Tour de Vermont and France Femmes

happy summer dog days folks! today we have some quick notes on the Tour de France Femmes first 3 stages, then we get into a little MADE bike show talk before diving into the 4 day inn to inn tour we just got back from in Vermont.  Vermont, where did all the people go??  Stick around at the end to hear about how I am getting into the granola business.  

see our Vermont inn to inn bike tour photos here!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

No comparisons.

SPEAKER_05 0:01

Okay, we are ready.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 0:03

Um reporting live from the beating heart of Nutmeg Country.

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Cable actuated and opinionated.

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This is All Bikes No.

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But no.

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Alternative Radio.

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Or alternative cyclists.

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I'm Ronnie Romance.

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And I'm Arya Hogstead.

SPEAKER_05 0:26

We'll get into that interesting last name a little later, won't we?

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 0:31

Well, folks, uh you're joining us. Yes. Thanks for joining us out here. You could hear, I'm sure you could hear the uh the August cicadas. We are set up outside on a much sunnier day this time around, aren't we?

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 0:42

Boy oh boy, have we had some rain this summer. Some torrential rains. The swim hole has never been fuller. I just went down there to take a quote unquote shower last night.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 0:53

And I nearly got blown over the dam. Can't you see that headline?

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Blown over. Glad you did it.

SPEAKER_05 1:02

Local cyclist blown over the dam.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

For once, it's not a driver trying to kill a cyclist. It's water.

SPEAKER_05 1:10

It's the damn dam.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

It's the damn damn.

SPEAKER_05 1:13

Well, folks, I am sure a lot of you are having incredible summer, late summer times here. For me, it feels like summer's over because the Tour de France, the men's Tour de France is over.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:27

For me, that's peak summer.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Afterwards, these are the dog days of summer right now.

SPEAKER_05 1:32

I'm a year older, also. I just I'm a year older than last week.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

This this summer is a dog that still has a bite left to it. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:39

Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

So I I do not like you saying summer's over. Summer's over. What about the kids that still have so much summer left?

SPEAKER_05 1:48

Like two weeks? There's already back to school commercials on. Um we might even do a back to school commercial here. Why not? So, you know, it's it's oh, the dog days of summer. You've brought it up. July 3rd until August 11th. Those are the dog days of summer.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Why do they call it that? It's because of an ancient astronomer who tracks Sirius and part of the great dog constellation, Candace Major.

SPEAKER_05 2:16

Oh I've always thought I've always thought it was because like it's hot, the dog's tongue's hanging out.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, like they they're laying down all the time because it's a hot anyways. Anyways, I thought it was gonna have something to do with Greece.

SPEAKER_05 2:28

I think forevermore now, the dog days of summer will be associated. Oh, this doesn't this isn't a great setup. I was gonna say it will be associated with the Tour de France Femme's Avic Swift.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Mmm.

SPEAKER_05 2:40

Well the dog, yeah, the dog connotations.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Well, let's get into it. Let's get into the show. We're gonna talk. We're we have contributors to thank because we forgot last time, so we're gonna stick that in the beginning. There's a lot of Tour de France Femmes to talk about. We're on stage four today, so less to catch up on. Bello Orange has some news for Ron for real life report backs. So that'd be it for the headlines. Real life report backs, Ronnie and I just literally last night, there's a car coming. Hope you can't hear that, listeners. Yeah. Because it's loud for us.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

That is a speaking of real life report backs. Are there 32-inch wheels on that car?

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Save it for the headlines, buddy. But we're gonna tell you about a quick tour that we did in Vermont. Very luxurious, very tough for me.

SPEAKER_05 3:35

I think we've got a lot to talk about on that, on that little. It was only a four-day tour, but so many revelations.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

So many. One after another.

SPEAKER_05 3:43

So we're gonna talk a bit about that and what it's like to tour some one of the more beautiful and bucolic places in the country uh this time of year.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

And that'll be the big tofu of our show today.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Big tofu of our potato and potatoes of our show.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

And then Ron will get into just a quick teaser about what he's building for made this year.

SPEAKER_05 4:05

Just like two weeks to go, two and a half weeks to go or something. I better get on this. That's life, folks. That's life of an alt-cycling mogul. Always going from one thing to another. One build to another. One building to another.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

So dog days, huh? Dog days, folks.

SPEAKER_05 4:28

Let's uh let's stop the panting and get into the the news, the headlines, and the hot goss here.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

No, let's thank the contributors first.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Because we almost forgot again. We can't we can't do this.

SPEAKER_05 4:42

We noticed that we got a lot more contributors, folks. To be honest with you, we got a lot more contributors when we mentioned them in the beginning of the episode. Hot news. Hot fluids.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

But we also forgot last week. So we have Eric Quetland. I think we might have thanked them, but thanks again, Eric Quetland. Rick Erfman. Thank you, Rick. Davis from Colorado.

SPEAKER_04 5:04

They were not David.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Not Vinny. Hans Newleman. Wow, what a name. Heck yeah, Hans Newleman. And then there's someone called Campio. Campoo. Oh, Cammy Poo. Cambi Pooh. Campio.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

Cammy Pooh. I like it. That is vastly different. Cammy Pooh.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Cameron Garrett. Thank you for your contribution. And Nick Stillerberg.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

Stu no Stoot Stutelberg.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Studelberg. Thank you. Thanks, Jenny. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Campio. Cammy Pooh.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Damn it.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Hans, Stevis, Eric, and Rick. Grazie mille.

SPEAKER_05 5:47

Yeah, we spent a lot of ice cream money on this little tour we did last over.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

We did, although we didn't get any maple creamies. No. Anyway, let's save that because we've got headlines right now, as we said, is the Tour de France Femmes Aveg Swift. And it is uh phenomenal. It has been such uh exciting and uh calculated but also kind of chaotic race so far. We're doing an individual time trial today. There's already been a huge mix-up in the general classifications because yesterday's stage, which people were saying is the first stage of people meaning people on the wheel talk podcast by Escape Collective. Please go listen to them. They are much more detailed and actually knows know the process.

SPEAKER_05 6:42

I think we're a pretty good skim over though.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

I don't know that that's true because last week I was like, yeah, Pauline Fair and Provot not showing a lot of strength that she did last year. In like not true at all. Not true. Like just filled with it.

SPEAKER_05 6:57

Well, we should we should talk about the first two stages first, just briefly. The sprint stages.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

They're somewhat sprint stages, and when you have when you have sprint stages like that, the first one in earnest was a sprint stage. The second one, there's a bit, there's like a climby finish, you know? So in the first one, all the favorites were there already. Lorena Weebus takes from SD works, takes the win stage one.

SPEAKER_05 7:27

Like without without any without any competition.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

The way that she moves in a sprint is just unmatched. There's no one who comes even close. In stage one, Kim LeCor Plinar, Pinar came close assist because she finished second, but there was like at least two wheels of a gap between.

SPEAKER_05 7:51

Yeah, we're we're seeing another generational talent here in Lorena Weebus.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

It's incredible to watch.

SPEAKER_05 7:57

You know, she comes from a track racing background.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

She tried tried cyclocross. We saw her race, not that great at that. Not not her favorite.

SPEAKER_05 8:06

She's not the best. Well, I wanna, I don't know. She's I remember her crashing out of the tour maybe two years ago on a technical descent. Like maybe not be the best bike handler.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Yeah, but she is fast.

SPEAKER_05 8:18

But fat, but it makes sense for me to track. Like a track finish, and like she doesn't even need a as we found in spoiler alert for stage two, she didn't even need a leadout.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Well, she did.

SPEAKER_05 8:30

She had a little bit of one.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

But that wasn't really a leado, that was just her entire team doing everything they can to get her in the front because there was a breakaway from Little Trek who looked like she was about to take it.

SPEAKER_05 8:46

Is it the Swiss national champion on the breakaway? I don't know. I don't know any of it.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

It's the the name's not coming to it. She's not coming to it. But she was she was she's almost she's a really good big star.

