The Gravel Ride. A cycling podcast

Evil Bikes - Chamois Hagar Gravel Bike with Jason Moeschler

03.17.2020 - By Craig DaltonPlay

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Evil Bikes, best known as an MTB company, bursts onto the gravel scene at the end of 2019 with the Chamois Hager model.  With an aggressive geometry and dropper post, the bike immediately turned heads.  We talk with Evil Bikes COO, Jason Moeschler about the design philosophy and intention  Evil Bikes Website Evil Bikes Instagram Automated transcription (please excuse the typos). Good day everyone and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host, Craig Dalton. I needed to take a minute this week and talk to you about the podcast. I've been doing it for two years now, having produced over 50 episodes. I very much appreciated the time you dedicate to listening every month and how you've shared the podcast with friends. The community has really grown, which has been super exciting and I'm super privileged to be part of that journey. As you guys explore and continue to be passionate about gravel cycling, one of the things I've been grappling with is the cost structure of producing the podcast. You may recognize that this isn't a full time job for me, but I am incurring costs on a monthly basis. Every time I put out episodes from hosting to editing to transcription and my time in general and I've been grappling with what to do about those expenses as we sort of pass into our second year. I thought about putting some of the content behind a pay wall or putting some episodes behind a pay wall, but that really just didn't make sense. At the end of the day, I want to provide information and audio content to those of you who are interested in finding out about events, race organizers, and hearing from athletes that are participating in the sport. So I came back to the idea that I'm going to need to start offering some advertising slots into the podcast and I'll try to keep them short and I'll try to keep them up front and not interrupt the content too much, but I wanted to just get out in front of it and let you guys know that I'm just doing this really to offset the costs and to be able to invest a little bit more into the podcast, into distribution, and into all the great things that I hope we're providing to the world. So as with everything I do, I definitely want your feedback, so feel free to shoot me a note of, Hey, that you're doing the right thing or BU this is really disappointing me. I'm always open to feedback and looking forward to hearing from you guys. So with all that said, I did want to tell you about our first sponsor cycle Oregon. I've spoken about the state of Oregon a couple of times on the podcast and we've certainly had guests from that area. I love the state for riding. I've spent time on the Oregon timber trail, mountain biking at fat tire Fest and bend riding in hood river. And I think my very first gravel event was actually up in Oregon, so I was super stoked in connecting with the team up at cycle Oregon. They're a nonprofit organization that has been transforming individuals and communities through cycling. So why are they here on the gravel ride podcast? Well, it's not too big a leap to understand that cycle Oregon who's been putting on events for I think a couple of decades, they are going to be highlighting some of the amazing gravel roads around the Thai Valley. Yeah, it's Ty like titanium, but not spelled that way. They've got a great two day event, which I think is kind of a cool format. They're camping overnight. So you'll be camping with all the, all the different riders and they're organizing two back to back gravel adventure days out of that Valley. So for those of you looking for ways of spending an entire weekend doing an event rather than kind of just a one day hit at a race, this cycle, Oregon gravel events, which is coming up here in may is a great alternative. I can't tell you how cool that area looks. It's kind of nestled below a hood river and above bend in the state of Oregon. So check that out on the map and definitely go to cycle oregon.com because they've got some video about the event that they're producing. You can register right there for the event and if you put the promo code T G R in your registration, the team up there as promised, a little special treat for our listeners. So go check them out. They're investing in gravel, they're investing in adventure for our community. So it's another great way to spend a weekend. This may again, that's cycle oregon.com for more information. So speaking of sweet adventures, I've got a rad episode for you coming up. We were fortunate to sit down with Jason Moseler from evil bikes talking about the Shammy Hagar. This bike burst onto the scene in November last year and really sent shockwaves through a lot of the gravel press as they were taking what was seen as a radical approach to gravel frame construction and geometry. I'm not going to say too much more because I want Jason to explain the concept to you in his own words, but suffice it to say what I thought going into the conversation is not what came out of it. Jason and the team up there at eval have a real clear vision on why this approach is great for gravel cyclists and believe they've created a really amazing platform for people to go out there and explore. So with that said, let's dive right in. Jason, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Right on. Jason, could you start by telling the listener a little bit about your background and a little bit about the company history? Yeah. personally I race mountain bikes professionally for 22 years. The whole time I race, I worked also so 11 years at a bike shop 10 years with wilderness trail bikes, a little