Listener Questions and Closing

This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network. Today's show is supported by Garmin, and thanks to their tax trainers, I don't even have to leave the house to get a proper ride in. Mine's literally set up all year round. There are so many reasons that I jump on it instead of heading outside. Like when it's snowy or icy. Or I just want to do some clean intervals. Or I don't have much time. Or I'm dog sitting. Or I want to ride at unsafe times of the day. Indoor training is totally different and a much more pleasant experience now than it was when I started cycling. Yeah, stuff like the motion plates are a game changer. You just have way more ability to simulate a real ride. The road feel, steep virtual climbs, sprinting. And when you pair tax with an edge head unit, rally power pedals, your Garmin watch, or a heart rate monitor, you get a full indoor outdoor training system backed up by heaps of data. So big thanks to Garmin for supporting the show. One other piece of news, Garmin Rideout is back and we're all gonna be there. Yep. Yeah. We had a lot of fun last year. I'm looking forward to it. Reunited again. It's a lovely ATK ride around the new forest, which is in southern England. It's an aid of action medical research and the route is fantastic. There's also an event village with talks from people. It's a great day out. So maybe see you there. 30th of May. So we'll put a link in the description if you want to sign up. And if you are there, make sure you say hello. It's the Wild Ones, it's the Wild Ones. So I'm there Welcome back to the Wild Ones Podcast, the show where we chat about bike stuff. I am Jimmy, and this is Producer Emily. Hello. And we are joined today by Bike Mechanic of the Year 2025, Nick Vieri, straight from America. Howdy Well, actually I was gonna try and do an American accent, but Do it. No, I' dond I'd probably butcher it. So for the listeners that are not watching this in a video form, because that's usually what listeners don't have is video. Nick has come in what I described as fancy dress, although he now considers it to be his just normal dress. It's pretty fancy. It is. He is he is a cowboy. I mean nobody knows this, but to get into America you need a Visa or an Esther. Or I think lots of people know that. Or a Stetson. I mean this let' lsisten straight through. Nobody asks any questions if you walk around with these on your head. You've changed, bro. Literally changed. He has denim jeans on, a denim shirt, a brown cowboy belt, a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. You've probably undersold it there. I've got a set of handmade leather Mexican cowboy boots, Wrangler jeans, a Stetson belt, and a Stetson hat. It it looks great. I had the shirt before. Oh, that's an old shirt. Listen, I've been thinking about this for years. Yeah, so um thank you for joining us, Nick. Good to see you again. It's been ages since you've been on the show. It must be over a year now. Must be over a year. Francis has gone away, so Nick's dressed up as American and subbed in in on this place. I'm taking it you finally have a passport. I feel like the last time you were on this show, we were talking about the fact that you couldn't get a passport and you were missing all your family holidays that have been planned and then the passport didn't The passport seems to now be burning a hole in your pocket 'cause you've been in a lot of places now. I've got two passports now. Oh oh. I decided you guys gave me a grief for six years for not having a passport. So I got a South African one and then I just thought well, I'll do all the tests, prove that I can do English as well. And now I've got an English passport as well. So two. British citizen. Now everybody's complaining because I'm never here. Well, what did you want? Like it's kinda I can never win. By everyone do you mean your wife? Because she's complaining that she has no longer got someone to help her with your young child. I don't know what she's talking about. So you're British citizen now? Yes. God they let anyone in these days, don't they? do I thought Brexit meant Brexit. Anyway, no. So Whoa, you can't you can't say that. You definitely can't say that. So it's a joke. It's a joke. Let's talk about some of your travels. The first one I want to talk about is Cape Epic Yes. I think we can call this the fluff up not only of the week, not only of the season, but maybe of the year. For anyone who doesn't know what Cape Epic. It's essentially I don't know. There'll be debates about this, but it is essentially the Twitter France of mountain biking. For cross country mountain biking. It's the biggest mountain bike race. Uh it's they call it the hardest mountain bike race, but I'm assuming that's gonna be subjective. It's eight stage so eight days, seven stages in a prologue. Uh this year it was seven hundred kilometers and I think twelve thousand meters of elevation. I don't know what that is in American speak, you know? I shouldn't know. I should know. I know. Sounds pretty tame compared to the Tour de Front. But there's also unlike the Tour de France and all of those um drama queens over there, mountain biking is different. So they have to race in teams of two and they're not allowed any outside support. So if you're in a pro team and you have a puncture, you fix your own puncture. There's no neutral service, no car, nothing's gonna come help you. At the water points, which generally there's three a day, you can leave spares. So you can't have anybody else, but you can leave your own spares over there. So spare legs. It has to be a thing of can you sustain can your equipment survive? Mm-hmm. So you were entered this as a pair? Yes, I entered it about a year ago. Because it's it's incredibly hard to get into as well. It's in South Africa, right? Yes, in South Africa. Yeah. So the full story is one of my customers worked and one of my friends, you, worked at uh last year volunteered at Cape Epic, and that got him a guaranteed spot. Doesn't mean he gets any discount, it just meant he they would accept his entry because that's the first massive hurdle to get into it. I think at that point it was about six thousand pounds for an entry. And then he put on Instagram saying he's got an entry, who wants to be his teammate. So obviously loads of people messaged him, but I I made him a deal he couldn't refuse. Okay. Saying, firstly, I can fix your bike if it breaks. And secondly, um, because I'm Sud African, we get a massive discount. I thought you were British now. No, I'm American now. Okay. But back then I was Sud African . Actually back then I didn't have a passport, I wasn't anything. That was stateless. So yes, and then he agreed to that thing. So we each paid I think two thousand four hundred and eighty pounds to get into the event. Little did I know that that wasn't gonna be the last money I'm spending. Okay. I've got seventeen bikes, but the one thing I don't have is a mountain bike. So yes. Um so I had to get that. And then there was flights and then there's food and equipment and the one thing I completely didn't factor in is that I'd actually have to train for this. Yes. Ye ah. I feel like um we know some of the background about the preparation that went or the maybe the lack of preparation if I can be so bold that went into uh it is absolutely classic Vieri, except you would think that Nick knowing exactly how significant this event is, he would actually go, Maybe I shouldn't do what I usually do, which is one massive ride the weekend before, but he still approached it in classic Vieri. No, but I took your advice is your fault. Because I finally got a mountain bike in December? January? January? I got a mountain bike. Uh the kind folks from BH length new one to train on. And I went riding with you, and you said you always do this. You could wait until three weeks before events, and then you panic train to do the event. And you said it's probably better off if I just tap er. Because I'm starting all these events tired, so don't train at all and just show up fresh. Train on the ride. So that's what you did. I didn't mean it three weeks until the start of the event and then go, oh, I better taper. But what I meant was don't do what you normally do, which is a massive, massive ride the day