How Far is Too Far: Smoke & Fire 400

Editor’s note: Edyn sent in this writeup of his 2024 Smoke and Fire ride with friend Oliver Smith. Not many photos were supplied with this piece, so we’re including those, but Oliver and Edyn also described some lovely sleep deprived imagery in their own words, so their descriptions were fed into Midjourney to generate some fun and abstract renderings of what bike hallucinations can feel like sometimes. If you’ve never ridden We hope you enjoy!

The Smoke and Fire is a 400ish-mile bike race on the backroads of Idaho deep in the backcountry. I did this race in 2022 as my first ever bikepacking race, and I came back to take it on again in 2024, this time with a friend. Typically this route is a loop but in 2022 the route was an out-and-back on the north side due to fires. With more big fires in the area, it also looked like there would be a reroute this year. The course ended up being an out-and-back on the south side so I have never raced the full loop but I have raced both the north and south sides. I decided I was going to do the Smoke and Fire while I was racing the Tour Divide in June. I texted one of my friends and told him “we’re gonna set a fkn FKT on the Smoke and Fire”. I’m not sure why I decided I wanted to do more bikepack racing while I was on one of the biggest races in the world because typically after pushing your body like that you don’t want anything to do with it for a few weeks after until you forget all the bad parts and how hard it was. But my friend, Oliver, was down so once I got home from the Divide we started getting ready for the Smoke and Fire. 

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To Bloom

Darkness surrounds me. There’s a smell of moisture in the air, and the only noise I hear is the sound of my bike moving slowly up a gravel road toward the edge of the world. I am riding toward the end of an island—Tierra del Fuego—a place touched by few and known by even fewer. And I am inspired. On the horizon, I see traces of the sun rising. The sun brings hope for a new day, a race finished, and a decision made.

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Podcast: Our Four Favorites 

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 need. 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 finisher 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. 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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White Rim Micro-Invitational – Feb 22nd

In December I had the most incredible solo ride across Utah’s White Rim Trail, located in Canyonlands National Park. December is not, as far as I know, a particularly popular time to embark on White Rim, probably because the desert’s fickle ability to be quite warm, or utterly freezing, within hours. Thankfully, my trip wasn’t planned, it was entirely impulsive: I looked at the immediate forecast, saw a window with lows in the high 20s F, and highs in the low 50s F, and knew deep down that as long as I was dry, those temperatures would be doable, if not a bit of an unknown to plan for. I’ve ridden White Rim five times, always in a day. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. On this outing I wanted and needed to go alone, to get some think time and rekindle the flame that keeps me excited for the wild, unscripted bicycle lifestyle. The trip was a spectacular success. On the first day I started late and rode to camp in the sunset and utter darkness. Magic. On the second day I woke up to a cold morning that warmed quickly, and had the entire place to myself as I completed the loop. Having done the trip, I had an idea: Why not try to invite others to come and do this same trip with me? So that’s what the White Rim Micro-Invitational is: An incredibly limited space invite for people I know and don’t know to come and do that same trip with me again in late February, 2025.

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Top Rodeo Bikes of 2024

It’s been a year, hasn’t it? In the middle of one of the most challenging periods of the bike industry in recent memory, I’m proud to say that Rodeo didn’t stand idly by and “wait it out”, we leaned into the headwinds and continued to up our game in terms of the bikes and other products that we’ve brought to life. Our customer service people listened intently as new owners described their dream steeds, then worked with our in-house paint and build departments to turn those dreams into reality. Quite a large percentage of the bikes that ship from HQ go out with black frames and standard decals, and those bikes ride as well as any other bike we build, but the team here takes extra pride in the wild custom creations that we turn out. So, with that in mind, let’s dig into a cross-section of some of our favorite builds of 2024, in no particular order.

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Preparation

At 5:00 AM, the harsh buzz of my phone alarm shakes me awake. The temptation to hit snooze is real, especially knowing the comfort of 15 more minutes in bed. But I remind myself of the reward: another episode of The Sopranos, my new trainer session companion. I shimmy into my bibs and socks, letting the compression stir some circulation. My spare bike is already set up on the trainer, making it easy to slide on my shoes, swing a leg over, and press play. Last winter, I binged Six Feet Under, diving into its poignant storytelling of a family funeral home swirling in chaos. The characters were so maddeningly flawed that they became magnetic, drawing me into their world episode after episode. This winter, The Sopranos has muscled its way onto my training regimen, using classic Mafia tactics—charm and intimidation. Widely acclaimed as one of the greatest shows ever made, it was simply a show I couldn’t refuse. Tony’s relentless pursuit of control in a chaotic world feels familiar. Each episode is a reminder that life is often a balancing act between ambition and the forces that threaten to unravel it.

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Podcast: Rodeo Rider Profile – Jeff Chapman

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!

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The Tour Divide, Day by Day

In June 2024, Edyn Teitge became, at 15, the youngest solo rider of the Tour Divide. This is his story via his own words, day by day through the ride. Images throughout by Edyn and Eddie Clark Media.

The Tour Divide is one of the world’s longest and most well-known off-road bikepacking races. Stretching nearly 2,700 miles from Banff, Alberta, Canada to the US-Mexico border at Antelope Wells, New Mexico, it closely follows the Great Divide Mountain Bike route along the spine of the continent. The route gains around 150,000 feet of elevation with conditions ranging from unkept narrow single-track sections of the CDT, to smooth gravel and dirt roads, to death mud, and to long stretches of pavement. And somehow I got it in my mind that it would be a “fun” thing to do. 

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Adrian’s Story

Para leer esta historia en Española, haga click aqui

Hi there. This is Stephen here with an intro to this piece. Back in Covid times, 2021, the bike space was as crazy as it will ever be. Some of the business was good, and a lot of it was, honestly, bad. One thing that cannot be argued, the stress and anxiety of it all left everything a blur. I can’t remember a lot of what happened in those 2-3 years. This story, I had forgotten about this one mostly. I remember there was this guy, Adrian, and he ordered a bike. I was running operations and didn’t talk to most customers at that point, Isaac was customer service and sales, so he did. Despite the chaos during his time at working here, Isaac did a great job taking care of people, and he built out a great bike spec for Adrian. Adrian had ordered this bike, and then because of the trickle down effects of Covid, it turned out that his funds for buying the bike had to be funneled on just staying afloat during that difficult era. So, Adrian got in touch to cancel the order. Once a build is underway, we do charge a restocking fee to cancel it, because we have to order all those parts on a per-bike basis. In Adrian’s case, it seemed like a good idea to waive that fee. But then Isaac said “what if we just give him the bike?”. I really don’t remember much from that moment, but in that moment I think it was strangely obvious to us that the right thing to do was to just give him the bike for free. So we did. Adrian was so awesome and grateful. He never hinted at getting the bike for free, and wasn’t trying to guilt us into giving him a bike. I think all of us, Adrian, Isaac, and myself were all equally surprised this whole thing was happening. We finished the build, we boxed it up, we shipped it, and then, more or less, the bike disappeared.

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