bit of home-building sprinkled in between there and and now I've been at eval for two and a half years. Evil was founded in 2008 and really didn't start selling bikes until 2014 with the launch of the following, the 120 millimeter full suspension, 20 Niner. And at that point the whole mountain bike industry was the, the, the whole industry. The ship had turned to 27.5 inch wheels and then all of the sudden eval lands this super aggressive, super playful, long, low and flack 29 or bike in it. It just like stopped the industry in its tracks. And from that point forward, evil has, has been looked at as this, this kind of game changer of a design and geometry company. Yeah. I encourage the listener to go out and check out the website and check out some of the history of evil. Cause I do remember that time period and it was like boom, here is a bad ass mountain bike coming to market. That's kind of a little bit different and a bit different in all the right ways. So it's an exciting time For sure. And you know, the, the fact that it was a 20 Niner and the fact that it had a really never before themed geometry was one thing. But then you had evils design language in the frame, the actual industrial design and it looked like nothing anyone had ever seen before. And that that same design language has plopped forward to the bike we're going to talk about today, the Shammy Hagar gravel bike. Yeah, I think it's interesting and you know, some people may be scratching their heads, why are we talking about full suspension mountain bikes for the first few minutes of this podcast. But as we've often talked about, you know, the gravel bike market, there's a, there's a spectrum. There's, there's starting with a road bike and adding a little bit of tire clearance and we've kind of talked about that as being called the road plus category. And then there's the other end of the spectrum. And I think we, one of the things that comes up time and time again is depending on what terrain is out in your backyard, your idea of a gravel bike can be radically different. So in December, you know, just a, just a couple of months back when you guys introduced the Shammy Hagar, it was like boom. It was another one of those moments where someone was saying to the industry and to the consumers, Hey, here's a different perspective. We're thinking about a rider that's maybe coming from a different geography and has a different idea about what writing is, looks like it's not, you know, simple, pleasant gravel roads that people were riding on 28 see tires. This is a different kind of animal. So can you just talk a little bit about the Shammy Hagar at a high level and then we'll get into some of those details that make it a different performing bike. For sure. Yeah. So when the Hagar was designed, we really didn't want to exclude people from the road side. We, we didn't want to make this a mountain bike and there's some key features in the bike that every rider that likes to peddle will appreciate. The first thing is that the seat angle on, on the Shami it's at the forward edge of the UCI C2 bangle position. What that means is that your pedal position is there in relation to the bottom bracket. It's not some, you know, crazy steep mountain bike seat tube angle that, you know, the full suspensions are using to, you know, take advantage of all the kinematics and everything. It's really a, a road huddling position. When you look at the bike from the side, it looks really long and it is really long. But what we've done to accommodate for that length in the peddling position is that we've flapped a really short handlebar STEM on there. We're, we're shipping the bikes out with a 40 millimeter to 60 millimeter STEM. And so what that short STEM has done is put the rider essentially in the same pedaling position that they're used to on their road bike. So we have essentially given a road rider, if you will, the optimal peddling position, a handlebar and handlebar position that they would really appreciate so that they're not excluded. But then on the extreme side, we link them the wheel base. We dropped the top two way down. We don't sell this bike without a drop or post. So all of the sudden you have a bike that can get your center of gravity really low, allow you to get your weight back and descend really comfortably. Yeah, I think that, you know, those are some of the things, if, if you're not driving or listening to this while you're riding, check out an image of the bike because it is striking some of these things. But as you're describing it, Jason, I know you've guys have put a lot of effort into making it feel as if you're in a sort of traditional gravel bike position. Ultimately, however, the angles are going to play out quite differently in terms of how the bike's gonna perform. Particularly descending, I imagine. Exactly, exactly. When you look at the overall schematic of a Shammy Hagar versus when we look at when Eagle looks at other gravel bikes there, to us, they're all very similar. And in general, the Shammy, Hagar, the wheelbase is about a hundred millimeters longer maybe even a little bit more. And what has happened to the rider position in relation to the front rear axle? Is that in relation to the axle? The rider, sorry, the wheel axles, the rider has moved back and down a little bit, but again, like I said, that pedal position is is maintained. Now a lot of people look at the Shami and they're like, Oh man, there's no way that thing is gonna turn. It's, it's gonna feel floppy. What they don't realize is that the bike has a very custom fork, very custom actual, the crown measurement, custom offset which was developed by Dave Weigle. Day wiggle comes from the mountain bike side. People probably know about him, but if there's