before doing a massive ride. Well you should have clarified that. I was tired on the day. You were riding away from me. That was a hard day, actually, on the bike. I think people then under yeah, to put it into context, I I think we did this project four hundred last year. Four hundred four hundred hours. Yeah. To put in context, last year I did a hundred and fifty two hours for the full year. And this year, from the first of January until the day we flew to Cape Town, I'd done twenty-one hours of riding in total. That is all my riding. Um I don't go to the gym or do any other sport. I don't walk. My average is like three thousand steps a day. Good old chair that I wheel around inside the workshops. You really are American at heart. To be fair, he does m breakfast most days drive to a drive through McDonalds. Every day. Yeah. I had McDonald's this morning again. Uh while I was in America I had Denny's. So yeah, new experience. Dine and breakfast, you mean it's a game changer. But yeah. Okay, so you go on into this, your preparation is um lacking but your confidence is high. No, no, no. No, no. So no, I there's no redeeming factors. I wasn't used to riding mountain bike. Nobody realizes, but I was saying to Jimmy, we're riding like your shoulders, your arms, your hands, it was just killing me because it's a completely different way of sitting on a bike and holding onto a bike. It's not the same. Um so that worried me. My actual bike that I used for the vent I got the day before we flew. So I hadn't ridden it until we landed in South Africa. Awesome. Um haven't tested any of the equipment. It was all new stuff, completely different groups. They suspension, wheels, tires, everything was different. I I I remember we went riding in January. When was Cape Epic? April. March. March. We w we went riding, I think, end of January. You were in like summer kit on a gravel bike. And I was like, Nick, like, you need to be on a mountain bike and you should be in like the hottest possible kit you can imagine to just somehow attempt to climatize knowing that you're gonna be riding in forty degree heat in six weeks time. It's one of those things that like my brain doesn't work normally. I think I don't know there's something wrong with it. It definitely doesn't. I was dreading it for months, for six months I've been dreading this event, knowing all I need to do is ride my bike. Yeah, it's I don't know if for some reason I was just I couldn't say I was too busy. I don't know, just too lazy. I didn't ride my bike. I knew it was gonna be hot. I think by January I just kind of I gave up. I just realized it's death or glory. I mean I'm either gonna die on the event or I'm gonna actually finish it by some miracle. What happened then? Did you was there glory or was there death? Um I trained a lot the week before I got there. Right. I did something like twenty-nine hours. I need to don't quote me on this, but 29 hours the week before Cape Epic in Cape Town. I thought, no , I'm I'm routing back to proper panic training and the sun it was nice to ride over there. And then uh prologue went much better than I expected. U h James said there's no ways I'm going faster than one hour and forty-five minutes. I managed one hour and fourteen minutes. So I was happy at that. And then stage proper stage one started and um it was it was terrible. One of the climbs I measured forty eight degrees Celsius. People walking, climbing and everything. I had this I drank loads of water. Um I asked James beforehand, should I take electrolytes and he just said it makes your pea expensive. So is that true? No, I find that the hard way it's not. No electrolytes are really good. I think I drank about two and a half litres of water, but by the last water stop, um yeah, I was You had no salt, so it just wasn't yeah. And then one uh one of the doctors pulled me on the ride, made me sit down, check my heart rate, everything, and then they end up getting me an ambulance. I got ambulanced into a hospital where they put me on a drip and a parasites on loads of stuff. Um and then I had to do this hydration thing during the night to be allowed to start stage two in the morning. So I got blood tested in the morning. There were quite a few of us in the skew. And then two of the guys next to me got they got told yes, you're good to go riding. And one of the guys just started crying. It was like he's not going out. So he didn't go. Um and then yeah, I should trade it. I thought like, well, you've paid money for this, I've paid money for this, might as well finish. And then bizarrely I just started enjoying it. Stage two went well, stage three went even better, and then by the Queen stage, I really, really enjoyed it um it was getting faster and faster and then I got too confident uh I crashed on sorry yeah I crashed on stage two at about 55k an hour uh fully compressed my suspension at the bottom of the seal through like a river crossing thing. And I just went flying. But somehow I landed. But it wasn't bad. I had a bruised arm, but like the rest of my body's okay. And then but stage six, uh, I was chatting to a guy about a restaurant and I clipped a rock, went down, hit my head, uh smashed a helmet, and then I well the friends impact was so hard, I uh separated my AC joint, so my clavicle from my collarbone. Was it? And then but I finished ride. So I did another forty something, forty seven kilometers, I think it was, um, with that arm. And a cracked it. It must have must have been adrenaline. Because I yes, because I rode and it hurt, but I I could do it. As soon as I saw the finish line, I couldn't have bars anymore. You've got five years of Viery gravel training specifically for that moment. Yeah but usually I roll. Yeah. This is what I keep saying to people about mountain bik es. Mountain bikes aren't they are better. They're much faster than a gravel bike. But when you crash on a gravel bike, because the gravel bike feels fast and scary. So you crash is not as bad. Where on a mountain bike, when you hit top speed and when you actually get it wrong, you get it horribly wrong. So yeah. Am I right in saying Jimmy, you told me that Nick had text you and said he was he was descending so fast and dangerously that everyone he passed was Oh people unhappy with me. Yeah. We were doing stupid things. Uh like I think we were not very liked at the Cape Epic. Okay. So we were just overtaking in Why are you saying we? Well you was just as bad. My teammate was just as bad. I mean he's good at overtaking like the two of us were just good at descending, but it was just a a point we only enjoyed the descent and we were going as far yeah as fast as we possibly could down everything. Uh one of the descents we went so fast we completely missed a turn and she had full unskidded, like almost into a car. Does that remind you of riding bikes of me around around here ? When you you didn't junction slammed your brakes on and went through the junction. Fortunately there was not a car coming. But yes, I enjoyed it. Um I'm converted. I want to do another so I've already signed up on doing the Swiss Epic, which is three hundred and fifty kilometers, twelve thousand meters of elevation Are you gonna train for this one? Well no, because now this is my second thing. If I didn't crash, I would have easily finished the Cape Epic. Meaning everybody that said I had to train, they were wrong. You know what I mean? Like so it I would have wasted my tongue. Okay, so sometimes we have Nick on the show to give advice. I feel like I should say for legal reasons, none of this constitutes advice. Please don't try this at work. For the training. Training is cheating. Just show up and do the event. Death of glory. Well, I'm happy to award you uh fluff up of the year for that one. Thank you. Yeah. So after Cape Epic, you were back in the UK for like a couple of weeks. Two weeks. I didn't get to ride with you because you'd knackered your shoulder, which was sad. And then you left again and went to cowboy land. Yes. What were you there for? Uh so the lovely folks at Indira Barrings invited me over to come and s we've been talking for so long, I'd never been, to come and see their facility factory and hang out and then go to see Otter, which something I've told everybody I want to go to. And see for people who don't