SPEAKER_05 8:57

She she came so close to making it to the finish.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

They caught her at 300 meters. Meters. Which is wild. And then it was, you know, the people who were chasing her down were like all of the like the top ten from last year and the year before that. So that's that's a really intimidating. So again, Weebs's entire team empties their tank, Lata Kebekki, especially. She is up there pushing really hard to bridge the gap. And then Weebs is kind of on her own in the last like half KM to the finish line, and she freaking sends it. It was, it's it's magnificent to watch.

SPEAKER_05 9:38

Incredible sprint just wound up past everybody. Absolutely. Like they were standing still.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Like it just no one no one came close to her.

SPEAKER_05 9:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

And then yesterday, stage three.

SPEAKER_05 9:48

One of the most exciting stages of any race I've watched.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 9:52

Yeah, yeah. That was so cool. How the way that all unfolded because you can't really it's you know, you can't really lend the like the lens that you we just watched the men's tour under, and you are expecting certain things to happen. But when it but with this with the with the FEMS, it's not entirely different, but things just happen differently. So it's there's more of a surprise element to it because you're like, oh, this wouldn't this wouldn't happen, this can't happen. No way. And then you're like, oh my god, it can. Oh my god, they're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Right.

SPEAKER_05 10:24

And and it was just one of those stages where with with 88k to go, there we have a solo breakaway. Solo breakaway of the Norwegian national champ who had just won her first bike race, uh, that which was the Norwegian National Championships.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Yeah. Pretty incredible work from Seagrid Hogsett.

SPEAKER_05 10:45

She loves Uno X mobility. Yeah. She's having who's having an amazing year.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Yeah. I don't know what they're doing in that team. Like, are they just doing because yeah, Uno X like went from went from just like a farm team. No one is to uh no one's winning to like to like they're winning all over.

SPEAKER_05 11:06

They're like top tier, they're you know, they don't have the budget of a top-tier team, but they will.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

But they're performing like it.

SPEAKER_05 11:11

Yeah, yeah, they're performing like it.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

So I mean, you know, last year we had Marie Squiban win two stages, and this year she's been quiet. I'm a little more quiet. So uh I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 11:23

This could be a future superstar, or you're not you're not saying are you?

SPEAKER_01 11:26

I'm just I'm just not sure because it it works really differently.

SPEAKER_05 11:29

I want her to be a uh I want her to be a a superstar. This person has this is there's personality here.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah, there's I don't know, yeah. I just I don't know. It's it's still too early to tell. I'm I am just much more careful these days with like getting my hopes up.

SPEAKER_05 11:46

But she was let's see how it went. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

She was so fun to watch.

SPEAKER_05 11:50

Yeah, personality, overflowing with personality, and looked so good on the bike.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

When when Lata was about to catch her, okay, so to give you an idea, Lata Kapeki is a two-time world champ road bike winner. She's got the rainbow stripes on her, you know, what is it, armbands, and she is chasing you down. You are a brand new pro road cyclist. You have only won once, like just a few months ago, and then at 27, you are being hunted by one of the best riders in the world.

SPEAKER_05 12:38

Yeah, because how many kilometers do I have?

SPEAKER_01 12:39

10 seconds away at one point.

SPEAKER_05 12:41

When did when did Lotta start chasing?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

At like 70-ish.

SPEAKER_05 12:46

So most of the race.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Sigrid gets away at 88 solo. Lotta starts chasing her down. It goes from like a minute and a half to a minute to 10 seconds.

SPEAKER_05 12:58

Meanwhile, the yellow jersey is like 15 to 18 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Yeah, that's Lorena because yesterday was there was a bunch of categoried climbs. So it was it was gonna favor a climber and a lot of the GC hopefuls. So Lata's only 10 seconds behind at one point. Where Ronnie and I are both like, okay, Lata's just gonna catch her, and then she's gonna take the channel.

SPEAKER_05 13:20

Peter for lunch, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

No, there's something that happens to this young woman. I mean, she's 27, but she looks like she's a teenager, right? Like she that the excitement that she had, like the joie de vivre that she expressed on the stage and at winning, just like a huge shit-eating grin on her face during the interviews, like just looks like a little baby doll. So awesome to really like see and experience that kind of jubilant, like buoyant, joyful energy.

SPEAKER_05 13:53

What is what is a side note, shit eating grin.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Shit eating grin.

SPEAKER_05 13:58

Where does that come from? I agree that was the grin that she had, but where who's eating shit and grinning about it?

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Let us know in the comments. This girl, she's not having a shit eating grin. She sees Latta and maybe like hears the moto or something that's following her, and uh like uh reaches uh to something beyond understanding and hammers it down, grows the lead from Latta from 10 seconds to 13 seconds to 16 to 30 to a minute. It's like Lotta finishes a minute and like 50 something.

SPEAKER_05 14:42

Yeah, there's a there was a point where she where Lotta just gave up.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

She just gave up.

SPEAKER_05 14:47

Yeah, you know, and I'm wondering if that new engagement ring from Axel Merck's maybe like the glare, like like blinded her at some point.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Right, because women's performances always have to go back to some man putting a ring on their finger. Girl, please have a seat. Go away. It has nothing to do with the weight of the diamond, the added weight. Remember when we talked about that, folks? That Lata was marrying Axel Merckx.

SPEAKER_05 15:17

Yeah, I'm just trying to do a little through line thing here. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure both Axel and Eddie looked at this performance and were like, reconsider son.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

I doubt it. But incredible win. That's why my last name was hers. Because that was a joy to watch. It was uh beautiful to see a winner who is just so, so excited about it.

SPEAKER_05 15:45

And she won. She so she so she broke a number of records here, too.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

She took the yellow jersey after this.

SPEAKER_05 15:52

Takes the yellow jersey by two minutes. I think she's got a two-minute, twelve-second lead.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

No, Lotta is after her. Yeah, because she put a minute twenty-four between her after she was almost gonna catch up.

SPEAKER_05 16:06

Oh, that's the stage results. I remember from last night, though, that the actual like the overall standings, Lotta or whoever's in second place is like two minutes and twelve seconds behind her. So she could very well hang on to this. Like today's a time trial, and we're gonna call her Siggy because I heard someone call her that.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Siggy.

SPEAKER_05 16:24

Siggy is apparently a very good time trialist. So she could have completely emptied herself on this stage. We'll, we, we won't know until today. Um, so we'll see how she does in the time trial, but she could actually put more time in on this time trial. Like I'm really rooting, I love the Uno X mobility squad. I love Norwegians, and I just think that their whole project is so cool. The kits are good, the bikes are cool, and Sigrid not only won the stage, but was also the first Norwegian to win a f uh a Tour de Femmes stage, the first Norwegian in yellow in the Tour de Femmes. And she also won the most combative rider of the day, and she also won. I think she may also be in green. Is that true? I don't know that for sure. But she got kept on getting called up to the podium after she won to show off how jubilant and and shit eating for lack of a better term. You know, every just being kept called up to the podium maybe four separate times. And each time we were just like, this is awesome. Yeah. Like I want to see more. I want to see more of this person. So hopefully we see more of this person for the rest of the tour because I think this is a real emerging star who has was able to fend off Lata Kopecki. It's just that's that's not just you know a run of your run-of-the-mill racer, you know.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Yeah, granted, Lata put in a huge dig the day before to get her teammate Lorena Weebs close to the line, just to catch up to the breakaway, the solo breakaway that they had. So she definitely burned a lot of matches there, but I feel like just yeah, I'm I'm careful about getting my hopes up because I totally fell in love with Allison Jackson and because of her like joy and jubilance and when she won Roubaix years ago. When she won Roubaix, and then beyond that, she won a stage of the Tour de France as well. And it was just awesome to see personality. Frankly, just some freaking personality.

SPEAKER_05 18:47

It's few and far between in in professional racing, unfortunately, because these people have to be so robotic in order to do these workouts day in and day out effectively, and be so measured with their training and efforts. So it is cool to see personality in any way. And Sigrid's got got, you know, bucket loads of it.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

For sure. And you know, the next time we check in, the tour's gonna be over. So we'll know who the winner is. Isn't that isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_05 19:18

We're hoping that you know the big day is gonna be Saturday where they're supposed to do Mont Vantu, or is that Friday?