one person that knows how to make a bike handle good, it is Dave Weigle. And so he's got his paintbrush all over this bike. And so what you'll discover is that he's, he's adjusted this thing to where it doesn't have any steering disadvantages. It doesn't have any cornering disadvantages. In fact, you end up, you know, the faster you go cornering the, the more you realize, wow, this thing, it's, you just keep finding more potential with it. Yeah. If I'm understanding you correctly, if you're sort of shifting your body weight back a little bit because they've got the shorter STEM, how does that translate to cornering performance off road? Well so when you look at the Shami, the top tube is dropped way down and it also has the dropper posts. So if you drop that seat posts, all of the sudden that seat isn't in your way. And so you can get your weight down way down. Like nothing you've ever felt before on a regular gravel bike. And what that does is it allows you to get your center of gravity down which allows you to keep the wheels more planted on the ground. It just, it like being down and low. Is, is what allows you to get your weight low and get more traction to the tire and also not feel like you're top heavy. And like, you know, if you hit an obstacle, you're gonna buck yourself over the bars or something. So that, that sloping top tube really along with the dropper post really lets the rider get their weight down and low. And then the other part of that equation, and you've probably seen this with a lot of, with a lot of your listeners, is that most gravel writers these days, and I, and I hear this from a lot of my colleagues, they say, you know, I don't use the drops anymore. I just use the top of the hood. And that's my comfortable position. But in our opinion, the top of the hoods is a very scary place to hold on to. When you're trying to negotiate something technical, when you're going really fast, we also feel that the drops are very uncomfortable. For the same reason you get your front, your front end weight is just disproportionate when you're in your drops on a standard gravel or road set up. If your front wheel hits an obstacle, your your way wants to be thrown forward with the Shammy, you drop your seat post and all of a sudden because your body is lower, your angle of attack going into the drop bars is much better. So all of the sudden you've got this amazing position to use your drops. They actually feel good to be in the drops. Not only that, but your angle of attack towards your brake levers and your shift gears in the drops is like nothing you've ever felt on a, on a standard gravel bike. Typically it's very hard to, to strike a good balance of good hood position when you're holding to the top and good hood position. When you're in the drops and reaching for the brake lever, how's your, you can get your, your weight low on the rear of the Shammy. With the feet dropped, all of the sudden there's this whole new world of accessibility using the drop bars. Yeah, I have to say those are some really important takeaways and as listeners know, I'm a big fan of the dropper post and I can see in the design of the Shammy Hagar how you really get down low. And it's interesting that you mentioned kind of that the hoods versus drops because I was, it was riding yesterday and descending here in mill Valley and, and just thinking about how better the position was with my saddle really dropped with the dropper post, kind of my hands felt very comfortable and planted and my weight was was low. So when it got steep I didn't feel like I was getting flipped over the bars. And I think your point about, you know, a lot of riders descending on the hoods is absolutely spot on. It's crazy. And I, I see people, mostly people in my rear view mirror that I'm passing who are descending on the hoods because there's just no way you can keep the control with just really effectively your, your thumb part of your hand being the only thing that's effectively gripping and holding you onto the bike. Exactly. Exactly. And now the other thing to consider with the Shammy Hagar versus a typical gravel bike. Sure you can throw a dropper post on a typical gravel bike, but the typical gravel bikes, the triangles are bigger. A lot of the bikes out there, they're their road bikes that are trying to be gravel bikes or they're gravel bikes that are trying to be cyclocross bikes. But the common theme is that the triangle's pretty big, so you can't fit a very long dropper on there. And so the cause of that, you just can't get as low as you could get on the Shami because the frame is organically, way lower. So you can just get yourself way, way lower. And that gets you way more wheel traction. It gets you the ability to lean way further back when you are going really fast. But that dropper posts and not compact frame, that's only part of the equation. When you take a typical gravel bike and you put a dropper post on, you're still dealing with the, the how do you, how do you say it? The, the road bike style front end. What I mean by that is you typically have tow overlap. You typically have a very short amount of trail. You typically have very steep head two bangles. And so those three things combined, they still make for a really sketchy descending experience. Compare that to the Shami where you essentially have a following MB mountain bike front end on this thing to scare with. It wants to attack aggressive stuff and that's what you get with the riding position of the Shami is you, you've essentially been given, we've, we sprinkled in all the benefits of mountain bike geometry to help descending feel more comfortable and safe on, on our gravel bike. And then have you designed it around a specific wheel size? Yeah. We, so