When Dave Pryor started UnPAved of the Susquehanna in 2018, gravel cycling was crystallizing into a discipline in cycling. It was reserved for the real hipsters, early movers, and the dreamers. Since then, gravel has changed, as has UnPAved. Now, the race is part of Pryor's full-time job, an institution in Pennsylvania cycling, and also unique in the landscape of gravel cycling.

In our most recent mini-episode on our Rodeo riders, we spoke to Pryor to learn more about a few things. Mostly, we chatted about the power of Pennsylvania's vast gravel goods, the strange place gravel racing holds on the East Coast, and what gravel means to him and his Flaanimal.

Enjoy!

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guest: Dave Pryor

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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Suspension forks on gravel bikes is a dividing line in the cycling world. For many, they are a tool that expands the use of the bike and reduces the stress associated with the rugged terrain that gravel biking revolves around. Others dismiss the tech as reinventing mountain bikes from the 1990s. 

We’ve been wanting to dig into this topic for a while because Rodeo Labs bikes could be well-suited for a little suspension, if that is your thing. This summer, Logan finally got enough time on two different fork options to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of gravel suspension. Stephen, who has been trying suspension forks for the last year, joined in on the podcast to add his two cents. Nevertheless, we wanted this podcast to be more than simply Stephen and Logan breaking down their experiences. So, we called up Will Hart, the product marketing manager at Cane Creek, to get into the gritty details of their Invert gravel fork and muse on the philosophy behind building specific gravel tech. 

If you are interested in investigating this further, Logan tested the Cane Creek Invert SL and the Rock Shox Rudy Ultimate XPLR. Both options had 30mm of travel, with the Rock Shox priced at $929 compared to the Cane Creek Invert SL at $1,099. Stephen tested the Cane Creek Invert CS and Fox 32 TC – Grip SL. Both forks had 40mm of travel, with the Fox priced at $999 and the Cane Creek at $1,199. 

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins and Stephen Fitzgerald 

Guest: Will Hart 

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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At Rodeo Adventure Labs, adventure is in the name of our company, so our side quests are quite crucial to what we do. These quests have shifted over the years – from Silverton, to Florida, and recently to the Dolomites – but the goal behind the travel has remained the same: bring people together to ride bikes in great places. 

In this episode of the Rodeo Labs Podcast, Drew, Stephen, and Logan delve into the traveling Rodeo has undertaken, both locally and abroad. Where have we gone, what have we learned, and why does it mean so much independent of economic returns? 

Lastly, Drew and Stephen break down the most recent trip to the Dolomites and explain why Italy’s northeast might be a Trail Donkey “Dreamland.”

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guests: Drew van Kampen and Stephen Fitzgerald 

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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We are back with a new season of the Rodeo Labs Podcast, as the summer and all of its hecticness turns to fall. With the Intern off in LA, it was down to Drew and Logan to bring us up to speed on a few key topics that saw significant developments over the last few months. 

The podcast is a three-parter. We start off with a look at several new group-sets that were released in a steady drip this June (3:38), then shift to the recent release of two new bikes with very different takes on chainstay length (25:00). We then close with a quick breakdown of the development of 750d wheels (49:00). Or was it actually a way for Logan to get on his favorite soapbox and defend the 650b standard? Listen, or you may never know. 

We plan on having a consistent output of episodes for the next four to five weeks. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform. 

Host: Logan Jones-Wikins and Drew van Kampen 

Producer and Editor: Logan Jones-Wilkins 

Executive Producer: Stephen Fitzgerald

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If there is one thing that you should know about Rodeo, it is that you get to make it your way. Nick from Wove took that to heart and cooked up a bike that really pushed the limits of what is possible. The build was launched and was written up on Escape Collective with contributions from Nick, Steve the Intern and the rest of the bike companies that contributed to the build.

You can read that story here.