SPEAKER_01 19:24

They're not sure. The rumor is the because of climate change, there's forced fires. Everyone was really excited about Mont Vantu. They might have to redirect because there are still active fires there the last time that I checked. We only mentioned five chains on my neck.

SPEAKER_05 19:42

We only mention climate change because that gets more comments in the uh on the YouTube. Not because by climate deniers. That's it does. It does.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Really difficult for me to hear as somebody who works on climate change issues 10, 15, 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_05 20:05

So we've got hard, hard lives out here. Are we able to put a cap on the femmes for now for this episode? That's right.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Wait, do you have a favorite yellow jersey? Should we do some predictions?

SPEAKER_05 20:22

I I mean, I am such a Puck Petercy fan.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:25

That that's who I want to win on Fonto. Like I want Puck to emerge as like the the climber of the I don't know if she's much of a but we don't know. She's been doing just mountain biking. Just a mount, she she's also she's a multidisciplinary racer. And mountain biking, cyclocross, road racing, an excellent we fall in love with her in the wintertime watching her race cyclocross.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Although she's dialing back her personality a lot more these days, too. So yeah. Yeah, it's true this is this is just what happens. The they they all get grind, grinded down.

SPEAKER_04 20:59

Ground.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Grinding down. Last week we said Kasha. We're both big Kasha fans. We always are rooting for Kasha as like the perennial underdog. She's been on the podium every single time. The one time in the yellow. So my ears last year. My coins are still in the Kasha ballot.

SPEAKER_05 21:25

All right, all right. Well, we'll have to. That doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Coins are in the ballot.

SPEAKER_05 21:28

Coins are in the ballot, folks. You've heard it here first. All right, who's your favorite next week? Let us know. Let us know who your favorite is. Maybe this is your first time watching the FEMS. How are you liking it? Let us know.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

I do love the announcer that we have on the Peacock. Oh, Hannah Walker. Hannah Walker is such she's just such a pro.

SPEAKER_03 21:50

So much knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Yeah. The respect is there. Like I could she loves it. She gives us so much information, not just about the racers and what they've been doing. Off of off season, but she's also like, Oh, those cows, those very specific cows that the broadcasters just showed us. That is that they do have notes in front of them. You know, they do, but she's processing and saying things makes all those little, all those little Phil had Phil Liggett had notes too, and he did not deliver.

SPEAKER_05 22:24

He's also a hundred years older.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

There's a lot of excuses for men, but you know, the most excellent woman announcer we have ever experienced is like, well, she has notes. Bitch please.

SPEAKER_05 22:36

Bitch please. That's me. I'm the bitch.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

I mean, it's it's just like so much comparison. Let's leave this for work. Tell him why you're mad next time.

SPEAKER_05 22:45

But I'll let you. I've got a brief little I was just perusing the the uh you know alt bike product news. Really the only thing that came out, you know, there's this not much of a of a uh product cycle here. I think most stuff that is gonna be cool that maybe we want to talk about is gonna be released at MAID, which would be two and a half, three weeks away. But Velo Orange, interestingly, interestingly enough, has just released 20-inch and 32-inch wheel sets. So the the parameters, uh the margins of wheel sizes have never been more supported, should we say. I just think it's cool that a VO is doing stuff that they want to do. And it's just fun that you know these two wheel sizes are so niche and that there are companies out there like Velo Orange that are supporting those curiosities for us nerds because you know, this is the this is the fun stuff that we like to play around with. These are our our Legos as adults. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

So, you know, obviously the 20. The 32 are I'm like, eh.

SPEAKER_05 23:58

You want a mini vella with 32-inch wheels. Who's gonna be the first to do that? Someone's gonna do it. I know it. A mini vello for Shaquille O'Neal with 32-inch wheels that he that fits him well enough that he won't need icy hot.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

He's in every commercial.

SPEAKER_05 24:19

It does not matter.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

I thought he uses salon pass. He doesn't even use icy hot.

SPEAKER_05 24:26

Salon pass?

SPEAKER_01 24:27

It's like an icy hot.

SPEAKER_05 24:28

Oh, I was gonna say he doesn't need a salon, he's bald.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Oh, he needs it for his toes.

SPEAKER_05 24:33

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Ah, salon pass.

SPEAKER_05 24:37

So uh yeah, that's that's just a fun little thing that Velo Orange is offering now. And I I really, you know, as far as like the what's coming up in MAID, I expect half of the bikes this year to be 32 inch.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Oh, prediction meter. What about the 20-incher? I mean, there's always a few.

SPEAKER_05 24:54

There's always a few of those kicking around.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:56

But the 32-inch wheel thing, I think, is gonna hit a fever pitch this year at MAID.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

How many were there last year?

SPEAKER_05 25:04

Well, two years ago there were like two. I think like I think, you know, Bitchin had one and and Daniel Yang. What was that under New House? I think he had one.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

Okay, very good.

SPEAKER_05 25:16

And that was the one that I got to ride. And then last year there were I don't I can't, I couldn't. There was probably like five or six last year.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Oh more than a handful.

SPEAKER_05 25:25

And then this year it's gonna be like well, I think there's gonna be at least twenty to thirty.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Oh, okay. Hands edge.

SPEAKER_05 25:34

Everybody, there's so many tire companies releasing 32-inch tires right now, too, and that are gonna be releasing formated, not us. I would love to again, but we're not not uh not able to.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Is this a gimmick from a dying industry or is this another Lego piece to add to to the to the build?

SPEAKER_05 25:57

Well, I think uh the larger industry, this is kind of like you know, like like you're throwing throwing some silver dollars in the wishing well. But for this for small bike, which is what we're more tuned into here, I think it's a good thing. I think it's more it's I think it's always going to be like a niche. It makes more sense for custom builders and like small runs of bikes and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Not small bike as in 20 inches, but small bike as a small industry with less than like four or something.

SPEAKER_05 26:26

So you don't have to have like a bunch of like inventory of 32-inch wheels when really, you know, they're so new, geometry changes so much. You think of like the first two niners with how different they are today, and fitting them on certain, you know, making that geometry work for people of different sizes. It's just a there's a lot of constraints that go around this bigger wheel. I have no doubt that it is a different feel altogether than your 29er. Um, just like a 20 a 26 is different than the 29er, still the they're all the sizes are fun. You know, it's I I don't always ride my 26ers, but when I do, I'm like, oh, this is this bike is sketchy but super fun. And I like and at that moment, I'm like, this is the only bike I want to be on right now. And then you were on a 650 feet, 650B bike, you could feel the slight difference there. You're like the same thing. And then you put get on your 29, and you're like, oh my god, I can't believe this traction. Or like, oh, I could lean into this corner so hard, but oh, I can't make it around this tight corner like I could on my 26. There's just so many different use case scenarios, but you know, it's it's one of those things where if you're gonna have multiple bikes, maybe, and you're tall, maybe a 32-inch wheeled bike could be really fun for you. And could, you know, this is these are great for the tinkerers. Great for the tinkers, and you know, if you're you know, people you think of how much people spend in on like gym memberships and like nutritionists or like like protein powders or something like that. And these things professionals.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Well, let me tell you folks, you just need a new bike. You just need a new bike.

SPEAKER_05 28:05

Add it in there, and you know, it's something that for me at least, it gets me out.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:09

It's like, oh, I want to, I want to, I want to feel that sensation today. Yeah, it's different than yesterday's sensation and the sensations the day before. And oh, I'm gonna tweak this one little thing, you know, and and this is gonna change it all for me. And okay, well, I'm gonna get out for a ride and I'm gonna feel better afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Perpetually looking at what's beyond the bend.

SPEAKER_05 28:29

Yeah, precisely. So so yeah, we'll see this year at MAID. I wonder, I wonder, I would like to perhaps I'll probably bring like some audio recording devices to Made and get some interviews and stuff like that so that we can see that.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Oh, it'd be it'd be fun to do sound clips.

SPEAKER_05 28:46

So, yeah, so that's really that's it for the headlines hot goss. Hope it was hot enough being August. Maybe you're looking for some cool goss.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 28:55

Well, we don't have any.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

We don't have any cool goss.

SPEAKER_05 28:58

We don't know.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

We don't even have any like gos goss. Remember?