know is like a bike festival and a massive expo, isn't it, in California? It's like every bike show festival in the UK all put together and then add a lot of steroids and whatever the pros are taking these days. It was it is like I I still can't get my head around it. There was I think something like 900 brands. Um that sat on a thing eight thousand people, but it's just it was insane. Every single day I'd walk around, I was convinced that during the night somebody's moved everything around because you just couldn't find places. But no, it's it's it's the one event that they just I don't know how they see I spoke to so I know the guy that started um Sea Otter, his name's Rick Sutton, known him for a few years now, we talk quite a lot. Um and I asked him at the show, what how how has he managed to do this? And he said there was years and years of pushback and it was quite funny he said because all the disciplines of cycling say they want this um they want inclusivity and they want to like everybody this but as soon as you put one event with the other event, they're all like, oh no, no, no, we own a little niche, and then they don't want to do anything to do with the other group. But there was at this one there's uh there was gravel races, there was a 5k run, there was uh enduro there's a downhill thing uh uh slalom where people race against each other. Oh cool. Um it's like Laguna Saka racetrack and it's just cycling so it's a massive like loads of people just racing and doing stuff but then in the middle of it a massive expo with just um all the different brands. It's really interesting because clearly a lot of brands are now using Siotta as like a a marketing platform. And I think it used to be Eurobike. Yes. Which was like the big place where all of the industry stuff happened. But Eurobike is absolutely Did you see lots of thirty two inch wheels? I mean, I'm a tall person. Lucas that I ride with is a very tall person, is six foot seven. Both of us still run six fifty Bs. Um I had quite a few heated debates with engineers and brands about the 32-inch wheels. And none of the stuff they say to me still, I'm not convinced. They they have nobody's convinced me yes over there. And I'm not invested in this in any way. Um I like new stuff coming out for making I yes, trying new things, but I don't see how it's gonna work. Mountain biking, yes, because mountain bikes, they at one point they were doing head angles on bikes that are sixty degrees, probably even slacker than that. And you can fit the wheels in and longer chain stays. But the big issue with big wheels are the tires are bigger. So essentially you're if you think you wheel the circle, the the circ umference gets bigger. Which means the wheel needs to be further back so it doesn't touch your your seat stay. Yep. Um and also with cranks. So some of them are doing all these funny shaped seats days so they can get more space for the wheel to fit in. But what they're not factoring in then is that you then have to change the chainstays and then you've got chain ring limitations. The other thing is that as your wheel gets bigger, you lose climbing gears. A bigger wheel is harder to climb with, so you need more gears, so then you lose sprocket size. Um all they kept talking to me about was the attack angle. Attack angle is a big thing for downwheel, but on gravel, what are you attacking? Pebbles . Yeah I mean, like riding over logs and so then somebody said to me, yes, but if it's like in tight gravel in a forest and you've got logs and things, but that doesn't add up either because a smaller wheel will pop easier so you can get your front wheel up easier to get over things because you're not doing it at speed and also a smaller bike steers better because these have longer wheel bases. Um then somebody said to me there's more grip and you can run smaller tires. And I was like, but why would I why don't I just run smaller wheels big Do they genuinely think it's like it's just it's again sorry, I like I'm I'm ranting over here, but it it's engineers that sit in a thing and they work in theoretical things and they never go out and ride different stuff. And I think it's it's a case of the industry has convinced themselves a new thing and they've convinced themselves so much of it that they're now stuck on it. Because that's a worry they can sell you new bikes. Don't don't fall for the marketing. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. Wow. Um Downhill mountain biking, yes, by all means. As long as they keep the courses, they're gonna have to create the courses for them. What I wanna see is all the brands doing 32 inch wheels, and then I want to see one of the downhill courses change where they make all the corners incredibly tight. So that they don't work. So you have to almost go back to twenty-six inch wheels for anything. Yeah. Um yeah, it just doesn't. I can I can go in for hours into why it doesn't work. Um and previous studies and tests and things, but it's just a thing of um the biggest thing I always say to people is try different stuff. Don't listen to somebody's just tried one thing. Um I've got all the different wheel sets for my bike. Have you tried thirty twos? Well not thirty twos, I can't fit it in, but I already know that I don't like twenty nines. Yeah. I've got a bike with twenty nine by two point four inch on a gravel bike. And I knew that I've had to gone f go from a forty tooth changing to thirty six tooth and I still don't have the same amount of climbing years. Well, I think you should take your own advice and you need to test them and you need to tell us how badly you hate them. Uh I'm happy to test it. If somebody wants to send me one, I'll write it for a bit. But it's just a thing of I already know six fifty B works better than twenty this is what I'm basically. Six fifty B for me and what we do work better than 29er for set reasons. It corn is better. It um front wheel can you can pop it up easier. Uh it's much snappier. Your trail is lower because the wheel's lower. It's loads of things that is affected by it. You sit more into the bike than sitting on top of the bike. And then the other thing is for smaller bikes. To engineer a smaller bike with six foot B is much easier than seven hundred, let alone thirty two inch. So, and also the argument that keeps saying for tall people. I ask every single one, who are these tall people? Like, do you realize tall people can still ride small wheels? The small people can't ride the big wheels. The logic's just not there. It's like saying, oh um, oh we've built loads of one million dollar houses because it's all these rich people. Well where's the ten thousand dollar houses of poor people? Because a rich person can still stay in a s in a cheaper house. Yeah. But a poor person can't buy more expensive it's just stupid. I'm very glad I don't have to argue with you about thirty-two inch wheels. There's gonna be loads of comments trying to just like listen. I'm happy to listen to what everybody's saying, but uh I'm just not convinced. The brands couldn't convince me, the engineers over there couldn't convince me, so Yeah. 650B made sense. Disc brakes make sense. Thirty two inch wheels. It does it just it's pointless. It's it's unnecessary. I would go as far as to say that aero gravel bikes . I can understand it. Yeah. And there's a place for it. For me, it doesn't make sense, but for industry, I'm not talking for me about 32. It's like for yes, there's people that ride their bikes fast off-road on gravel and they do smooth gravel. It's the 32-inch, which is somebody told me it rolls faster on straight flat roads. I'm like Holden. So they made one bike for unbound . I mean it's you do realize there's other races. So yeah. And also, sorry, the accelerate slower. So yes, it'll hold speed, but in what race do you just hold speed the whole time? People slow down, attacks, all these things, ashes, yeah. I'll be a four hour podcast if I keep going on like this. No hust le , no bustle. This is life in the black lane . Relax to and from the airport. It's a breath of fresh air. A sigh of relief. Jet without the lag . Blacklane. The global chauffeur service. In London and over 500 other cities. Book now at Blacklane.com or download the app. Hey, Bill, can I- Whoa . Your desk. But why so many