The Rodeo Labs Podcast

On this special episode of the Rodeo Labs Podcast, we sat down with Jacqueline Claudia and Michael White of the White Line Foundation to discuss how the organization has been championing key policy on the federal and state levels. Claudia is the Executive Director of the White Line, while White is the co-founder and the father of Magnus White, whose death in Boulder County in 2023 was the catalyst...

After spending a few thousand miles on the new Shimano GRX/XTR Di2 mullet (yep, flows right off the tongue), Drew Van Kampen and Logan Jones-Wilkins dig deep into their feelings, sensations, and opinions around the new electronic offering from the Japanese component giant. In line with their reviews of the SRAM XPLR update, a detailed look at the TRP Vistar/Classified groupset, and hopefully more...

Welcome back to the Rodeo Labs Podcast and our annual Four Favorite Things episode. We got Drew, Stephen, Logan, and Cullen Perkey, a new member of the round table of bike geeks, on the show to discuss their four favorite bike things they used this past year. From bottom brackets to shifters, mountain bike pants, and insulated bottles, we went wide and weird with it, but everything had a good expl...

Success, we are learning, comes in many forms. At Rodeo this year, we've had a successful year – by some metrics, it's been our best year – but from another perspective, it has been a year of immense challenge. Those challenges have extended all the way to the holidays, with new hurdles around every curve. Yet, as we tend to do, we are set on taking the wins and losses in stride as we fl...

Cyclo-cross has never not been a part of the Rodeo story, even if it hasn't been front and center. For a company that doesn't not make cyclo-cross-capable bikes, all these double negatives leave us pondering the sport every time we hear #crossiscoming. This year, Stephen answered the call of cyclo-cross, and so too did Cam Little, a Rodeo rider from West Virginia and Marian University. Now that th...

What even is a road bike? We investigate with Tyler Simon, an engineer, cyclist, and the mind behind the most road-optimized Rodeo Trail Donkey we have ever been a part of. Plus, Stephen and Logan get into the question of all-road bikes and why Logan is all over this new cycling trend. Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins Guests: Tyler Simon and Stephen Fitzgerald Editor and producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins Hos...

It is finally time to talk big tires. The subject is all the rage these days, but we've been here for a while – riding our thick gravel tires on rigid drop bar bikes for years. Nevertheless, we are intrigued by a lot of what is coming to the discourse, especially some of the quantitative testing we are seeing from certain corners of the internet. Most notably, John Karrasch, a.k.a @flexfitbyjohn o...

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...

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-suit...

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 Loga...

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 thi...

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 stor...

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' tr...

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...

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...

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...

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 ha...

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 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 thos...

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 lega...

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 r...

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 f...

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, an...

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 wor...

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....