SPEAKER_05 29:02

Remember those days? But what we do have is a real life report burr.

unknown 29:13

I love your sound effect so much.

SPEAKER_05 29:15

And I'm gonna have to hit pause on here because now we are sitting in the sun and I can't see my computer screen. So gonna pause. Okay, now we are back inside. It's been like the yeah, the last two weeks. We're talking about our first end-to-end tour that we've ever done. We've always only packed all of our stuff in our stuff and taken it with us as a point of pride and cheapness.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:47

When we started touring together, ten dollars a day was the budget.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:55

And we did it. We did by eating bacinois, beans, and forage greens.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 30:03

And if we rolled through a town and you needed a meal-ass meal, I said, we can't afford that. You can't have a burrito.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

You think we're made of beans?

SPEAKER_05 30:13

You think we're made of beans or something? We're on a fixed income here. So you know, fast forward, you we'd always kind of romanticize. I remember especially when we went to Switzerland when you were a Blackburn Ranger.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:27

And we saw all these people doing the Swiss Alps bike route.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Yeah. Completely unloaded bikes.

SPEAKER_05 30:34

There a lot of them were on e-bikes.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Yeah. The the smart ones were. That's what you needed.

SPEAKER_05 30:42

And although a lot of hike a bike on that. I wouldn't want to remember that Roman, a few of those Roman passes, would not want to push an e-bike up that, but I guess those e-bikes were the same weight as our loaded bikes, if you think about it.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

And 2017, yeah, not anymore.

SPEAKER_05 30:57

But right, right.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:58

Um, yeah, we kind of always see this, like, oh, and and and uh and then staying in a place, you know, at the end of the day can get really expensive.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

You know, if you're doing seven-day tour, they're at least gonna be a hundred bucks a night, and that's yeah, minimum, you know, minimum. Yeah, so that's already like a thousand bucks on lodging, which uh for when we were starting out was an obscene amount of money.

SPEAKER_05 31:23

Yeah, right. You know, when you're working off of twenty thousand dollars a year for two people for two people, and we were we were good at I mean, side hustles here and there.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

I used to write for the Radivist every once in a while for tours, but that's like 300 bucks back then.

SPEAKER_05 31:41

Yeah, you're camp, you're can't you're camping on that budget.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

So not not much, and during that time it was it was so easy because that's all we had to think about was just riding and do we have enough for food? And if not, we're gonna go stay somewhere and get a job, save up a little bit, and then do it all over again. Classic dirtbag lifestyle.

SPEAKER_05 32:06

There was no needing to check emails or needing to stay on top of productions of things. I guess we were we were doing the bags with Swift, but it was you know, it was only a few times a year and we didn't have to ship, we didn't have to fulfill the orders or anything. So yeah, it was an easy, easy time, but yeah, because of those easy times, yeah, you don't make much money. What's changed since then is we make a little bit of money enough to afford to go on a four-day in-to-in three-night bike trip for my birthday.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Well, you're 46th.

SPEAKER_05 32:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

I mean 21st. So young.

SPEAKER_05 32:42

So yeah, I had thought about this last year, and we just never did it. And this year I was like, oh, you know, we it would that kind of ride would be really fun to do up in Vermont because there are so many cute inns and little villages and town and that you want to check out and you know, just like the quintessential, you know, exactly what you imagine when you think, oh, in the inn New England tour.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Right. And Vermont is so hilly. We're like, we don't want to be lugging our tent and our tarp and our sleeping bag and our sleeping pad and our pillow and you know, all right.

SPEAKER_05 33:16

And it could be really buggy this time of year, too.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

It was pretty buggy, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_05 33:20

It wasn't actually, but it's usually I thought it was usually buggier. You're you're yeah, you get the lumps all the oh my god, you look like you got leprosy.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Yeah. It's gonna fall right off.

SPEAKER_05 33:31

I know a surgeon. Yep, that full so you know that full tour. I so it's we left on Friday. Well, last week I made up a route and then found a few, you know, tried to think of like, oh, I will say, you when I pulled you onto what you wanted to do, you were like, big days, big days. You did say that. Well, I feel like the days were big, they were big, even shortened days were big. So I made up a route, it was pretty much one-to-one elevation, which is generally what we get around here too. So didn't think much of it. And we drove up to a Scutney, just south of a Scutney, to a park and ride, like a commuter lot where we could leave our car for a few days, and yeah, got our bikes together and started riding. So we had pretty much like every 60 miles-ish, we had a stop at a place that I had rented for the night. And so day one, wants wanna get wanna just get into this? I got the Strava file right here in front of me, and we're gonna go. We're you're just gonna follow along with us, folks.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

It'll be fun.

SPEAKER_05 34:39

So I don't know if you could see.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

We reached that that parking ride at like two.

SPEAKER_05 34:48

Two. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

We still we still had to 45 miles with you know, all climbing. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:56

This this one's we we started on the other side of the route. We crossed over to the other side of the river to New Hampshire and rode a paved section to kind of fast forward a little bit. It was about eight miles, and then you cross over this beautiful covered bridge that crosses the Connecticut River. It was huge. Huge.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

I just kept being like, is this still oh my god, it's still going. That's a lot of maintenance.

SPEAKER_05 35:18

It's a beautiful covered bridge. And then almost immediately we start climbing up and we reach some, and then we uh it's it's pretty lumpy the first day. There wasn't necessarily like a big, a big, one big climb. It just kind of lumped and they were they weren't like 300 foot climbs like we have around here in in in East Adam. Yeah, it was like you know, 400, 500 foot climbs just over and over and over again. I want to say this this day was the hardest for me, and I know it was for you. We hit some we hit some roads that had 21% gradients.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:54

And yeah, it was hot, and we were just trying to get our legs under us, I think, too. And we had already realized that we had packed too much stuff.

unknown 36:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:02

Like the the whole fantasy with this kind of end-to-end tour, credit card tour ride is carrying like just the change of clothes to you know wear in the evening if you're trying to go out to dinner or something. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

But I packed what it so I packed and it's summer, so you're like, oh we're stuck cold. We don't need anything.

SPEAKER_05 36:21

And you really don't. I but we packed like cold weather stuff. I packed like a stuff, the stuff that I didn't need. I didn't need an extra pair of shorts. I didn't need a long, I didn't need this long sleeve shirt, I didn't need this long sleeve base layer. All I could have done is like with that uh the only thing I wore were my wool with leather chamois shorts every day.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 36:42

And I wore a like a seersucker top.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Yeah. And button down that you had unbuttoned.

SPEAKER_05 36:47

Right, unbuttoned the whole time. Sandals, yeah, my bedrocks, so I didn't have to use any other, didn't have to have like an off-the-bike shoe because it was actually on the bike also.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:58

And that's all I needed, but I packed other things too. And I packed a full coffee setup and with a with an aeropress because I was like, oh, I'm gonna have off, I'm gonna have really good coffee. Shout out to Joe Redbeard, gave me some fresh beans from down in. Yeah, what are these? They were really good.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

They're awesome. We saw the Odyssey together, and Joe handed this coffee off.

SPEAKER_05 37:19

Broad Street coffee roasters. This must be in this must be in um Asheville.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

They said they got it from Boston, though.

SPEAKER_05 37:26

Oh, from Boston. Well, it was really good. It was even though it was a washed Ethiopian, it had a very fruit forward flavor to it. So yeah. So I brought that and with along with my aero press and grinder and all that stuff, probably like a total weight of like two and a half, three pounds, and took up a a pretty big took up a pretty big, you know, took up a lot of real estate in the bag. And yeah, I go to make I we stay in a yurt that night. And we wake up in the morning and I go to make my my coffee and I'm missing the little brew basket. Yeah, I came home and it was right on the counter here. I just didn't put it in.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Was nearly in tears.

SPEAKER_05 38:14

You know, so you know, make sure you make sure you pack all your coffee stuff if you're gonna bring all that, because you know, I we we thought about shipping it back like the next day because I was missing such a crucial piece and carrying around this thing, but uh we missed the post office closed. So, you know, lessons learned. But although I this is this isn't the first, and I'm sure it won't be the last time that I forget something.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

It's just it's just crying and moving on.