notebooks and stickies? Yeah, I know. It's the only way I can stay on top of my meetings. What do you mean? I want to stay present during conversations, so I jot things down after, but some things get forgotten. And look, there's a much better way to keep yourself organized. Plawed. Plaud? Yeah, plaud. It's an AI work companion that reliably captures your conversation so you can stay in the moment. Oh wow. So maybe you won't need all these notebooks? Hey Bill, you have a delivery. Why so many sticky nodes? Good luck, Bill. CYPLORD is trusted by over two million professionals globally. Visit uk.pl ad .ai slash pod and for a limited time use, promo code UK1010 for % off any new Plaud Note Pro or Note Pin S. Offer expires May 31. That's UK.pl A U D dotai slash pod and use code UK10. One other thing I want to ask you about, a brand called Xenor. We had a listener called I think it's pronounced Rowan in Brooklyn who was asking about Xenor. Can you explain what it is? And did you see it? It's the greatest thing ever. Okay. Uh so it's one of the first things I saw at the show on the Thursday, it would have been an hour in because they stand was quite close to where we went in. I saw it, the guy showed it to me and I was just like, Well, it's pointless walking around the rest of this show now. This is not sponsored at all . It's literally just someone asked about this and I asked Nick about it because I thought it was a good idea. Can you explain what it is? Okay. So it's a disc brake hose decoupler, but it's one that is really small. It's thin. It's almost just as thick as a as a um as the hose itself. What is a decoupler for those? So essentially, generally speaking, people have always tried to figure out how they can connect two disc brake hoses to each other so that for internal cable routing or anything where you have to take your your handlebars off, you can decouple the hoses. So you're not cutting hoses to service your headset bearings or to travel or to service a bike or For the um non-bike techie people, what it essentially means is you could have um a one-piece integrated bike and you could literally like disconnect the cables and just fully remove the handle bike seven steps beyond that okay no tools. Yeah. No brake bleeding needed. Yeah. Fits through holes. So it's not a thing of like where you disconnect and you've got this massive thick thing and you have to you can still take things off. So you can take your you can rebuild the bike if you wanted to as well. So Rowan says I just had them installed on my gravel bike, and my unpopular opinion is these should just be licensed and come standard on every bike with hydraulic brakes. I think they neutralize a huge chunk of the debate over internal routing. Also I just travelled with my bike and it felt insane being able to fully disconnect my handlebars without any tools and just hold them in my hands. If money was no object, I'd love to have a couple of different handlebars and swap them in for different types of riding. Uh yeah. Uh it's like I said, I I I actually felt bad because I saw the guy on the stand, he showed me the thing, because I kept that in their pocket for some reason. And then I was like, this is brilliant. There there's there's no point in me going on the nothing is gonna top it. Walking around the show, loaded loads of industry people kept coming up to me and saying, What's the best thing you've seen so far? And hands down, that is it. I took about, I would say about ten different people, I walked them to the stand to go and show them this. Like mechanics and engineers that I knew. Um and I kept apologizing , like, I'm sorry, but can't we have it again? I need to go through this. They've got some new stuff coming out as well, which was embargoed, can't talk about. That's even better This definitely been around before, presumably not this business, because when I bought my Cannondale Super X, which was I think twenty nineteen, that came with a system where it was already So that's Shimano. And it was just clipped together. Shimano did all of that, but that was for external to make it easier. Yeah, yeah. So the issue with it is is that you can disconnect, but you couldn't then take it through your headset to get things apart. Actually, yeah, that's yeah, it's it was like a barrel adjuster. Yes. So for external routing, it meant you could just unclip it. But yeah, I guess the the magic of this is that it's so small it'll still feed like a hammer bar, so you can do it like I would do it on you can do it on your bars, or you can do it in the headset. So you open it up and then unconnect it and take it out. And it doesn't use any to ols. J just to be very clear, this is a product that adds a lot of value to people that have hydraulic brakes and internal t cable routing and probably travel quite a lot , but to actually everyone else it's not that big a deal, I don't think. But it is cool. Yeah, but it makes mechanics happy. I'll be perfectly honest, you guys, I don't mind routing through the headset. I don't mind servicing the bikes . Uh, doing like I don't mind doing the job. What I mind is that how much the customers are going to charge for it. Yes, it's great for me. I make loads of money. Um, because there's no two ways, because if I have to service your headset, I'm cutting your hoses. How else would you get that Stetson? Yeah, some exactly. Sometimes I need to cut uh several hose actually, so do I have to say the Stetson was sponsored? Actually. Yes . The Americans yeah. So the lovely Matt Harvey from Enduro Brain's actually bought me the states and I was gonna go to a thrift store and I think he just kinda thought no if you're gonna do it you have to do it properly. I don't think that officially classes are sponsored, but He's paid athlete, he's just paid in Stetson. Stetsons and boobs. Boots. Oh boots. Well boobs works as well. Yes. So the lovely folks from Indiana Bearings bought me the hat. Um yes, thank you very much. I I love it. Um I sleep with it on at night. I just took it down. My goodness. Don't need an eye mask. So on the subject of this guy's comment, what I the the only bit I'm a bit perplexed p the only bit I'm a bit perplexed by is what what different handlebars would you want to swap out on a bike? So he was uh I get what he's saying, so if you wanted a long piece, what longer or shorter one piece bars? Yeah, but does it does he not mean like swap 'em out as in wider ones and things like that. Of the same bike in the same setup, or do you think he means over time? No, because he's in a couple of different handlebars and sorting around for different types of rides. Yes. Flat flat bar and drop bar, sure. So this is a new thing that's happening. Nobody's released it yet, but this other thing, but see loads of stuff you can see there that you have to sign forms for and you can't talk about. There's stands where every stand had something behind it. Like some of them were not as exciting as they made it out to be. One of the stands went to the back to show me something. It was just new colours. I was like Like it's a it's nice color, but it's not I mean like you don't really need to hide this from anybody. Did I need a sign an NDA for this? Yeah, exactly. Like you're joking, right? It's not groundbreaking. Where are you going with this? Um so sorry. One of the things is happening is this new thing of making a bike being able to do everything. So you guys tested that factor . And I can say this hideously ugly bike. Um the factor one. Yes, the thing with the massive fog. That's not a bike to do everything. That's almost a bike to do nothing. But what I mean is what what it's normalized people too is that you can have a road bike with a very wide clearance and spacing. So like let's say you have a gravel bike that can take two point four inch tires. If you put a road wheel into it, it actually won't look that stupid anymore because they've got forks out there that can take what, seventy mil tires if we really wanted to. So um the idea would be is for gravel you want to be higher and shorter, maybe slightly wider. Not for everybody, but I that's what I like for myself. Then if you wanted to make it a full on road bike by just swapping your wheels out, you could in theory just take that handlebars off and then fit your longer, lower, more