Nevertheless, this particular bike was worth much more than a few thousand words, so we took the discussion to the podcast! Between Logan, Stephen, and Nick, all the big questions were asked, answered, and deliberated. You won't want to miss it!

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins and Steve the Intern

Guest: Nick From Wove

Producer/Editor: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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When Luis decided to ride from his home in the Bay Area to his grandmother's home in Guadalajara, Mexico, he didn't know much about the journey ahead. What he did know, however, was that it required more than just his Flannimal. Being a sucker for a good story, Steve the Intern wanted to help him problem solve and thought it would be a good idea to make a prototype Show Pony available for Luis' trip south. What resulted was a trip of a lifetime that brought so much joy, adventure, and understanding to Luis, not only as a cyclist but also as a first-generation American of Mexican heritage. In this edition of the Rodeo Rider Files, Logan and Luis talk about his journey, unpack the intrigue, and delve into how to accurately reflect Mexico's deep cultural facets without ignoring the danger that would be naive to ignore.

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guest Luis Orozco Sanchez

Editor and Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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The Classified Powershift Hub, with its internal gearing that makes a 1x chainring work like a 2x, has always been a point of curiosity around the Lab. However, without a full groupset to give the shifting a proper home, there has always been hesitation. That is, until Logan got his hands on the brand new collaboration between the Belgian company and the brake specialists at TRP for a full review at Cycling Weekly. From that testing, it was clear we needed to delve into it here. In this episode, Logan ceded the hosting chair to Stephen Fitzgerald, our Intern/CEO, and we brought Drew Van Kampen, our resident Always Trying New Things Guy, to pepper Logan with questions around the new groupset and explore a few tangents along the way. 

Host: Stephen Fitzgerald 

Guests: Drew Van Kampen and Logan Jones-Wilkins

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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We are back after a spring break here at the Rodeo Labs Podcast with a brand new season of stories for your ears. Everything from tech to adventures will be discussed this summer as we head back to the (podcasting) lab to delve into things we are getting up to.

Fortunately for us, Stephen gave us a great place to start with a win at the recent Pinyons and Pines nano-ultra bike-packing race around Flagstaff, Arizona! Not only was it a win, but Stephen managed to do it on the Project Denver Show Pony, a prototype mountain bike that Rodeo is reaching, developing, and making right here in our Colorado home.

Logan and Stephen get in-depth into the race, Stephen's eclectic racing career, why the draw to race persists, and what Project Denver means in this crazy economic climate, the bike industry is currently facing.

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guest: Stephen Fitzgerald

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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You might already be familiar with our next episode in the Rodeo Rider Files series: Luke Hall. Luke is our resident long-haul factory racer with big results in 200+ mile bike races like second place in the 2023 Unbound XL and a win at the 2024 Gravel Worlds Long Voyage.

Luke sat down with us to discuss the high peaks and low valleys of 2024, what he is looking forward to in 2025, and what he has learned from a decade of bike racing. Things get deep along the way, touching on many topics in a quick-hitting 45 minutes, but as the kids might say, it is all for the love of the game.

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guest: Luke Hall

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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Sponsorship in cycling is a moving target. In all aspects of the sport, sponsorship is a crucial marketing tool, but it is often economically inefficient. What’s more, those two outcomes are difficult to track, adding to the complexity of the topic.

While the importance of sponsorship is integral to a wide range of elements of the cycling business, it is so difficult to discuss because everyone has their perspectives and interests shaping how they interact with it. Even journalists cannot be entirely unbiased as relationships and support are unavoidable. Conflict of interest, to some degree, is unavoidable. 

Yet, here at Rodeo Adventure Labs, we are not phased. Sponsorship is a constant topic of conversation here, so we felt we needed to bring that conversion out into the open. To do that, we called up Hailey Moore from The Radavist to add to our collective understanding of sponsorship in terms of marketing, storytelling, and athletics. After two recordings, many emails, lots of outlining, and a dose of audio cleaning, we came up with an episode that we found fascinating. For those of you who have liked what we have done before, we hope you will enjoy this as well. 

