black pepper lingers for a minute after expelling smoke. Pallet filling, great. The burn is great, straight and not pulling inside at all. The smoke at this point is drying my mouth with every puff, but making me salivate at the same time...I almost equate this to the experience of an almond when you first put it in your mouth, it is drying your mouth, but making you salivate at the same time. There is an underlying peaty/ earthiness that comes in only after smoke is expelled and taste lingers. At this point, it reminds me the only H. Upmann Mag 50 I have had, wonderful ! Second quarter - Started developing a white pepper flavor that I absolutely love, I only get this in T52 Toros and it is the flavor I always search for. Still a drying effect with the smoke in my mouth at the sides, almost like red wine tannins when you first take a drink and it gives you that "bite" at the back sides of your mouth. Still smooth. There is a mineral, almost metallic, taste that comes in now that works well with cigars on the finish. Third quarter - Settled out now to a lush white pepper flavor predominantly filling the pallet. Still a mineral feeling/taste that works. The body now goes from a steady medium, to medium-full as the smoke seems to get richer and thicker. Now I am getting a roasted deep tobacco flavor at the end of this quarter that fills out my missing piece for what I look for in a great cigar. MMMM ! White pepper and roasted tobacco complement each other so well because they don't bombard your pallet, but complement the experience. Last quarter - Same tastes at the beginning, but as I get deeper in, the roasted flavor starts to dominate. The flavor and smoke completely coat the mouth. I know when I blow smoke out and it becomes a giant white/grey cloud that floats in the air outside like a cloud, that it has now transcended into full bodied. The white pepper subsided and became a creamy roasted tobacco ending ... oh wow ! Great finish. I don't usually smoke cigars until I littlerally burn my fingers, most of the time I smoke them down to about an inch, but if the smoke is still cool enough and has flavors other than tar, I tend to incure short term pain for long term gain. I have only done this once, with a Padron Maduro. I highly recommend these cigars, and would buy more to lay them away for a little bit to see if that mineral taste would subside a little bit, as it was the only thing that wasn't helping earlier, but that mineral taste was not bad in any way. Now for the non-technical of this email; I love these cigars, and recommend them to as many people as I can. I have given them away to people, even though it is very hard for me to find them as the retailers are not willing to ship up here, and also turned people onto smoking these wonderful beauties. I have had the Lancero, Canonazo, Robusto, and Corona Extra's. My preferance is the robusto's as the blend just "fits". It is funny that when I ordered some cigars the last time, my friend who goes down across the border to pick them up for me and bring them back across to ship here informed me of how he had been looking for Esencias for a while as well. He was so happy to know where to get them after we discussed my source; Fullers Pullers. He was even happier when he was gifted a 5 pack of cigars heh. As far as my "experience" with Esencias, I cannot say that I have smoked them with anyone else at the same time, or done anything wild with them anywhere as I have just been smoking them for a few months now, but what I can say is that my "experience" with Marc of Brothers of the Leaf LLC has been fantastic ! He has treated me well, answered a few questions I have asked in a timely manor, sent me a couple cigars to start me off in down the road of ever-expanding credit card debt, and seems to be doing well at maintaining a great standard on his cigars. As a consumer, I cannot ask for much more from a brand owner....well I guess I could ask him to come up here to the frozen north for a shop event .......... but somehow I highly doubt that :/ Thanks Craig for reading this long-ass email, I am just so happy that I finally found a way to get these cigars up here, even though there are a bunch of hoops to jump through. #2 Ralph from Connecticut (Ralph Purificato) On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Ralph Purificato wrote: Hey guys. Long time podcast listener who went to the CRA website to support the Traditional Cigar Manufacturing and Small Business Jobs Preservation Act. Unfortunately the support in CT seem to fall on deaf ears as you can see below. My response from Senator Blumenthal was the same as from Mr. Leiberman. Just wanted to pass this on and see if we could make a little more noise in Connecticut to let our "representatives" know