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.
We sat down with two Rodeo athletes, Edyn Teitge and Cade Reichenberger, who both completed the 2,700 mile 2024 Tour Divide with class, and both in with their unique style. Cade rode to a 4th place overall finish in 15 days on his Rodeo Labs TD4, an incredible achievement on it’s own, but even more so considering that this was Cade’s first go at Divide as a relative newcomer to the genre. Not to be outdone, Edyn rode to the finish in 20 days, also on his TD4, becoming, at 15 years of age, the youngest solo rider to ever complete the event.
With stories this diverse it’s hard to fit them both into a single episode, but we gave it a good shot with hosts Logan Jones-Wilkins and Steve The Intern tossing in questions from their own cycling perspectives.
Here is a photo breakdown of Cade’s TD4, which featured flat bars, a Tailfin rear rack, and a Fox 32 50mm front suspension fork.
Edyn chose a different built type for his TD4, leaving it in drop bar configuration, and foregoing a suspension fork in favor of Redshift suspension stem and seatpost combo. As a Tailfin supported rider, Edyn enjoyed a particularly cool array of bags built specifically for his bike.
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Edyn’s ride in particular has been well covered in the media at the following links:
Both Cade and Edyn wore our Explorts Expedition bibshorts, which are design with the demands of bikepacking and ultra racing in mind, and each also wore RDO lab jerseys with Edyn chosing our SPF Highlighter jersey, and Cade option for our Merino wool short sleeve jersey.
Welcome to the Rodeo Labs Race Director Round Up! Over the next few weeks, as the gravel race “season” gets underway, we have decided to take on a mini-series focusing on gravel racing through the collective eyes of gravel race directors from across the country. Race directors are both the tastemakers and the police of the nebulous concept of “the spirit of gravel.” While race directors have a fantastic platform to voice their perspective for their own races, that voice is often limited to those narrow confines. The goal here is to use our podcast, as a small journalistically minded outlet with no skin in the game, to give them a collective platform to share their interpretations of the state of the sport.
Welcome to the Rodeo Labs Race Director Round Up! Over the next few weeks, as the gravel race “season” gets underway, we have decided to take on a mini-series focusing on gravel racing through the collective eyes of gravel race directors from across the country. Race directors are both the tastemakers and the police of the nucleus concept of “the spirit of gravel.” While race directors have a fantastic platform to voice their perspective for their own races, that voice is often limited to those narrow confines. The goal here is to use our podcast, as a small journalistically minded outlet with no skin in the game, to give them a collective platform to share their interpretations of the state of the sport.
In part one, Logan introduces the series through a field dispatch from the Gravel Worlds gravel race in Nebraska last summer and the dialogue that followed. The first conversation was with Andy Jones-Wilkins, who is not only Logan’s father, but also an accomplished ultra-runner and pundit. Using the conversation with Andy as a framework, Logan sat down with Jason Strohbehn, the race director of Gravel Worlds and the co-host of the Gravel Family Podcast, to learn more about the race and start at the question that is guiding the whole series: what is the state of gravel bike racing?
Adventuring on dirt is what brings everyone to Rodeo Labs. Yes, there are other contributing factors, but if your intention is not to adventure on bikes, on dirt, you might want to find a different bike company. With that ethos at our core, Logan wanted to do a bit of a deep dive into a fellow dirt adventure based cycling company: The Gravel Adventure Field Guides.
Nonetheless, while reporting on the guides themselves, Logan found the project was a gateway into a discussion about adventure on bikes, on dirt, in the 21st century. So, in hopes of not ignoring those other voices, the podcast grew into something different from the standard Rodeo Labs production.
In this episode you will hear from Juan and Stephen from Gravel Adventure Field Guides, but you will also hear from Wally Wallace from the economic development office in Trinidad, Colorado; Kevin Prentice from Ride With GPS; and Gordon Wadsworth and Emily Hairfield who are cyclists from Roanoke, Virginia, who helped builds routes for the recent guidebook there. We hope you enjoy it!
The Atlas Mountain Race sets off for its third edition next week. In anticipation of the bike packing race, we brought in Ashley Carelock to look back at her Moroccan experiences in last year’s October edition of the race, while Stephen Fitzgerald dropped into the chat to add his own perspective from his outing to Africa in 2020.
If you are interested in following along to the 2023 Atlas Mountain Race, be sure to check out the race website, here. Additionally, back in the depth of the pandemic, Stephen penned this expansive write up about what that race was like. You can find that here. Lastly, Ashley eloquently wrote more about her race on her blog, which you can access here.
Rodeo Labs has been supporting the development of a new bikepacking event in Armenia for two years now, and the race is set to have its first edition on June 25, 2023. In this episode of the Rodeo Podcast, Stephen talks with Tom, Tatev, and Jay P about the work done thus far, the “why” of the event, and what the goals are for it. Armenia is a beautiful, challenging, and welcoming country for bikepackers and bike tourers alike, and Rodeo is proud to help support the effort to introduce this place to more riders.
and Drew at Rodeo Labs talks about launching the Show Pony
Part one of the podcast picks up with Logan Jones-Wilkins rambling through the middle of America. After leaving the muddy grass field at the Rule of Three in Bentonville, Arkansas, Logan was on his way to Emporia, Kansas to race Unbound Gravel. With time to spare and capitalizing on his proximity to Stillwater, Oklahoma, an idea was born– a Rodeo Labs Podcast field recording. The first field recording is a ride in Bobby Wintle’s 4-Runner. Logan experiences some of Bobby’s favorite roads, which didn’t even make this years course!
Ben has a storied career of over twenty years working in the cycling and media industries. His tenure includes multiple well known outfits– VeloNews, Specialized, BikeRadar, Roll Massif, and Outside Interactive. When Stephen and I got an opportunity to sit down with Ben we grabbed the chance. By chance, Logan, a former guest on the podcast and journalism student happened to be in town, so we made sure to add his perspective into the the mix. The topics ranged from journalism versus marketing to how the media industry generally pays its bills (advertising or memberships). Finally, we learned about Ben’s new venture, a YouTube channel The Ride With Ben Delaney. The channel aims to provide contextualized gear reviews, unique ride insights around Colorado, how-tos and event recaps.
Andrew Maher first invited Stephen onto his New Normal podcast in 2021 and it was a great opportunity to talk about a wide range of topics, philosophies, and what we do here on Rodeo. Now, almost a year later, Andrew invited Stephen on for a second time to get an update on how things are going at Rodeo, and also to to deliver some firsthand feedback on a bike that we delivered to his friend Dave.
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