You can read more from Hailey on The Radavist here, including a profile she wrote about the Rodeo HQ that sparked this whole conversation that you can find here.

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guests: Stephen Fitzgerald and Hailey Moore

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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At the end of the year, most publications and their writers come out with the four or five favorite products they used in the past year. Most of these things are the cutting edge of their categories or a niche product that fits a specific year. These stories are great because they often allow journalists to write about their favorite things and are often useful to a wide range of people.

This year we here at Rodeo Labs wanted to get in on the fun, but to stay true to our roots we did things a bit differently. So we got together our host and resident bike journalist Logan Jones-Wilkins, CEO and Head Intern Stephen Fitzgerald, engineer and fourth finish at the Tour Divide Cade Richenberger, and product manager/master tinkerer Drew Van Kampen together for a podcast. Specifically, a podcast discussing our four favorite things from four different categories.

At the end of the year, most publications and their writers come out with the four or five favorite products they used in the past year. Most of these things are the cutting edge of their categories or a niche product that fits a specific year. These stories are great because they often allow journalists to write about their favorite things and are often useful to a wide range of people.

This year we here at Rodeo Labs wanted to get in on the fun, but to stay true to our roots we did things a bit differently. So we got together our host and resident bike journalist Logan Jones-Wilkins, CEO and Head Intern Stephen Fitzgerald, engineer and fourth finish at the Tour Divide Cade Reichenberger, and director of product development/master tinkerer Drew Van Kampen for a podcast. Specifically, a podcast discussing our four favorite things from four different categories.

We didn’t limit ourselves in this discussion to new products like most end-of-year lists do – some of our products are much older, while others are still to hit the shelves – but we did do all non-Rodeo products to ensure our recommendations stay true to things we have simply enjoyed and would like to put on your radar. Most importantly, we also didn’t limit ourselves to a set clock, so for this pod, we lingered a bit to cover all the ground we needed to and we found some pretty interesting rabbit holes along the way. 

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We are back with another Rodeo rider episode! This time we sat down with Jeff Chapman. Jeff is from Kansas City, Missouri, and is new to Rodeo Labs this year as he has waded further into the gravel thicket.

Jeff started his journey into cycling around the pandemic and is now a two-time participant of Unbound. The race in Kansas has taken on extra meaning for Jeff whose day job is spent out on those same Flint Hills gravel roads. Nevertheless, as is common practice for Rodeo riders, the urge to explore has brought Jeff to expand his racing exploits and explores bigger challenges, most recently taking on a race in Germany.

Jeff's story is different from our previous guests, but for me, it was very similar to the countless chats I’ve had with rodeo owners all across the country at races. Only this time did we turn on the microphones first! 

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guest: Jeff Chapman

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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Over the last few weeks, the Lab has been hard at work finishing the new updates to our range of bikes before the holiday season goes into full swing with a brand new Flaanimal 6 Titanium and a tweaked Trail Donkey 4.2. Both bikes offer a new Spork and a new UDH-capable slider system, while the new Flaanimal offers a laundry list of new innovative ideas packed into the bike that builds on the legacy of the previous Flaanimals that have already wandered the Earth. Logan sat down with Drew to get into the weeds of Rodeo's unique way of doing development cycles, what goes into a new iteration of a bike that has a great tradition, and the specific joys of the myriad of gems included in the final cut of the Flaanimal. Less is said of the new Trail Donkey, mostly because the bike is the same, beyond the way the slider adjusts the rear of the bike and the fork updates. More information on both bikes is available on the Rodeo Labs website.

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guest: Drew van Kampen

Editor: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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Cullen Perkey is a U23 mountain biker and a new member of the Rodeo Labs Family after he got his Trail Donkey 4.0 this past summer. Cullen's baby blue Trail Donkey is what he describes as "the most aerodynamic mountain bike ever," and trail mode is his standard operating procedure: big tires, short cranks, and lots of steez. In this conversation, Cullen and I dove into his roots as a rider and a racer, what brought him to get a Rodeo, and what he has done thus far as a mountain biker with a new drop bar habit.