that consenting adults would like to make their own choices on how we spend our time and money. I also wanted to take the last half of this email to talk about Esencia cigars for Craig's contest. I still consider myself a "new" cigar smoker though I have been enjoying cigars for close to 10 years. It started when I was 18 and a friend and I were given cigars by an older relative. From that point on we've always frequented our local smoke shop, The Owl Shop in New Haven CT. Up until about 2 years ago I never bothered to try and pick out flavors and a cigar simply being smooth was my main criteria. Now since paying more attention and listening to podcasts and reviews I am enjoying cigars more than ever. With that being said, I finally picked up an Esencia cigar last week and enjoyed it on my porch with a glass of water. The first thing that hit me on the first few puffs was gingerbread. As I smoked the cigar more and tried to pick out the individual flavors, I found that the spice and cedar woody flavors I picked out combined to make that initial "gingerbread" that hit me initially. I really enjoyed this cigar and it seemed to fit the fall season that's starting here. The burn was also terrific and the cigar smoked great down to the nub. I will definitely be picking up more of these and really enjoyed it. -- Ralph from Connecticut #3 Dan Crouch WINNER - He shared the experience with another. I gotta say I never thought I would have an Esencia cigar in my life (or any super premium for that matter). There are no Brick and Mortars in the area and to be honest they are really not in my price bracket. However, due to the kindness of Marc Aub I received a few samples and now I am hooked. The cigar smells as good as it smokes and that is amazing. All have been smooth and had a nice touch of sweetness along with hints of pepper in the retro. I even gave one of the few to my dad and he just could not believe how smooth it was. Now I am saving my change in hopes of buying a box should I ever get up to the city (Chicago). #4 Charlie Platt from Springdale AR Some of the best NCCs in my man cave! I tried these on recommendation of Bob and Dale. Completely satisfied! A rich and complex smoke. Great work BOTL. Charlie Platt What's My Band? - This week we have three unbanded cigars, one from each of the hosts.. Bob: Dales unbanded (Famous Nicaraguan 7000): Great leather with a slight sweet spice, I enjoyed this cigar tremendously. Now I guess I have to buy some. Craig (Craigs own blend): unbanded was the best constructed lancero I had had for some time. But the tste did not quite live up to the construction all the way through. Craig: From Dale (Famous Nicaraguan 7000): 5x50 Prelight - No tingle,slight sweet spice; cinnamon? Slight Barn funk. Round, like it was from a cabinet or SBN cedar box packed loosely. Curious if it was put in cellophane to fool us or just an older cigar that has lost some shape. Oil lines where the cigar was touched by somethign else for an extended period. 1st 3rd - Immediate Earth & citrus sweetness. made me think of a royal Corona then, naturally of a Monte pascal. Little tangy sweetness similar to the Montecristo fruity tang. Overall, despite having the sweet Cuban flavors, the sweetness was more Nicaraguan in how it came across. More zing than Twang. Med Body (3/5) - Med/Strong Strength (3.5/5) Reminds me of the RP 15th at this point but stronger 2nd 3rd - Deepenign up in Flavors & continuing w/ med/high strength (4/5) Slight bready component - Good. Think this might be a blend instead of a Puro. Turning sugary sweet with less deep/dark flavors. The bread, sugar, and accompanying 1942 Tequila make a wonderful cookie flavor. Starts dropping strength back down to ⅗. Estelian sweetness, like Pepin gets out of his balsy Nic flavors. Like a JJ or a Black label 3rd 3rd - Sweet tang; more Esteli-an flavors. Less strength than 1st third, (who did we meet that positions leaves “backward”? Stalk than tip? They mentioned consistant flavor & strength.) This is so different from that idea. But, it behaves as if it was opposite traditional flavor/strength progression. Odd. It should be getting stronger if it was normal & staying the same if it was backward... Overall - Good, too much nicotine for an anytime smoke for me. Finished more to my preferred strength but started w/ more complexity & depth of flavor. Serie JJ? No real idea. From Bob (blended dring a Cigar Tourism trip in 2011): 6-1/8”x51 Parejo Prelight: Barely any wrapper aroma; loads of Saffron & paprika like smoke off of the filler. Very, very unique for a cigar to have this distinct savory spice flavor. Pretty wrapper with a funky cap. I didn’t cut this cigar, I peeled the simple cap off & separated the binder leaf below. Looks a lot like an Equadorian wrapper from the stuff La Aurora puts out but the sizes don’t match their production. 