SPEAKER_05 38:38

Moving on. So I made my own pour over in the Mr. Coffee Machine by boil, they had like a I was boiling the water and then like pouring over on the top. And uh it worked because I still had the grinder, it was good, it's good beans, even even with this method, those Broad Street coffee roasters, let me tell you. The fruit, the fruit forward shine through. So it was nice. So that yurt, so so we um I jumped ahead a little bit, but we we did uh some big climbing this day, and we were both we had didn't have a lot of time to stop, so we were like hammering to try and get to this yurt before sundown. And we decided we found this this really nice market as our plentiful in in Vermont, right before the final climb up to our where we were gonna be staying. And we had our dinner like that, and then we climb, and then we descend. The descent was like how long the seven-mile descent, okay. So we descend and we were just like, Oh my god, we're almost there, we're almost there, we're almost there. But wouldn't you believe it? We missed the turn all the way to the bottom of the hill and had to climb back up, maybe like a quarter of the climb, a few like two miles with the climb back up.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

I was so delirious at this point because it was, you know, just starting to get dark, and you know, the last light was starting to happen. We go through this on a descent. It was a screaming descent, you know, but I knew that like at the end of this descent, or like we don't have any more climbing. This is it on the descent. I thought we go through this like kind of creepy like tunnel.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

Do you remember that? It got really dark and cold, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:20

I and I didn't have any lights on. And then Ron was like, Oh, we have to go back through that tunnel. And I was like, That tunnel is haunted, it has many ghosts. But we had to we had to get back up. But we did see a friendly face over there, didn't we? We saw a gravel gravel dad or a roadie dad that you had talked to. He stopped and talked to you, but we turned around and had to go back up.

SPEAKER_05 40:47

I don't remember this.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

Your memory is from pain.

SPEAKER_05 40:54

From pain. So yeah, back.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

It was me who was in pain.

SPEAKER_05 40:58

So yeah, we just rode back up the hill, got to our yurt, and it was a nice, nice stay on a farm with a bunch of goats and chickens.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

Chickens like chickens were not doing okay.

SPEAKER_05 41:13

Pecking at everyone, being a being a there was a real it was a real like pimp scene.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

There was a there was a few roosters.

SPEAKER_05 41:21

A few roosters. There was one rooster that wouldn't let these other hens do anything without going through him.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

There was there's definitely a pecking order there, and like within the roosters, I saw three roosters and probably like 50 chickens.

SPEAKER_05 41:37

So yeah, that was the you know, uh overall experience.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

10.

SPEAKER_05 41:42

10. You want you like to be in surrounded by all those chickens.

unknown 41:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 41:46

Yeah, yeah, right, right. So yeah, you know I like foul. So yeah, good night's sleep in this cool yurt. We we get up the next morning, we get a pretty late start around 11:30.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

And uh you had to go in the house, go through flock of chickens who are looking to poop. So I I will honestly, I was pretty like burnt out from the night the day before the day before. Because we did, I mean, we started riding like wheels rolling, probably at like 3 p.m. Got to the yurt at like 8 to 3 p.m.

SPEAKER_05 42:27

And we were climbing the rest of the time.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

And like 47 miles, I will say at this point I was like a one-to-one ratio, and we didn't stop anywhere. It was just like heads down, we're just gotta get to this year business.

SPEAKER_05 42:40

Not the best way to go about things. Because I will say, at the at at that at halfway through that day, I was like, maybe this wasn't a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 42:48

Why?

SPEAKER_05 42:49

Because I because it was it was way harder than I thought it was gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

And I was already thinking too.

SPEAKER_05 42:55

Well, yeah, I was already thinking, I was like, this isn't enjoyable, like this is just hard. Like the only thing we're doing is like you know, you're you're climbing, your head is down because it's 21%. The only thing that you're looking at is the road in front of you because everything is just trees. Yep, just like the Pacific Northwest, where I don't particularly like riding either, because it's just trees. No views, there's no views, yeah. You're just on a treadmill, you know. And so kind of feel it. I was feeling like that for that section of Vermont between Scutney and and the Mad River Valley. I was feeling like, oh, this isn't not scenic. It's just like a dirt road that is like graded really well, so you could be on your road bike, but it's there's no scenery.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

It's just hard.

SPEAKER_05 43:41

It's this is just hard.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Because it's so different than the riding we have here, which is very varied.

SPEAKER_05 43:48

There's there's all sorts of stuff to look at. And I I I was thinking in that in that context, I was like, Connecticut is so much better. Or our area of Connecticut is so much better than this. The way I was thinking that was where you're used to. Yeah. So and I was like, this is just hard for no reason. Or there is a reason because it's hilly here, but I'm not seeing anything different.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

I think it was our expectations. I think we went into it thinking, like, oh, we're unloaded touring.

SPEAKER_05 44:18

This is gonna be easy.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

This is gonna be essentially a road ride. I think that was my my problem with my mindset, is like I didn't pack any of like I didn't pack my tea, honey, milk that I uh usually bring, because I was like, oh yeah, we're just gonna be. I I just underestimated it. I think that was my problem. Because you think because you're not bringing all of your sleeping gear, right, like tents and stuff, that you're gonna be flying. No, your bike is still heavy because you're carrying your clothes, all of your charging equipment, your food, all of the water. Like your your bike is heavy. And I was thinking heavier than a normal day ride.

SPEAKER_05 45:00

For a summer tour, the only weight that we would have added would have been the sleeping bag and our and the and the shelter, or a bug net for that matter. So it I was thinking it's only like two, maybe like two extra pounds.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Sweet pad, too.

SPEAKER_05 45:15

Still, you know, three pounds, maybe with all that. So it's not like you cut a huge amount of weight off of your bike doing it this way for a summer tour.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

We definitely could have packed less stuff.

SPEAKER_05 45:28

Yeah, but still I don't think we're gonna try this again. I don't we are gonna do it again in Western Mass next. I'd like to do that one.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Yeah, somewhere near.

SPEAKER_05 45:35

I think this is a was an awesome way to see a bunch of cool stuff without having to, you know, worry about having your cleaning your swamp ass every night and whatever questionable body of water you could find while getting attacked by mosquitoes.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's the thing that I was most grateful for with landing in a place every night that has hot shower and no bugs. Like what a luxury.

SPEAKER_05 46:04

We don't even have a hot shower at home.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

Not right now.

SPEAKER_05 46:06

Not yet.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

No, we don't.

SPEAKER_05 46:09

So, so yeah, that was that was nice. I and I implore you to go to my Strava right now, or I'll have it up on the blog too, ronspikesblog.com, but I have an award-winning photo set from all of this. So I posted it all on the last.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

I'm sorry, I wanted to be able to take more photos and stuff, but I was pooped.

SPEAKER_05 46:27

Yeah, it was good, it was kind of like early days when we started touring together where I got really good at photography because I was always able to get ahead and set up a shot for a few minutes before you got there.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 46:37

So that's the kind of quality you can expect from this award-winning photo set, folks.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

Cool.

SPEAKER_05 46:42

Okay. Ultra romance circa 2018.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

By the time I'm 46, I'm going to be stronger and faster than you.

SPEAKER_05 46:51

Whoa. You heard it here first.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

Yep, six years. And I will take your photos. I'll be 52. And you'll still look like you're 20. So I will do that.

SPEAKER_05 47:01

I'll get some.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Promises were made.

SPEAKER_05 47:04

When, yeah, when am I gonna get a new head of hair?

SPEAKER_01 47:09

When are they gonna Why would you want to replace this one?

SPEAKER_05 47:11

I wouldn't want to replace it, but I want more of it.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

Okay, well, there's definitely things you can do, but you just don't.

SPEAKER_05 47:17

Plugs.

SPEAKER_01 47:19

No, not plugs, like oil, like little diffusers, massagers that promotes growth.

SPEAKER_05 47:25

But oh Rogan, I mean So, so yeah, so I implore you all to follow along with all this on Strava. You can see the routes and stuff. Uh, we're gonna move on to day two of this tour now. Oh my gosh. Which we already were at. So we're we're gonna kind of we'll we'll get a little quicker here.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

Let me bring up the day two felt so much harder than the first day.