this bike holds a 700 by 50 tire. So effectively a 29 by 2.0 and that's what we spec it with. And we've had a lot of questions of, well, Hey, why, why don't you, you know, promote like a, a road plus like a six 50 by 47. And our answer is well, cause you can use a 700 by 47. It to us it's just like a mountain bike. The bigger wheel is better. And so that's kind of where we're trying to scare people. I actually worked at WTB when the road plus tires were created and what we were doing there was working with consumers and bike brands that had road bikes that had some extra width and the chains days where they could take this road plus wheelset throw it on their road bike and you know, have a bike that goes off road much better and still does on road pretty good. The height of that six 50 by 47, the tire is essentially the same as a 700 by 30 road tire. So, you know, tired of feet tube, your clearance is good. You just need that chain stay with. But again, that's, that's taking a road bike and trying to make it you know, go off road better the evil Shammy Hagar, we, we're not trying to be a road bike. We're not trying to be a cyclocross bike. We're, we're trying to be the best gravel bike possible. So do you, we talk a lot and we've talked a lot about sort of descending and cornering. How, how do things play out when we're climbing? So again the climbing position, the peddling position is exactly what a rider would want. It's, it's exactly comparable to their road bike or their current gravel bike. So feed angle saddle for AFT, all that adjustability is, is just like what the rider is used to. Same as a bar position. So measuring center of the seat posts to center, the handlebar handlebar height below the saddle height. All of, all of those measurements that riders appreciate are achievable. Say you're a very traditional road rider who when measuring from the ground you'd like your handlebars to be about seven centimeters below your saddle height when also measured from the ground, you know, like a very aggressive kind of pro road position. You can actually do that with a Shammy Hagar. You can achieve that position. But here's the awesome thing. When you start going downhill, you're not stuck in that position. You can get the seat way down and all of the sudden you've turned yourself into a rider who had like, you know, a pro road position and now all of a sudden you can go downhill with the seat post down and you're in like the most Aero position you could ever, you could ever obtain because you're so low. And you know what you see with the pro road riders as they you know, their seats are up and they, they get their weight or they get their body in front of the saddle and then they drop themselves down on the top tube. Like this super dangerous riding position. Well, imagine just slamming the seat all the way down to the seat color and you can actually keep your weight back a little bit into a safe zone. I'm pretty much positive that this bike will out descend any road bike. I have all these dreams of Peter Saigon riding this thing and you know, he already smokes people, but I can't even imagine what that guy could do on this bike. No, I hear you. I, it was funny, as you're starting your description, I was imagining like the, the Chris Froome sitting on the top tube dissent position and how that just doesn't work for gravel, but you can effectively get there if you've got a long dropper, you can just be sitting comfortably on the saddle. Totally in control and totally low. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, I'm curious, you know, if we will, we will see these dropper posts on the, in the pro Peloton for exactly the reasons you're talking about. Now that I've been hooked on our dropper post, if I go back to Europe and I'm descending off of Alpe d'Huez or some classic climb, I would definitely want to drop her post on my bike. Totally. There are some technology that has taken time to break into the let's say those of us and I'm, and I'm one of us that appreciate lightweight. We appreciate efficiency. We appreciate you know, the ability to go from point a to point B quickly go uphill quickly. You know, disc brakes is one of those things. For cross country, mountain biking, dropper posts. I mean, they're, they're just starting to break in there. And for gravel, I think you know, bellow news just did a podcast not too long ago where they were, they were saying dropper post isn't appropriate for gravel. It's just not needed. We really hope that this bike shows people that it actually, it's not just a needed, it's, it's incredibly beneficial. Yeah. I think that's what's really exciting about people taking bold stabs at what gravel bikes should look like. Whether it's what you guys are doing or some of the forays into suspending mountain bikes. I think it's opening people's eyes that the things we're trying to do on these bikes are different and fresh perspective, whether it's coming from the mountain bike world or outside. The industry is very much warranted in this moment in time. And it's giving people a lot to think about and shaking up the establishment in a big way. For sure. And there's other, there's other stabs the devil took as well. For instance, the short STEM mountain bikers is known now for 10 years, that long STEM are not beneficial. So we didn't go halfway. We went all the way down to mountain bikes STEM. And we did that because day wiggle knows how to correct the geometry to make the bike steer correctly. So there's, there's no reason to leave STEM length on there. It's, it's silly. The other thing is we, we just, we used 160 millimeter rotors on this bike. The, the main reason being is while you've effectively got a a mountain bike geometry for going downhill, so