In this week’s Nerd Alert episode, tech editor Dave Rome has a chat with Australian custom builder extraordinaire Mark Hester of Prova Cycles.

Hester was a very early adopter of MTB-style geometry on gravel bikes, incorporating things like long front centers and shorter stems when most other brands — especially mainstream labels — were still using dimensions mostly borrowed from road racing machines. Yet as with anything bike-related, if a little bit of something is good, lots more of it surely makes it even better, right? Hester has some interesting thoughts on the idea, and you won’t want to miss hearing where he thinks things are going from here.