SPEAKER_05 47:46

What?

SPEAKER_01 47:46

For me, because it was just like there were sections of day two where I got off and walked the bike up some of those like gradients.

SPEAKER_03 47:56

Well, we should we should give some context here.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

And we did more climbing on day.

SPEAKER_05 48:00

Day one was 48 miles with 4,500 feet of elevation gain.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Day two for me was 44 miles, so four less miles over the course of 10 hours.

SPEAKER_05 48:16

I mean, for for for me, day two was easy and was like because we we left, we cut off a we I started cutting off a bunch of dirt that I had put in there in this route and just routing us.

SPEAKER_01 48:31

Very kind, I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_05 48:32

Well, I I started thinking too, I was like, well, this is what you're sh really should be doing if you want to have fun out here. Like if you stay on all of these class four mountain passes, like you're gonna get an experience, but it's gonna be so going up and then screaming down and then going up against the city. Which is exciting to fit in like a few times in your ride, but be nice to yourself. Like you want to savor those moments, you want those to be special. So put in some pavement because you won't believe how like you get off of some of those roads and you're like, Oh my god, pavement, thank God. Yeah, and then you get off, then all of a sudden, when you're done with pavement, you're like, Oh, gravel, thank God. You know, and so you just have all these thankful moments if you route this way.

SPEAKER_02 49:15

That's true.

SPEAKER_05 49:16

Things go a lot quicker, and so be with that Strava, Strava has like a routing, is it you're able to route on the Strava app and then send to your wireless device or your your your Garmin or Wahoo or whatever whatever you're using, your hammerhead. So I was able to do that and kind of route on the fly, and we skipped over a bunch of stuff and made day two a lot easier than it was going to be. And I am going to bring it up here.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

I have 44 point, I have I have 44.44 miles with 4,564 of climbing. So it was more than a one-to-one ratio.

SPEAKER_03 49:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:59

I think that's why it felt so hard. But also because I was again the expectations, like in my head, this tour is like, oh yeah, it's just up and down, that's just how Verman is. But we're on light bikes, we'll be okay. It's not like touring days when we're averaging four miles per hour doing this kind of stuff. And then it I think, oh, I can stop here, I can stop here and take a view. We could, you know, go get a burrito here, we could go this this kind of thinking, and it was not that.

SPEAKER_05 50:36

Well, I mean, we the first 15 miles were like pancake flat, and we did them all the way to Randolph.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

That's not pancake.

SPEAKER_05 50:45

That was pancake flat.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

That's not. I'm looking at this, and that's what that's that's that's hills. That's little hills.

SPEAKER_05 50:53

Well, it was that's not pancake. Well, okay. That's a waffle. So we took pavement to Randolph, and we get to Randolph, we have lunch, and then I used to I love going to Randolph. I love the Mad River Valley. This area I've been going to since I was 13 years old. I went to a mountain bike camp here, changed my life. No, and and then Randolph is where the New England Mountain Bike Festival used to be, Pedro's Fest. So I used to go there with my when I was a teenager, and then right above Randolph is Braintree Hill, which is a house that Patrick and his wife Curry used to rent slash borrow from a family friend, and we would stay there in the early aughts, and really where gravel, like where I started riding road bikes on gravel in this area, and and then cyclocross bikes on gravel, and then 650B randoneering bikes on gravel when we were still just calling it dirt and gravel wasn't king just yet. Just a you know, just a lot of memories in this area, and I always feel it. When I hit Randolph, it's like, okay, here we go. Like this area. Also, my family generations ago lived in this area. The Wheelers in America.

SPEAKER_01 52:05

Yeah, because there's a lot of like Wheeler Gold Troves.

SPEAKER_05 52:08

So I just feel like this, I always feel this connection to this zone. And so I love coming back. It had been a few years. I think we came through here in like 2021 or something. I mean, I had done a similar ride on my Atlantis and met you over at American Flatbread and Warren.

SPEAKER_02 52:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 52:23

So I was starting to feel it. And we from Randolph, we climb up Braintree Hill, which is one of my favorite climbs, and a steady, like 1,500 foot climb. And we get to the top and we get to an old, the old house that we used to stay at, that I always stop at and try and, you know, just kind of pay homage to a part of me that was there 20 plus years ago. And the house was gone. And they had just left the garage. And now, granted, this wasn't a good, this wasn't like a fancy house. Like I remember staying in it and being scared. Like this is a haunted house. Or like there's holes in the snake, like you could see like a snake is gonna fall down while you're yeah, it was not in great shape. But you know, when the family friend did offer to sell it to Patrick, it was very inexpensive, and I wish that we had done it, but I don't know, whoever bought it knocked it down. Granted, it's a beautiful spot.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

Great view.

SPEAKER_05 53:31

A great view that you couldn't see before when we were there because it was all overgrown. But yeah, I had some emotions up there for sure. So yeah, that was a real you know, yeah. You know, you you don't you never know what to expect. You never know in life, you know, which way things are gonna go, what pieces of yourself you need to take with you or let go. So I'm still processing that one, but it was nice to be up there with you, sweetheart, because that was very comforting. And then we descend down to the Mad River Valley. I shouldn't say Mad River Valley. We sent I don't know what river that was, but we descend down and then we have another we have Roxbury Gap to get over, which is one of my favorite climbs. I met a guy going up that one who actually we met a lot of people this day, a lot of uh a lot of alt cyclists out and about.

SPEAKER_02 54:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 54:24

Because as I was climbing up, we met somebody at lunch in Randolph. Right, and then I met somebody just on Carrie Car, I think it's called Carrie Howe Road. It was like this old house that I had been like looking at on Zillow for the last 15 years, and this guy bought it and ended up knowing Sandy Carson, a mutual Austin friend, had gone to college in Austin. Oh, that's nice. He was about 55 years old, had redone this house, it was gorgeous. It was just cool to chat chat him up a little bit. George was his name. Shout out George if you listen. And then I uh wait for you in that brook there. You thought I had been kidnapped. Yeah, and I come out of the brook, and then we start the real climb in earnest, which is the the last thousand feet up Roxbury Gap, which is a dirt climb, you know, a graded dirt climb. And I met somebody who was coming down that who was doing a like a the six-gap ride, and he stopped and was like, Oh my god, I don't know if I'm hallucinating now, or are you really here? And I was like, I was like, I think you're I think you are hallucinating. But it was really cool to see somebody like on the last 100 miles into a six-gap ride screaming down that downhill. So, whoever you were, thanks for saying hi. That was really cool.

SPEAKER_01 55:33

We get up to Maybe we were hallucinating.

SPEAKER_05 55:35

Maybe I think we were the ones hallucinating. We get to the top and then we descend down to the Warren store at the bottom, and then we make the short ride through Waitsfield to American flatbread, which I first went to in 1993. And it was one of the first times I had ever tasted like gourmet pizza. It was like a brand new thing in the United States.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

Nice pizza.

SPEAKER_05 55:55

And I tried to go there ever since. It holds up surprisingly well for being one of the first.

SPEAKER_01 56:02

I was so okay.

SPEAKER_05 56:04

And then we met somebody at Americ. The the host at American Flatbread was like, Hey, I know you guys, I know you guys.

unknown 56:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 56:12

It was so four people that day in the middle of nowhere, seemingly. So that was that was cool.

SPEAKER_01 56:18

Not something we're used to outside of the West Coast. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 56:21

So it's but now nice to see there's more alt cyclers in New England these days.

SPEAKER_01 56:26

Yeah, New England.

SPEAKER_05 56:28

So, you know, we uh we stayed at a lodge type scenario, kind of like a condo near there.

SPEAKER_01 56:34

It must, it's definitely for skiers.

SPEAKER_05 56:36

For skiers, all the stuff's infrastructure. It was good. You get cheap stuff this time of year because there's not people aren't skiing skiing right now. So yeah, stayed right near there. That ended up being a great, another great day.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

That was awesome, just like going into town, getting pizza, even though I was like totally fudge fracked. And there's like queer couples seated next to you, and like a younger set of boys, like talking really nice lefty politics, and they're so young. They're probably I probably put them at like 20, maybe 21. And it's just not something I'm used to in Connecticut.