1st Third: Deep, rich flavors; cedary, caramel. Tastes immediately of both Jalapa Nicaraguan tobacco & Olor (?) Dominican. Nice mix of flavors 2nd Third: Sweet creamy depth that has evolved from the Nicaraguan base of initial flavors. Tastes like the sweetness off of a Habano wrapper. Could this be a La Reloba Habano? What happened to the Dominican notes? The appearance continues to shine with oils coming to the surface of this thick wrapper. Almost corojo leathery feel without the appearance. Beautiful veining, color consistency & oils. More sweet flavor now turning tart & tangy like sorbet Final Third: Buttery sweetness from the Creamy 2nd third with a wonderful grain. Still woody but a bit softer in how it comes across. Not as much body as initially and the flavors have gotten a little “easier” on the palate. Full flavored & still complex. I really enjoy this stick. Could it be all Nicaraguan or is there more to it? I would say no stronger than 3 /5 with an equivalent body. Great smoke. La Reloba? No real idea. Palio Cutter Contest: The September winner of a silver Palio cutter is Dan Lawson from Louisana. For October's contest, we are looking for photos of you and your friends enjoying cigars. Send your entry to theshow@cigarmedia.tv. Please include your mailing address with your entry and type "Palio" on the subject line. Do you have a suggestion for the unbanded cigar of the week? Every week Bob and Dale include an “unbanded cigar” segment in their show in which they smoke a cigar without any markings and give their honest opinions. Bob then opens a sealed envelope and discovers the cigar’s name and manufacturer. If you have suggestions for the "What's My Band?" segment, please send them to liz@cigarmedia.tv. Do you have a Cigar Review? If you call and leave a cigar review on the herf line and it is played on the show, you will receive a DogWatch Cigar Radio patch! You can reach the Herfline at 321-594-4373 - or cigar.radio on Skype. You can also send email to theshow@cigarmedia.tv. Music provided by the Figurados from their new album, "Lesson Two," and The Surfonics. Please visit our sponsors and let them know you heard about them from DogWatch! Black Dog Coffee: http://www.blackdogcoffee.net/ Cigar Tourism: http://cigartourism.com/ Esencia Cigars: http://www.esenciacigar.com/ La Palina: http://www.lapalinacigars.com/ La Tradicion Cubana: http://www.tradicion.com/ Miami Cigar and Company: http://www.miamicigarandcompany.com/ Monte Pascoal Cigars: http://www.montepascoalcigars.com/ Palio Cigar Cutters:http://paliocutters.com/ Primer Mundo Cigars: http://www.primermundocigars.com Vanderburgh Humidors: www.vanderburghhumidors.com

"CBR 145: To the Victor Belong the Spoils","Living in the city of champions has it's privileges. One being anytime someone challenges us to one of those playoff wagers we tend to win. In June Craig from the The Brew Bubbas challenged us a sixpack of Pennsylvania Beer vs Michigan beer on the outcome of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings. Craig went above and beyond securing way more than a six pack from breweries. Not to mention several limited releases. Thanks Craig, as well as Mario, Sydney, Evegeni, and Marc-Andre. This show is to you! Beers: Michagan Brewing Company - Mackinac Pale Ale Dragonmead - Crown Jewels IPA Founders Porter Big Rock Chop House - Saison St. Clair Dark Horse Brewing - 3 Guys Off The Scale Barleywine Rankings Jeff: 1. Founders Porter, 2. Mackinac Pale Ale, 3. St. Clair, 4. Off the Scale, 5. Crown Jewels Greg: 1. St. Clair, 2. Mackinac Pale Ale, 3. Founders Porter, 4. Off the Scale, 5. Crown Jewels Preshow - Big Rock Chop House - Maple Road Postshow "

"CBR 145: To the Victor Belong the Spoils","Living in the city of champions has it's privileges. One being anytime someone challenges us to one of those playoff wagers we tend to win. In June Craig from the The Brew Bubbas challenged us a sixpack of Pennsylvania Beer vs Michigan beer on the outcome of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings. Craig went above and beyond securing way more than a six pack from breweries. Not to mention several limited releases. Thanks Craig, as well as Mario, Sydney, Evegeni, and Marc-Andre. This show is to you! Beers: Michagan Brewing Company - Mackinac Pale Ale Dragonmead - Crown Jewels IPA Founders Porter Big Rock Chop House - Saison St. Clair Dark Horse Brewing - 3 Guys Off The Scale Barleywine Rankings Jeff: 1. Founders Porter, 2. Mackinac Pale Ale, 3. St. Clair, 4. Off the Scale, 5. Crown Jewels Greg: 1. St. Clair, 2. Mackinac Pale Ale, 3. Founders Porter, 4. Off the Scale, 5. Crown Jewels Preshow - Big Rock Chop House - Maple Road Postshow "