aggressive road bike handlebars if you want to use a road bike. I mean, like I say, if money was no object, I'm gonna say it 'd be cheaper than getting two bikes because you only need two sets of handlebars, two sets of levers, and two sets of wheels. So you're actually talking about adjusting the reach and stack height via the handlebars on a in like an integrated bike that you can then just go clip clip up clip clip buff buff buff. Exactly because you only change the frame size. Technically you probably want to move your saddle slightly forward as well or back. But I mean that's easily done. Yeah. That this is like mad scientists, crazy ide as. Um anyway, what I was leaning to with the uh NDAs is that I know there's like there's a few different kind of brands trying to work out ways around doing this. So different ways. Actually not one bike that does it all. It's one bike that is not one bike. It's one and a half bike that does two bike jobs. And that's by selling multiple 800 pounds. Unfortunately, the most expensive part on a bike is generally the handlebars and the levers. It's almost like they know what they're doing. Um I'm gonna move us on just so that this doesn't end up t being like four hours long. But I have to say, before we do move on , you're also a big YouTube star now. I wouldn't go that far. Nick set up his own YouTube channel. Yes. Um 'cause Francis came back and took my job. What's your YouTube channel channel called? And what do you do on that? Very okay, yes. Sell yourself. Very, very original name. I mean I planned it for years and years. It's called Nick Vieri, bike mechanic. Nice. Um actually I will take comments on you to change the name so anybody comes up with a better idea. Um, please. I think it works. It works. I suppose so, but it's not catchy, is it? And you s it's sort of like uh ASMR bike build. Yes. Um I'm not good at talking, so I've decided to not talk my videos to do everything very quiet. I think this podcast says the otherwise. You're if if anyone that knows you knows that you literally don't shut up. Yeah, I know, but that's the thing. Like this you can see the other side of me. Which is quite we were supposed to start this at five o'clock and, it took two hours of chat before we could even get him into podcast mode. Yeah, because there's I've I've been completely quiet on my channel. Yeah, so at the moment, all I'm doing is uh I build bikes very quietly. Um soon I am gonna experiment with serv icing bikes very quietly. I don't know if that's gonna work. Uh is that for the only fans? So I've got that as well. You've obviously got all the content, but um so yes, it's going well. It's uh it's a year in. I'm surprised. Thank you so much for everybody subscribing. Um it's grown massively and I'm hoping to do cooler stuff. That is one of the reasons I want to go to see Auto, speaking to brands and just kind of seeing what interesting products they are to put on the bikes. The whole idea is to not build the bikes as too standard. So I don't want to go crazy with there's guys out there building bikes with individually customized parts, but' then thats not something normal people can get. So I want to try as best to keep it to kind of parts and stuff that is commercially available. But still interesting. But still interesting and different, kind of. There's no real niche. I try I'm trying loads of different stuff I want to try some mountain bikes. Nice. It looks very lovely. I would say um if you're interested in looking at bikes then go and follow Nick. Um because I've been telling Nick to make videos for years and it it got to the point where he roped me in to make videos of him doing bikes and I wa and like, you know, as you s sort of gested at, I got bored of doing it, but you still wanted to do it, you're actually making these videos yourself. And that is the bonkers thing. You are the videographer and the star. Don't tell the brands that. You know, if I one day I want to start charging them, I need everything, I've got wages and salaries to pay as factors. You do yours. Just put different hats on. Well that's the thing. On the Zoom It's it's the four members of staff and they're all you. One Sarafican, one English, and one American. Um yes. It took quite a lot to figure that one out because I realized the problem is you can't just get anybody to film you. 'Cause uh people need to know about bikes and building bikes and it takes quite a bit like what goes in, what doesn't go in, angles and stuff like that. So yeah. Um I managed to find a way to do it all myself. Editing was the hardest I had to learn because I stupidly decided editing software that none of you lot use. So I can't ring ring you and say how do I do this? Well I'm glad you now do accept that it is a stupid idea, but you're doing a great job. You are doing a good job. Yeah. Speaking of YouTube, I'm gonna do a little plug for for us as well. We are currently on 3 8 9 ,000 subscribers on YouTube. And I thought it wouldn't it be nice as a little present to Francis? Francis is on his holidays this week, a much needed rest. And I don't know if it's possible in a week, but it would be nice if we could take it to wards four hundred thousand. In a week. No no not in a we no not in a week. What I'm saying is if he came back and it was and and he doesn't know that where I'm I'm doing a campaign to try and get it closer to four hundred K just so that he has a nice surprise at some point. Okay, cool. In the in the future. I'm not putting any pressure on it. One week while the podcast is dead. Yeah, okay, yeah, fine. We're gonna come on your next week. Well uh I I I also have to break it to you we don't have a podcast cast next week 'cause Jimmy and I are on holiday. So either way there won't be a podcast next week, okay? You shouldn't have said that. You should have just next week, but I don't say We didn't get four hundred K. You Lord are dead to us . Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, you are dead to us. You've got one more week. Four hundred and fifty K. Four hundred and fifty K or we're done forever. Okay, well um fine, I I''mm willing to try that. Let's try this again. The podcast will not go live next week unless we are at 400k. I'm holding Jimmy and Francis at ransom until the YouTube subscribers tick over 400k. The choice is yours. Yeah, if you if you watch our content and you aren't subscribed yet, just do us a favor, please hit the subscribe button. That would be nice. Okay, thank you. Okay. Let's see what's been happening elsewhere in the cycling world.. Right First off, the co-founder and CEO of MAP fired shots at ASOS over some strikingly similar jersey designs that were released this month. So MAP big boss, Oll Coieus ins, posted photos on Instagram of some ASOS custom jerseys, which were made for a Canadian bike shop called Service Course. He posted them side by side with a couple of map designs, which I think maybe were from last season, and it's safe to say that there were a few similarities. The colour palette, for one, the style and placement of the graphics also . And Ollie tagged Assos in the photos and wrote, I'm glad we could help Assos with a love heart, and I would say a definite air of sarcasm and passive aggressiveness. It looks like the shop has since removed the posts about these jerseys and I can't find products on their website now either. What's not clear is who actually designed them. For what I can tell they're an indie bike shop, so it seems unlikely, although not completely impossible, that ASOS probably didn't do these designs. It was probably just given to them and they printed it. Don't know that for sure. I did reach out to service course for comment, but I haven't heard back. I also reached out to ASOS for comment on this. Interestingly, um there's one PR company in the UK that does PR for both ASOS and MAP. So that's an interesting conversation around the uh the office, their official comment was no comment from from both brands. Um It's it fair to say that everyone to some extent kind of takes InSpo from others. I I think definitely in kit design. You know, it's it's been that for decades and decades and decades. The idea of what's cool, what's not cool, what other industries can we can you look at? Um I know for a fact when you've designed