you're going to catch yourself going faster. So you need better stopper. So one 60 rotor standard across the board. And then another thing that some people scratch their head over is that we used a 30.9 feet post diameter. The reason we did that because you use 30.9, you can get any option of feet post that the entire world of dropper posts is your oyster. If you use 27.2, your, your weight loss is minimal. And all of the sudden you're heavily, heavily restricted over, you know, your seat post choices. Another big question we've gotten is front derailer compatibility and we left that on there. We left it on the Shammy. We want the customer to have all the options. For some people this bike might need almost mountain bike Gehring. And at the same time they might want, you know, a really high gear similar to a road to a road bike. So, you know, this bike could effectively be both of those bikes in the same ride. And so we wanted to really keep things open for the rider. Yeah. I think one of the things that struck me when I first saw the design of the bike was, you know, people often were in the early days of gravel biking, we're saying, Oh, we're just going back to a 1990s hard tail mountain bike geometry. And obviously over the decades the mountain bike geometry has shifted and all the ways that you've discussed the slacker head angles, the shorter stems, and my, my first gut reaction was, Hey, maybe these guys are just cut through that journey because of the mountain bike experience and put us at our ultimate end goal. And all gravel bikes are gonna look like this in 10 years. I don't know the answer to that, but it's certainly interesting to kind of think about it in that, that framework. Yeah. You're, yeah, you really bring up a good point. This bike is not compatible with a front a front suspension fork. And there's some thought behind that. Had we made it compatible with the suspension fork, you would essentially have a hard tail mountain bike with drop bars and a suspension fork. But we weren't trying to go there. We wanted to make the lightest, most felt best ascending gravel bike we could. We're, we're not trying to make a mountain bike here. We're, we're really trying to make like a tried and true gravel bike. That, you know, is just, just that it's, it's great for riding these dirt roads. It, of course, that'll handle, you know, it'll handle single track good too. But make no mistake, it's not a mountain bike on a single track, on smooth single track. You're good. But you know, if you're riding rough stuff like ride your mountain bike for sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's definitely one of those those lines that I'm sure you guys were super conscious of. It seems like you've, you've built the bike also to be ready for adventure. I noticed a lot of islets to, to Mount bags and whatnot to add. Can you talk a little bit about that angle? Yeah. We we didn't want any limitations on this thing. As far as being bike packable. So we gave it every amount that it could have. Fender mounts. Without heavy modification to the fender, you can fit 700 by 40 a tire with a fender on the bike with heavy modification of offenders in the rear. If you actually cut the fenders around the chain, stay a little bit. You can actually run the fenders with the full size 700 by 50 tire. We have employees that are using this bike as a commuter bike. Their daily driver, they've got a bike rack mounted to the back. You can, you buy an optional fee caller that allows the top brackets of the bike rack to Mount to the seat color. The bike has one, two, three, four, five, six water bottle cage mounts on a medium through extra large and five on small. And then it has, it has the ability to hold pretty much any bag that you want. So one of our ambassadors free ride legend led Brown sheet just returned from a bike packing trip in Thailand. And she's kind of our, our first test. We all have like, how heavy can you load this thing down? And as it turns out, I mean, it, it, it's as good of a bike packing bike as it is a gravel bike, you know, the, the roads really crossed there. And there was no disadvantage for us to add all of those mounts. You know, there's, there's not a huge weight penalty or anything, so it's just great. It, it makes the bike a lot more universal I think for, for the end consumer. Interesting. And I had heard on some earlier interviews you did that there was some resistance internally to bring a gravel bike from such a strong mountain bike company. Can you talk a little bit about that journey and where the rest of the team is that with the Shammy Hagar at this point? Yeah. so you know, evil really is focused on making really awesome mountain bikes. That's, that is everyone that works here, that is their passion. And so, you know, some, so much so that it doesn't seem like there's room to enter another category, but there is, there is a whole other section of our that is focused on making just the coolest bikes possible and it's not, it's not relegated to mountain bikes. And there was definitely some fear within the staff that evil might shoot ourselves in the foot for launching a gravel bike when launching a gravel bike instead of a mountain bike because, you know, people are always looking for what is the next mountain bike coming from evil. Our, our primary owner, Kevin Walsh, he's our design director. He's our branding director. You know, he was very stable footed through this whole thing and you know, never wavered. He was very confident that this was really going to be a category changing, maybe category creating bike that it, that it truly had benefits that really needed to get out there. The, the market needed this, the end user, we believe needs this bike. So now that it's