SPEAKER_05 57:23

Outside New Haven or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 57:24

Outside of a city, you know, and this is like a really small town, you know.

SPEAKER_05 57:30

Vermont is Vermont.

SPEAKER_01 57:31

It's a lot of Vermont is very like old school democratic astronomy. So there were other signage that I was like, oh, that's at least there's some variety up in here.

SPEAKER_05 57:43

So we're moving. Oh yeah, it was covered bridge week, and we saw a lot of covered bridges uh on day three.

SPEAKER_01 57:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 57:51

We saw a number of them, starting with the we we rolling.

SPEAKER_01 57:56

We went through like two covered bridges a day on this tour.

SPEAKER_05 57:59

Yeah, yeah. We we started in Warren essentially that second day.

SPEAKER_01 58:03

And you could see why there are so many covered bridges because there's streams and rivers like everywhere.

SPEAKER_05 58:10

They cover the bridges to keep the snow off because the it makes the bridge makes the bridge last longer.

SPEAKER_01 58:15

Right. It has to be covered, but there are so many of them because there's streams.

SPEAKER_05 58:20

I mean, a lot of them with the hurricanes and stuff in the last like the like Sandy and Helene. I can't remember which one in particular, but I toured Vermont like right after one of those, and like they had lost so many covered bridges. But these are still there. So there's not as many covered bridges in Vermont as there were, you know, 15 years ago, but these are still there. Or I guess that was even longer ago. So we start the day in Warren at the Warren store, you get your egg sandwich, and then we start riding. And I thought this day was my favorite. We were supposed to go over Lincoln Gap, but I swe I and through the breadloaf wilderness or breadloaf, not wilderness, but adjacent to that. It was breadloaf has all sorts of different things. Breadloaf wilderness. So we were gonna go through there, and but I was like, you know what, we gotta make this a little easier because that's the we gotta enjoy ourselves. And so so we did some pavement and cut off a few climbs and ended up like getting on this like freshly routed for me. This area, I had done gone over Lincoln Gap plenty of times, but I had never done this stretch down, like I guess really down the the main thoroughway of the Mad River Valley. That's not Route 100, up in the up in the hills, and with all this beauty, these beautiful, like very gentle gradient dirt roads. Yeah, that was nice with incredible views of I don't know what we were looking at, but it was there rolling green hills.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

It was just very daydreamy farms with like huge silos and really big barns that you you could really see what New England was like very back in Norman Rockwell. Yeah, what you want to do.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:04

Yeah, what you want to see when you're touring in Vermont. So that third day, I would check out what we did that day.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:09

Um it looked like an eye exam. You know, that's what I kept saying. I was like, this this can't be real. The red barn is down the road here and it's red. Like it you know those eye exam things, you know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:21

So that was that was really cool. I I I would check out day three on our Strava if you want to know those roads. Uh, we get down to a paved section, kind of burning some pavement before our big last climb. But that big last climb, we knew it was looming, we just had to get up it, and then it was a descent all the way down. The descent was huge. It was let's see, from mile 40 to 55, 56, we were descending.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:45

I know my hands were just like cramped in brake position because you were braking on the hoods and not in the drops. Yeah, as soon as I switch the drops, no problem.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:56

You gotta you gotta break in the drops if you're going downhill, folks. That's what the drops are for.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:00

So Okay, calm down. Um you do what you're doing.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:03

People don't use the drops enough. And so yeah, tell them people don't use the drops anymore. They're called drop bars, use them. If you want hoods, just use like a like one of those really unsightly, like, you know, fixed gear bull moon blood like brahma bars or whatever. All right, so yeah, so that was an awesome day. We end up in a very basic accommodations that night in Bridgewater. Yeah, but it was right across the street from this very interesting, like old woollen mill that has that was the long trail brewery. Yeah, that was originally the long trail brewery in the early 90s. I meet I meet this this guy who runs the dispensary who used to work at the long trail. She's like, Yeah, man, we used to be friends with fish. And yeah, you know, I know I look, I know I look the part. Don't listen to fish, folks. I don't. But I can hang, you know. Yeah, and so with anyone. Yeah, so we we have some pizza, some pretty like lackluster pizza, but we are but it's family style. It's family style. We're from here, New Haven, folks. We we eat the best pizza in the world every day. So it's you know very judgy. We're very judgy of other people's pizza. And so, especially Italy, get with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:12

All right, you know what? We're not gonna We're not gonna do that to anyone.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:17

So, anyway, we uh we have a great evening there. We go back to our spot or back to our where this lodge that we're staying at and watch the Fem Advic Swift uh from bed while you're eating leftover pizza. Yeah, it was very uh very nice way to end the day. Next day we know we only have 25 miles to go. I had to be we had a deadline where I had to be to Bellows Falls to drop some frame to pick up some frames from Frank. So, you know, we had to kind of hightail it. But you know, that last day ended up being a lot more climbing than I think we thought. It was only it was one to one.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:51

Yeah, again.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:52

So another big climb right out the like the like the club we climb climbed right out of right out of Bridgewater, up and over this really cool climb. I loved that one. That was a good one. It started off, you know, just a gradual gravel and then turned to class four at the top and then had like a really cool long descent. It was kind of raining all around us, but not on us. Yeah, and the mist and like every the fog in the mountains. My favorite it was so cool. Yeah, and the photo, the photos really made everyone like it, like the lighting, everything popped really nice. Again, award winner. Check it out, ronspikesblog.com. And you know, we get up to the top there, and then we have a pretty good, a pretty like lumpy descent to get back down to the other side. Super humid but breezy at the top.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:41

I loved it.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:42

So as far as bags we were running, you had go go through what you have.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:48

I was on my Alumax 2 with Ultra Dynamico Brute 700 by 43 race casing with TPU tubes. And I was riding my I was riding with a a clap trap in the front, and I used I which I put all of my snack foods and stuff in, my camera, weed kit. I think that's it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:10

Like quick reach stuff.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:11

Yeah, quick reach, quick reach stuff, and then in the back I had my coffee, I had a a a Fabs Chest mini with my useless coffee kit that weighed three pounds, and a change of clothes. And yeah, that's pretty much it. What did you have? Yeah, I think what were you riding?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

I was riding the lightning bolt, tires, roses, JFFs, 650B by 47. 650B 47, tan wall, tubless, tubeless, yeah. I was a little bit nervous about the tubeless thing because I just wasn't sure with like elevation, humidity. I I know you just topped off on it though.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:53

Yeah, I just put fresh saline in.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:54

So but I didn't I didn't bring a tube, so I was a little nervous because I know how class four roads can be for rims, but I had a fad chest mini in the front that had pretty much everything, and then I had one of those uh saddle bags, the butt rockets, but a very small one, the Akatanga one that I have used for five years now that's still kicking. Actually, that had like my all of my clothes, my long sleep thing, a change of clothes for dinner, I brought my squirt, and I had riding shoes and brought my bedrocks as well. And I thought I think that was a little bit too much stuff.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:44

So you wouldn't you wouldn't have brought a change of shoes, you would just wear your clipless shoes?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:48

Yeah, I think I would have even with the bunions. Even with the bunions, but like in this kind of a situation, I could have just walked like the American flatbed dinner. I d we just walked in with our cycling gear on straight with our cycling stuff because we had to scooch three miles down the road to our B- And then I guess it was nice having the sandals, but I could have done without it.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:18

Or you could have packed I'm surprised you didn't pack the real thin ones. Like I was surprised that you packed the heavy ones.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:23

Yeah, like the thin ones are so flat, I need arch support.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:28

You need arch support.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:29

And then these ones that are a little bit thicker, like this isn't the 3D one, but they still weigh weigh something. So I wish I had like I don't know, I would have worn just bags or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:43

But that was my setup.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:48

So we make it back to the car just in time, like right before a huge rainstorm.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:54

Yeah, that was amazing.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:55

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So little bellows falls, drop off with pickup with Frank. Huge rainstorm as we drive to the co-op in Brattleboro. If you've never been to the Brattleboro Food Co-op in Vermont, it's one of the tops in the nation.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:07