stuff, you've looked back at like the cool stuff of the eighties to look like can we pull some cool retro stuff from here and there when you've done stuff with backyard over the years. Um it's just normal. That's what that's what people do. I I still do it with bike designs. Imitation is sincerest form of flattery. Yeah. Unless you're bitter. Well but but also, you know, copyright is um is a thing and IP is a thing. I don't know whether it's just maybe in this case that they went a little bit too far. I mean, literally, for the listeners, there's two jerseys posted side by side, one's map and one's service course design b uh printed by ASOS and it's got a big ASOS logo on. The colours are identical. It's purple with the darker shade of purple, and I would say on the other one it's white with lots of similar colours. So it's definitely an imitation. Yes, but I don't work in this world, but they work in the world of fashion. How do they think that work? Simon Lister, you used to be the marketing guy from one of our friends from and clothing. He explained it to me once. He said if you want to get ahead of fashion, there's one thing and one thing only that you need to look at watch designs. Look at what the fashionable watch face color is and that'll give you a very bright insight into what next year's clothing fashion colours are gonna be. Interesting. I've not heard that before. So, like when the greens came out, everybody wore green the next year. It's like it's a big driver because they do stuff first, and people match their cheaper clothing to the obscenely expensive watches. This is a high fashion. So um everything comes from anything. Marp didn't just one day wake wake up and say lil ac and purple together is great. They would have seen it somewhere else. They would have seen a different brand doing it. Like everybody's gonna use the close enough copy, is also it's custom design. If I rang you guys at um when you guys had Atticus up and said this is a design I want for my kids, I'm paying you money, print it, you're not you know no worries, Nick. Well we we would have made you uh uh sign something to say that you are not infringing anyone's copyright and it's your responsibility. It's copyrighted. Can you copyright clothing? I don't think that is copyright. No, so then I think if ASOS were making these designs as their main season products then it's very heavily, heavily, heavily inspired by the map's designs. However, it's a shop. They're just they're they're literally just going, we just want cool kit to sell to our customers. They're still making profit off someone else's designs though. They are still a shop. Yeah, but I'm But it isn't else's designs. It's just it's not the same design. It's the same colourway with similar logo placements but different logos. If you saw it on AliExpress you would say, oh that's a that's a fair he version of a map kit. Well I wouldn't. I'd go, it's not the same one. If you saw it on AliExpress, it would be a literally a map kit that looks exactly the same with the same logos. Everybody just needs to stop crying. Stop being bitter. Uh if you go so Mark Ross, our designer, friend of you guys well, has done some stuff for you guys in yeah. He he designed the random little logos on our kit. Yeah. All the logos on the Kit. So Mark did all my stuff for backyard bike shop . Um, and he did the font and changed it all slightly. If you look at every cafe worldwide, this opened up with backyard in the name, almost all of them have just copied our font. So not just it's the same as copying your name, not just the the design of colours. Imitation is the most serious form of flattery. How many people copied rougher? Mm-hmm. So yeah, it's just yeah, anyway. Um may maybe he wasn't bitter. Maybe the love of heart just means I don't know. Yeah, maybe it's maybe it's completely easy. No sarcasm. Um I I like the map stuff. Um I like the new Assos stuff. I I think if it if it wasn't a small bike shop that are clearly making custom kit and it was actually Assos' range, I would probably have a different opinion. But because it is just a little indie shop. Just custom kit. And when you start fighting, who who introduced grey shorts? Because that's now the big thing. When I went to Cape Epic, every single team, every single pro kit, everyone had grey burb shorts on. Did they? Like grey burb shorts were more common than black burb shorts. Mm. Interesting. So it's like somebody came up with that first, everybody else has copied them. Ring the lawyers. Ring the law. Get the lawsuits going right now. Okay, I'm gonna move us on. I can't stop listening to a new track. We like music on this show, we like bikes, and this is the perfect combo. Uh Synergy. Synergy. It's a it's a track on Spotify called Paul's Success. Please don't sign for UAE. Hi guys, this is Kilo and I wrote a song about a really emotional topic for me. It's called Paul's Success. Please don't sign for UAE. And it goes like this . Paul's success. You're too good to just be Polgachar successor Do you wanna spend your winters riding zonto in the desert Do you wanna rich up mill watch or a statue in my garden, and could you let my sculptor know if you like stainless steel or marble? And how lame would it have been if we had Jonas and Bagatra on the same team, and how cool to beat their ass on it a cathlon bike. You're the next you know the chosen one, but won't someone think of me? Fall success, please don't sign for UAE Thank you. That's very good, I enjoyed that. This is a track by self-professed drop bar pop star. He's called Kilo. And he has a number of cycling related tracks such as six watts per kilo and eurosport and Cry. I feel like I need to make friends with Kilo. Kilo, well you can. I I uh I I slid in his his DMs and checked that we could play this track, so uh YouTube please don't give us a copyright strike. What did but did he say yes? He did say y yeses,. He did. No, no, okay. Yes, he did. I thought that was implied. Um so yeah, you could he seems like a pretty open guy, open to collabs, perhaps. For those who don't know, Paul Success is a nineteen year old French pro. He currently rides for Decathl on. He's had some very good results and there's a lot of hype around I would say his potential. I think especially for the f the French people, he's he's a French guy, he's on a French team de Catalon, and I think that that nation hopes that he can do what Pauline Feron Prevot did last year and provide France with a homegrown tour de France winner. He's under c contract with Decathlon until the end of 2027, but there is speculation UAE might be after him. It's maybe a bit like, you know, like when uh big tech firms buy out smaller competitors to to crush them. They don't end up even taking on the tech, they just buy them out to stop them. That's speculation. What they're gonna crush the catalons team? No, they're gonna take uh Paul's success so that there's no successor to Pagata's dominance . He ends up being a domestique for Pagaca rather than the main GC guy in another team. Oh right. Yes, but I wouldn't be surprised if Pagatcha doesn't do that many more Tour de Frances. It's it's not a but. This happened to me last year. What? You're no longer doing the Tour de France? They kicked you out? Yeah yeah. Last year I I did an ultra with only three weeks notice, two weeks of training, one week of being ill. Where the hell And I I I did so well that they decided to ban me from all ultras . Whatever. You know what I mean? Like You got banned because of the drugs. I got banned because I took a shower. Changed clothes in there and drank some wine at Rob's house halfway through. It was on the route. This was an event where it was meant to be unsupported and you were supported by your friend with wine. And and off camera, the organizers say to me wouldn't banned me because it would have given me no advantage, but obviously they still banned me. Okay, fine. Okay, I'm gonna move on because this is this is getting wildly out of hand and we still have a lot to do. Shall we do some unpopular opinions? Yes please. Okay. I picked this one just for you, Nick. Raj says I love the show and I enjoy watching it while riding indoors. Thank you very much, Raj. My unpopular opinion is that you shouldn't listen to bike mechanics product recommendations . You said you wanted to wrap this up. Yeah . Let's open the new can of worms. This is gonna be the four hour extended edition of the Wild Works Podcast. You're gonna we're gonna get so much today we can put one out next week as well. Okay, he says the mechanic isn't the customer and a mechanic's opinion about what is good or bad is swayed too much by survivor bias and how easy something is to fix. So mechanics will give their opinions on what is good or bad based on how often they see it in a shop, but it's never normalized or standardized to the number of products on the market. Of course if something breaks you see it in the shop more often, but it also misses the thousands of data points where the tech works flawlessly and the customers don't have to come into the shop. So I guess ultimately the bigger the brand, the more stuff's out on the market, the more stuff is probably likely to break. Secondly, their recommendations are based on how easy something is to fix. The famous example is internal headset routing. If you do change group sets often, like a mechanic might, it makes sense to have a more serviceable bike. But I switch group sets once every few years at most. So why should I sacrifice the look of a cleaner bike just because a mechanic has to do their job once? I've had awful recommendations because of this, including that I should run cable brakes externally instead of hydraulic ones, because quote, c ables are easier to find and less likely to fail. If I wasn't a bike nerd and had listened to that mechanic, I would have missed out on the performance of hydraulic brakes, which are incredible. Before he rants , I think unfortunately what Raj has come across is a is a crap bike mechanic. I know for the answer . Okay Go on. Here we go. He's right. So everybody misses the point, firstly. I love it. Go on, go on. Um bike mechanics aren't special. We're not we're not bike mechanics because we concentrated at school and worked really hard and was super clever with bike mechanics because it's not a real job people. I sit around drink coffee and mess about his bikes all day long. There's loads of people that have like the high paying CEO jobs who would dream to do what I do. Um but they like money. So yes. Um yes. Uh yes and no. So firstly , um I don't mind internal cable routing as harder, but that's the thing of of a lot bike shops after COVID started struggling because they can't sell bikes and compete with big brands. So they make all the money in a workshop. So you are right to some extent that they loads of them will recommend stuff based on what they see and what they like. Uh I have this argument with a lot of people because I hear things people say about one brand, but it's like that's the only brand they sell and they don't try the competitors and they don't take data points into consideration. YouTubers do this as well. There's loads of YouTubers on the channels on the internet saying this bike is terrible because look at the quality, but it's because that YouTube has been sent one bike from one guy that was unhappy. But there's always going to be, doesn't matter how good your product is Ferraris letting cars go out and there's issues with them. Uh it doesn't mean all the Ferraris are bad. It's just one's out of bound luck. Um same people will then see a lot of the same bike and then dismiss the problem s as, well, it's not the it doesn't happen on all of them. And all of a sudden, oh, that bike's fine. But if I I could make the exact same video saying, well, this bike is terrible, time is a good example, and I'm gonna call them out. Uh time makes excellent bikes, they're really good, but not a hundred percent of them are perfect. I have had times where there's issues, where there's paint overspray, where the bottom rack is not as great, where the brake caliper doesn't go on properly. Um and it's not a thing to knock time . It's the bikes are excellent. Keep buying them. But everybody's gonna make mistakes. There's gonna be QC issues no matter what you do. So that's the thing. Second thing of his uh thing about um mechanics wanting stuff to make more money and don't last and things like that and they never see stuff break. We do see see stuff not break. Because we see a bikes coming in again and again and again and notice, well, this part never needed to be changed. And the guy's done however many kilometers. Uh my shop is slightly different to most other shops. There will be a few shops similar, but I only have me and James working there and James races for Chinese teams, so he's away most of the summer. So we do servicing not to make money. Uh we do servicing as an after-sales thing. So customers buy bikes and they want their bike serviced because obviously when you buy a car or anything, you want somebody to look after it and you want to preferably look after the same guy you bought it from. Thing for me is that we don't have time to do it. Uh I service bikes. I've we've done math on this. Ninety-five percent of my time is spent servicing bikes, it makes up less than five percent of our turnover. Because we sell expensive bikes. So servicing is I like doing it, but it's not a good business sense. So we try and actually sell customers things that last longer. This is how we got onto Enduro Bearings. Long before I met the guy started speaking to them just the product lasts. Sponsored. Sponsored by Stetson. Sponsored by Stetson, yes. But before I go sponsored by them and by Stetson, we use it so that we see the bikes less. Yeah. Um in an ideal world to me, I would only want to see my customers' bikes once every two years I'm even considering doing how-to videos so they can just service their own bikes. Only come to me when there's big problems. So yes, Jimmy's question is not all mechanics. I'm not gonna say everything yeah. It's kind of a thing of don't just believe what anybody says. Don't believe what I tell you. Like like question. Like challenge them. And then see what the argument is. Have a debate. Nobody seems to have debates anymore. Because if you say something like, oh, you've upset them. Well, upset them. I mean, upset your mechanic. Uh so yeah. Um I yeah, I I had a very interesting one this morning actually. I'm gonna say it on yeah. Um which was quite good, but at the same time just completely blew my mind. I had a customer come in with a set of wheels, uh, some rooms built onto Chris King hubs, mountain bike hubs. And he told me that he uses it as his everyday commuter up here. And that he also uses it as his winter gravel wheels. He then said to me that he wants me to service them because they're slightly rough. Um and it was quite sticky. Um because he wants to sell them and then buy something that needs less servicing. So I was like, okay, fair enough. Uh when last did you service these wheels? I asked him. He said to me, he bought them used two years ago and he's never serviced them. So I was like, what do you mean you're gonna sell them for 300 quid and buy something that needs less servicing? You've not done anything with them in two years unless they're used. You don't even know if the previous guy's done anything with them for the last ten years. They're doing great. Yeah, it's like they're doing great. So I serviced him. Uh he doesn't know his yes, but it cost 70 quid in total. Everything was seized in, everything's bad, but I took it apart. And it all put it back together, they're like a brand new set of wheels . So yeah, please don't sell them. Keep them like they've done well. Sounds like hill buying them. I mean for 300 quid I'd have them. I even measured them to see if they'll fit into my bike. Okay, fine. Well, yes, uh yes, no. Not unpopular, not unpopular, I agree, I don't agree. If you have an unpopular opinion, you can send it to why ones podcast at cademedia.co dot uk or WhatsApp us on plus four four four seven eight six oh eight six zero two one three We do get a lot of messages. I'm sorry that we can't reply to everyone, but I do look and I add as many as I can in each episode. So thank you very much for sending them. We're going to finish off with some listeners' takeover questions. There were lots for Nick, so thank you very much. We are running over slightly on time. I'm going to ask you all of them that I have in the document because people took