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guest: Cullen Perkey

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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This week, we are back in the Lab to consider the new SRAM RED XPLR AXS (so many capital letters!) and its use of the UDH (moar capital letters! moar!). While we jest at the branding, the tech is serious business. The new 1x13 groupset leans into the SRAM Transmission style rear derailleur and brings it to drop bar bikes, with the UDH hanger instead of the previous convention of specific hangers for specific frames.

We delve into some of the specifics, but the majority of the conversation is about how these big standard shifts in the bike industry affect small-frame brands. Along the way, we also find a few tangents to discuss some of the nuances of groupsets in this day and age of cycling. In this conversation, Stephen and Logan talk shop at first, before the Intern passes the baton to Drew Van Kampen and Cameron Lindberg to get into the weeds. Then, it's back to Stephen and Logan to bring it all around.

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guests: Stephen Fitzgerald, Drew van Kampen, and Cameron "Coco" Lindberg

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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This is the first installment of a podcast series that we are calling the Rodeo Rider Files where we will sit down with extended members of the Rodeo Labs community. First up is Conor Dancy.

Conor lives in Northern Virginia, amongst the historic gravel roads of Loudoun County, and is a pilot in his free time. He is a real matter-of-fact presence and someone who loves cycling, the little things, and Big Dumb Rides—all things we can get behind.

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guest: Conor Dancy

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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Cody Cirillo and Matthew Tufts approached us early this year with an inspiring pitch: They wanted to spend a couple of human-powered months riding the outer perimeter of Iceland on Rodeo Labs bikes, all the while carrying their skis, and peeling off to notch seemingly innumerable ski descents along the way. We get plenty of project pitches at Rodeo, but this one stood out because it combined a world that we know a lot about with a world that we know very little about, all in a land that we very much want to explore ourselves someday.

Sit back as our hosts Logan Jones-Wilkins and Steve The Intern discuss the adventure all the way from it's "why", to the preparations, the endless headwinds, the long days on the bike, the line between skier and cyclist, the impacts of adventure travel, and more.

Stay tuned for the cinematic release of this story in fall / winter 2025, and in select ski publications.

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We are back with another round table conversation, this time focusing on the 2024 Tour Divide and, in particular, the two Rodeo Lab-affiliated riders who took on the challenge this June. Both Cade and Edyn had a massively successful outing with Cade arriving in Antelope Wells as the fourth finisher and Edyn finishing a few days later as the youngest-ever finisher of the Tour at just 15 years old.

Nevertheless, on the Continental Divide success is still filled with many ups and downs that come with some of the highest, wildest terrain in the United States. Stephen and Logan dug into it all with the pair of intrepid athletes, recounting the run-ins with lightning, mud, wind, and technical choices that went into the effort.

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Carbs Fuel has come on the scene this year as a simple, cost-effective gel that delivers 50 grams of carbohydrates in a neat $2.00 package. Stephen and Logan have both felt a shift in their fueling ability and understanding of on the bike nutrition after adding these gels to their pockets for training and racing, so it seemed like an easy choice to have the creators of this new endurance elixir on the podcast. To learn more about the company we invited Gabe Multer, the founder and CEO of Carbs Fuel, and Laini Ritsch, the CFO of the brand, into the Lab's podcast studio for a wide-ranging conversation on starting the company and why Carbs Fuel gels are the way they are.

From the jump, we also would like to stress from the get go that neither Stephen, Logan, or this episode is sponsored by Carbs Fuel. We buy our gels at full price and we wanted to look at the company since there are aspects of the company that are unique in ways that fit what we are doing at the Lab.

Hosts: Logan Jones-Wilkins and Stephen Fitzgerald

Guests: Gabe Multer and Laini Ritsch

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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