Yeah, I got some cute things. I got this crab timer. You can maybe hear it. There it is. Like I just love the health and beauty parts and containers, like all the clean canteen containers, like all the cute little kitschy kitchen things that are like made of wood or like ceramics that local people as you were going through the local ceramics, you're like, I would kill to have this door close to us. I would kill.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:34

I would kill for these cute ceramics. So you know them. All in all, I think by the end of it, I was like, this was an awesome vacation. And I needed that. I needed that vacation. And it got me thinking a lot about how I'm spending my time right now. Because I I think I've made I've definitely made myself too busy to, you know, maybe you know, it's it's still a job. This is still a job that I love doing every day. I just don't have that. Like, you know, going out for four days, I was stressed out because I had, I was like, I'm not going to be able to answer all my emails. You know, they're going to start piling up. And we're like pre-selling road bikes right now, and I have a lot of you know, customer sizing questions coming in, and I'm like, how can I step away? And I'm just like this, that, and that. I'm like, man, I'm working so hard for the bike industry, which does not, you know, it doesn't really give you tens of millions. Tens of millions, as we've talked about before. So you I I did have a pretty pretty big uh realization on this trip with a a new product that I can offer that may perhaps free up some of my time if I can make money off of it. And so you're gonna hear it here first, folks, at the Warren Country store after my emotional moment at the top of Braintree Hill. Talk about Patrick's Patrick's granola. So I think I caught I think it caught my eye because of it's Pat's, and I was thinking about Patrick because we had spent so much time in this area together. And this guy, the real kitschy photo of this guy with his dog on the front of the package, and it's just like Patrick's world's finest granola. And I bought this bag of granola because I needed something for breakfast the next morning. And as we left that store, it dawned on me. I was like, I make excellent granola. I love granola, I'm passionate about granola. One of my favorite what you even Namdal eats my granola sometimes. And so I, you know, this is my granola, is up there with some of my favorite foods. It has been for a lifetime. I just eat granola like it's going out of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:41

It's true. It's true.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:42

You know, it's true, it's true. And so, you know, I was just like, you know what? I could have a granola brand. Where are you going? You're my granola talk, you're gonna run away?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:51

No.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:52

She's gotta go, she's gotta poop. Really? So you're just gonna leave us now?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:57

Should I put it on pause?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:59

I'm sorry, folks, she'll be right back. Okay, folks, we're back. Just the mere mention of my granola causes bowel movements.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:10

It's rich in fiber. It's rich in fiber. It's very fiber.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:13

Yeah, so folks, I make the best granola. I'm trying to think of whether or not I should market it as Uncle Ron's granola or LaRon Designer Granola. So maybe you have some suggestions. I just think that I'm gonna st I'm gonna start making this and I'm gonna sell it through the website and through some local shops around the area, and then I'm gonna get it into Whole Foods West Hartford, and then someone's gonna buy it from me.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:39

Maybe Brattleboro Food Co-op.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:41

Yeah, we're definitely gonna get this in Brattleboro. But it's gonna be with Connecticut maple syrup, which is a superior product.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:47

I think everything in Connecticut is better.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:50

But you know, I think I really this is this is my I think this is my my my business right here. Granola. High profit margin. What else? Wholesome, nutritious, delicious, delicious. It's virility in a bag.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:09

Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:10

I was thinking of a lot of different, you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:12

You know, I this I'm sorry if I'm less enthusiastic because for the last two days of the tour, like every moment where I caught up, it was granola talk.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:23

Oh granola, granola, granola.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:26

I was looking at these how how I was looking at all these places and being like, you know what, with granola money, I could afford this.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:32

I was uh when we would go out to dinner, I was like, 22% tip. I got granola money coming. You know? These I'm already thinking that way.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:42

Okay, I like it.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:43

Please another another another side note on this tour was that Vermont is emptier than it's ever been.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:50

I know.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:52

Like, and I it gets you thinking like all these old houses.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:55

Yeah, we're having those discussions.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:57

We're having these these apocalyptic discussions. Like, we all know that the birth rate is down.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:02

And there's nobody, and young people moved to cities.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:06

And there aren't cities in Vermont folks.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:08

There really aren't.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:09

And we were just passing by countless once beautiful homesteads that were maybe like one old woman like tending to at this point, and like not much longer. Like all these places, and they're vastly overvalued, like the real estate. I was just looking. A lot of these places they were this is like two million dollars for these like beat up houses.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:31

Who can do that?

SPEAKER_05 1:12:32

Nobody can do that, and nobody will do that. So you know, hold your pennies, folks. Another 10 years, there can be anybody living there, yeah. And there's no jobs, there's no nothing. And so it kind of made it made me feel very like fortunate again to live in Connecticut because we get a lot of those same feelings of like classic New England remoteness in our area, but we're not that far away from city centers that people aren't gonna be without work and a bunch of abandoned houses and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:02

I guess, but we don't have food co-ops that good.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:05

We don't have food co-ops like that, which is a downer. But I think it can get here. I think this could be I think this could be yeah, I well, I yeah, I would love, yeah, once they're just giving away those homes because they're gonna have to. There's no one that's gonna take over these places. Yeah, they're beautiful, but they're already in such disrepair.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:22

Like most towns need their tax base. It's like 90% of the town budget comes from the tax base.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:28

And so these towns are just gonna cease to exist. They're not gonna have any. Yeah, so it's a it's a pretty interesting, it was pretty interesting because I feel like see it while you can't. Yeah, see what I can't. Like I've I've been touring Vermont and visiting this area of Vermont. I mean, the Mad River Valley, it may be an exception because it is a touristy place, but a Woodstock Vermont touristy place, like these really like touristy places that draw rich people in from the cities are doing just fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:54

Searching for quaintness, searching for quaintness.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:55

I guess basically us, we're rich people from the cities.

unknown 1:13:58

No, we're not.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:00

But people, people, you know, maybe you're that rich person from the city, and you know, so the you're our supporting these small Vermont economies, like there's no other like people get like, oh, tourism this, tourism that. Like, this is what keeps the rural places going. Like people, uh hopefully you could do it in a respectful way. I think bike touring through these places is a great way to experience them. But you know, it's pr it's wild, you know, it gets you thinking, it gets you thinking about the future because it reminded me an awful lot of Portugal.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:30

When I went to Portugal like 10 years ago, I encountered no young people until I went to I went to Lisbon. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:38

Uh was right. It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:40

It's just it's these once these people pass away, there's not going to be anyone left. No, there's no replace, not people replacing these people on the countryside. Not certainly not at the at the the the sheer numbers that there once were, just that alone. So gets you thinking. Well, that pretty much wraps up our Vermont tour and my new pivot to granola, being a granola man.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:03

Yep. So you heard it here first.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:05

You heard it here first, folks. I'm gonna get on it, start testing my recipes. But you may see it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:10

I like the designer.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:12

Does it you like the designer granola? Okay, all right. Yeah, let us know what you like, folks. What do you want to what do you want to munch on in the morning? Classic, a classic nutmeg country break complete a complete nutmeg country breakfast?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:26

A complete nutmeg country, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:28

Yeah, I don't know. Okay, quickly made preview.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:33

What are you making?

SPEAKER_05 1:15:34

I'm gonna talk about this more in the next episode because we're already deep into this one.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:38

I don't think anyone Yeah, we just said a quick, yeah, quick little peek.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:41

I'm doing I'm doing an Alli Max, it's not a 32-inch. I'm doing a 700C Alumax 2 build that is gonna be as much red as I could possibly fit on here. I'm gonna go, I'll go over the spec sheet on the next episode because hopefully I'll have some of it done.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:58

But yeah, that's pretty much it for this week, folks. You got any you got any parting parting messages for our for our listeners, sweetheart?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:06

Go fans, go kasha.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:08

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:08

That's what I got. I'm really excited about every day this week because of the tour of friends.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:15

So catch up on it yourself, folks, and don't forget about my award-winning photo set on ronspikesvlog.com.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:23

Please check it out.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:24

Right. Well, have a great week, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:26

I love you, sweetheart.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:28

I love you too. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:29

Bye.