The Rodeo Labs Journal | Rodeo Adventure Labs

The Rodeotejas Experience – TDC

Somewhere near New Ulm Texas – 45min drive from Houston.

Last week Joey P and I took a day off work to explore Texas Dirt Country. You’ve heard of Texas Hill Country? That’s the well-known region southwest of Austin, North and West of San Antonio and East of the Edward’s Plateau in the middle of the state. TDC is lesser known and contained partially in the triangle formed by I-10 west of Houston to it’s south, Rt290 between Houston and Austin to the north and the eastern border of Austin City Limits. I’d recently been exploring it, but Joey P needed to see this….

December Rodeo Rally.

Rodeo Rally. Last minute invite. December 20th. 8:30am. Buffalo Creek lower lot. 55ish miles of single track, Tarmac, and gravel. CX bike and MTB will work. CX bike encouraged for radness points (bring spare tubes!). High gearing encouraged. Bring lots of water and food. IMPORTANT: This is an advanced level rally on technical trails in the winter. This is NOT a no drop ride. We expect everyone to be on pace or self sufficient as we have limited daylight so we can’t wait around. There are plenty of bail out points earlier in the ride if you only want to make it a 20 ish mile round trip. Just remember: You must be self sufficient.

Route Here:

https://www.strava.com/routes/3711593

Cowboy Cross

Cowboy Cross at the Western Stockyard Complex. The smiles won’t soon fade.

In my opinion it is the best CX race and best atmosphere of any race in the Front Range. The labyrinth course in, through, under, and around the stockyards is SO. MUCH. FUN.

The Steamboat Ralleye via Kitsbow

197 dirty, epic miles and 19,302 brutal feet of climbing from Fort Collins to Steamboat Springs, Colorado with Niner Bikes and the Ralleye Riders.

Our own Timothy Fegel was along for the ride on his beta Flaanimal on what was no doubt an amazing adventure.

Music: Mr. & Mrs. Smith – Dirty Laundry

Bikepacking Flaanimal Gravel Kitsbow Ralley steamboat springs Tim Fegel

Lets Rodeo in Belgium

We are in the beginning planning stages of a Rodeo trip to Belgium in 2016 and we want to open up the invite to the larger Rodeo family.

The idea is to make what might be a complicated trip full of unknown for the uninitiated into a fun and much less stressful opportunity to meet up with other Rodeoers, watch some epic spring classics (Flanders and Roubaix) and do a whole lot of riding and hanging out in between.

The prototype for this trip happened this year and before going much further you should at least scan these two journal entries to get a sense of the trip:

Pilgrimage: Donkey does DeRonde. Belgium Part 1.

Belgium day 2: Good roads, great company.

Belgium Flanders Rodeo Roubaix Trip

A day at the races: CX Season opener

It is a funny and rare thing when everything converges. This year cyclocross season started a bit early with a season opener at Oskar Blues farm in Longmont. We’ve been a little bit quicker on our toes than last year so we already had our kits in-hand a few days before race day. On a lark I decided that I wanted to race the prototype Traildonkey as well. I’ve actually had this bike in storage since April because as a very early prototype it had a lot of imperfections in the design (which we’ve since revised and refined). I’ve been riding the Flaanimal prototype a lot lately and while I do love the bike and the feel of steel I wanted to go back and get re-antiquated with our first bike project, the one born at almost exactly the same time the team was in January 2014.

2015 cyclocross race elektrobunny Flaanimal Oskar Blues Rodeo Labs rodeo spork traildonkey

Fall Rally: You’re invited

Live in Colorado?

This is not just a Rodeo thing. It’s a time to ride with cyclists from any team or non-team. Invite your friends if you like.

Sept 29th. 4:30PM. Confluence Park.

Fall. A time of fading light and dying trees, or dying leaves anyway. Mark your calendars for the evening of September 29th. We are going to ride up into the hills above Denver and seek out the answers to life’s deepest questions. If we don’t find the answers we will have at least caught some sweet sunset action whist riding through groves of changing Assssspen™. We will ride back down to Denver in the dark and perhaps imbibe some refreshing cold ones as we recount memories not yet an hour old.

Evening derp sessions #traildonkey

#Crossishere twelve months out of the year for us. Playing around on local trails and bike parks is a pretty great way to mix up the rhythm of the summer months between road riding and mountain biking. It is also a great way to experience familiar terrain in a new way. It is also just fun! A lot of people spend time doing cyclcoross drills to build skills and that is very useful, but we think that people should see cyclocross bikes as everyday bikes, not race day bikes. If you spend time on the bike regularly and just go out and have fun it’ll fit and ride with perfect familiarity on race day. You might just be surprised at how tame a cyclocross course is as well after you’ve finished a summer of shred on your local trails.Continue reading

Adventure bikes Colorado CX Cycling Cyclocross Denver derp Rodeo Rodeo Labs thederpsearch trialdonkey

Mt. Evans Chill Climb. A look back a year later.

By: Jennifer Hines

Photos by Rufus Ryan Cathrall, Reid Neureiter, Jenn Hines, and Stephen Fitzgerald

Mt. Evans Chill Climb: August 9, 2014 One Year Anniversary It was one of those mornings when your alarm goes off and it takes a few blinks to realize that although it feels as if your soul has been separate from your body for the last eight hours, you’re indeed still alive. And your covers are really warm so you don’t want to move. And you’re a bit annoyed and momentarily confused as to why you’ve been woken up when the sun clearly has not. Is that the moon? Yeah, definitely annoyed. But as your mind catches up to the best of your body, a smirk finds its way to your face as you remember why you’re awake before the rest of the world; it’s the morning of the Mt. Evans Chill Climb.

Chill Climb City Bikes Mount Evans

The Breck Epic: Six Days of Singletrack Survival

PROLOGUE

Bear with me, this could take awhile.

Epic is such an overused word anymore. It’s hard not to think of it and roll your eyes at its virtual meaninglessness, among hashtags and internet memes and over-exaggeration. Too often, it’s an unearned descriptor. So there is a certain audacity in naming your mountain bike race the Breck Epic – even if it is six days and 240-something miles of gnarly backcountry singletrack, with 40,000 feet climbing and descending, mostly above 10,000 feet in elevation.

But here, in those six days, epic cannot simply be claimed. It must be earned.