launched, now that the staff has gotten to ride a lot of the tests and wheels and everything you know, the, everybody gets it and everybody is universally excited about this bike and, and excited to ride it. And a lot of what was there was the, the, the negativity was the thought of, Oh, we don't want to make a gravel bike. Those things stink. Like I, we've written those and they're, they're not good. They, they didn't get the full concept of what the evil gravel bike was going to be. And so we've really, we've changed our employees thinking of what a gravel bike is. Yeah. I'm optimistic that this is a category expanding bike. You know, I've long held the belief that, you know, a lot of the gravel market growth has been from road riders who are discovering the value of being off road, which is something as mountain bikers we've known for decades, right. That there's just joy of being away from the cars and having this sense of adventure. So you're getting a lot of road athletes who are just dipping their toe in gravel. I feel like this bike may be one of those bikes that a mountain biker could look at and say, Hey, I've been hearing about gravel. I like the idea of maybe going a little farther or doing a different style of riding. Maybe I'll dip my toe in the water and grab this new Shammy Hagar bike. And ultimately, you know, you're going to draw athletes from both sides. I've seen plenty of my road friends who ended up starting with a sort of very gentle road plus bike and now are up to, you know, 47 millimeter tires on their, on their next generation gravel bikes. So it's really fascinating to me. And, and, and I, I love the idea of bringing more people into the market and getting some mountain bikers to join us in the gravel parade. For sure. For sure. And that's what we really wanted to try to pay attention to with this bike is we weren't making it for just Mount biker and we weren't making it for just road rider. We gave road riders all of the, the handling that maybe they don't know they need. But this bike is, it's just so much safer to ride when you're off road with no negativity related to pedaling position. It's also light. So there's, it also, it also holds, you know, 700 by 40 tires, just fine. Heck, we even, we ride this bike with road tires. You can actually slap 700 by 30 like the WTB exposure tire 700 by 30 road tires on this thing. And man, it is, it is so fast it, and you've never felt a bike, so good going downhill on road corner. It's incredible. So yeah, like for me personally, I keep a second wheel set on hand with, with road tires for if I am going to go out on a road ride. And again, you've got that road position. And then for the mountain bikers they've got this super lightweight rig. You know, it's, it's, it's way lighter than, than what you can get with a mountain bike. And they've got that, that familiarity that, that feeling of home with the geometry of the bike. So yeah, basically they can get they can just go faster. You know, on the open road. They've got the benefit of the multiple hand positions on the drop bar. And then they've got their drop receipt posts, which you know, 10 years ago mountain bikers didn't think they wanted. But you know, now it's like it's uncommon to see a mountain bike without it. Yeah, exactly. Well, I appreciate the deep overview. I feel like this is one of those bikes that you want to hear from the designer. You want to hear from the company, you want to hear other riders perceptions of it. And I know you guys have done a good job of getting it out there underneath some people who can document what they're feeling and validate what you're talking about because a, it's a really interesting model. Definitely everybody's listening. Go check it out on the web, check out some of the videos to get a sense for all the things that Jason's has been describing because they've really put together a, an interesting model. So Jason, thanks again for the time. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was my pleasure. Okay. What a fun conversation with Jason. I love talking about the Shammy Hagar. It's such an interesting design. As someone who comes from a mountain bike background. I was kind of really drawn to a lot of the things he was talking about and I can't wait to spend a little time on the Shammy Hagar here in mill Valley dropping off Mount Tam. I think it's going to be an exceptionally fast bike for me in this neighborhood this week on can't let it go. I want to talk about my experience with the post carry company travel bag. It's one of those bags where you pull the fork off the bike in addition to the handlebars and you can get it in a really compact portable setup and here's the thing, you can travel with it on the airlines and likely avoid any airline travel fees. I used the bag maybe three times last year and not once did I get dinged for it. It kind of looks like an oversized massage table and that's my company line should anybody ask. But this post carry bag has just been a joy to avoid those $150 fees. You get on a lot of airlines, so check out their websites. I know there's some other competing bags in that genre as well. I definitely recommend it. If you're going to travel more than two to three times a year, it really makes sense financially to grab one of these bags. So that's it for this week. If you have any feedback, please shoot me a [email protected] or hit me up on social media channels. Happy to hear from you. As always, ratings and reviews are appreciated. You'd be surprised how the algorithms out there on the podcasting web will share the pod and get us in front of new listeners with that. Until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.  

More episodes from The Gravel Ride. A cycling podcast