the time to write them, but we will try and be as No, not one sentence, but we No, but if you say one sentence, it'll be a f five minute spiel rather than fifty. Okay, cool. We'll see how we get on. First one is from Jakob, who says I have a question for Nick about creating custom bike frames and builds. How does this process look? Do you need a bike fit beforehand and do you create a bike based on that? Is there any leeway after it's been made? Often people say you buy a bike for life, but the older you get, the less flexible you are. So I'm curious, especially with stuff like a one piece bar and stem. Love the podc ast and keep up the good work. Thank you very much. I'm assuming he when he says is there any leeway, I I'm assuming what he means is like by swapping components and that kind of thing rather than changing it. I can rant on this one for fifteen minutes, but I'm not so I'm gonna give him a short answer. You can message me to get the rest of it. A bike fit does help as long as your bike fitter knows what he's doing. It's not essential if you've got a bike that you're very comfortable on and you've got a bike builder that knows what he's doing, he can look at that and then use that as a starting point and then suggest cosmetic changes like making the head chip shorter longer, depending on spaces or what future preferences are. Um you need to think that from a small bike like Jimmy rides got 52 centimeter top cheap to my bike which is 56, that's only four centimeters. That's 120 stem to an 80 stem. So getting it closer together is easier and then from there it can be modified to some extent. Yes, I'm not going to recommend me riding Jimmy's bike or him riding my bike. So frame is important, but handlebars, 10, seatbus, all that can be swapped. One piece cockpits, I always recommend for my customers, especially if it's really expensive ones and they're not sure, we tend to build their bikes with a cheap alloy two-piece setup. Run that for a few months, see how they feel, swap the handlebars out, swap the stems out until they know they're comfortable, and then do the bars. That's my advice if you're not sure. Some people have enough money and they don't care, they're willing to risk it 'cause they don't want to ride the bike without the stuff and they just buy it and then if they need to change they change. Um so yeah. So how how do you get closer to getting a bike for life? Animal bonds them needs to be two separate bits. Uh by generally speaking, people don't need to go low in the head tubes, they don't have to worry about that. You can add spaces to go up. But the downside is you if've cut your stereotybe too short you're not going up but also you can stretch there's other things you can do you change the angles of things your saddle can go up and down infinitely well to an extent um bike for life becomes more to the state of standards. Is the industry going to change things and makes your bike obsolete, which for some reason they love doing. Well actually not for some reason, for the reason that they're greedy and they want to make more money. Um you can quote me on that one. Uh the There's also no such thing as bike for life. I've I had actually had this discussion with the customer this morning. He's like, oh, I keep coming to you to buy bikes that I believe is gonna be from last bike, but then I see a new bike and I buy a new bike. So yes. Don't sold sell yourself. You can tell yourself it's a bike for life, but people generally cycling is a weird sport where people just want more stuff. So next one, Steve from Illinois says I work in a bike shop in a small college town as a mechanic. We service everything that comes through the door, including electric bikes and emotos. We service all of these in order to stay in business . But as someone who is new to the industry, I don't see this type of business model as sustainable. What are your thoughts? Also, I'm an avid gravel biker and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on suspension front/slash jewel on gravel bikes. In my mind, it just makes them mountain bikes. Any opinion? Okay, on the first question, yes, I agree. Uh it's not sustainable, but at the same time, uh, we specialized in our shop and in road gravel, dropper only, no TC bikes, no fixed gear, no mountain bikes, anything like that. Um and it's purely based on it's easier to market for something than where it's a generalized type of person that rides bike. There'll be loads of debate about mountain bikers riding gravel. Doesn't happen as much as what road bikers ride and gravel. Um sorry. So the big thing is um yes, but when you're a small bike shop starting out, you can't say no to any work. You can only start saying or start picking what you want to do when you are fully busy and you're doing well. And it kind of starts impacting on doing the stuff you want to do. Um, in terms of if you want to specialize in time trials or triathletes, don't start sending the mountain bikers away until you've got so many triathletes that they can't get the bike service because you've got mountain bikes in the stand generally. So be careful when doing it. Um people give you grief at first for not servicing everything, but then at the same time, it works to flip. We got a lot of grief originally for not doing older bikes and hybrids and things. I said yes, but there's thirty seven shops in a bu in our city that do that. So yes, it'd become more of an issue if you you had everybody in the entire town doing the exact same thing and loads of people are being neglected. So yeah. Um, gravel suspension. Yes, I agree. Um, the suspension does make it nicer, uh, smoother. You can do some stuff, but it adds weight in other ways. I don't think for most gravel rid ing people do where it's just dirt roads, suspension does enough. It won't take a vibration. In that instance, something like a redshift suspension stem personally works better. The two two two completely separate things. Disclosure, I don't think you have an official relationship with Redshift, but you are very friendly with them, so I'm just putting that in as a disclosure. So I don't know, does that constitute uh anaber, uh, an official relationship? You're a cheap date. I I asked him, I said to him, I even asked him, why did you start making this product? Because it's ridiculous. And you look at it and so you use it and then you're like, wow. And that's the thing. It just basically the product sold me on it. They didn't send me the product. It was Lucas that sent it to me originally. So yeah. Yes. You know, it's one of those things. Whatever floats your boat. I like to not have full suspension on my gravel bike even though I want to do a video of it. Uh for my own bike is it scares me more by not having the suspension. So you need to feel it being bouncy so that you don't get too fast and then fall off your bike. Yes. Too comfortable equals too confident. But also to do suspension on a gravel bike, you need to completely change the geometry. So that affects things as well. So statically it will not look as nice and in my opinion, obviously some people might love that look. And also um it changes the way the bike rides. So yeah. It's it's always more exciting riding underbiked than overbiked. Yes. Same as driving a go-kart versus Rolls Royce. Mm-hmm Go kart's gonna feel a lot faster even though the Rolls Royce are going ten times the speed. Yeah. Next question is from Tabar ak who says Hey Nick, battery in my left s battery in my left shifter on my SRAM Red Group set keeps dying after a few weeks. It's up to date on the latest firmware, and I remember you saying on the podcast before how some batteries are particularly bad due to the childproof coatings on them. Any particular brands you'd recommend . I think it was actually Francis who were saying that you told him about. Yes. And then he said, gave the worst advice ever that he just is a problem we found as well in the shop, um Maxel. I said this to Francis, I don't know why I didn't give the name out there. Maxel batteries is what Shram uses works better. Uh the coating this is from Shram. They told me the coating on some batteries are too thick, so it's intermittent that it reads through it. Um sometimes the battery, some of them the battery doesn't die, but your your head unit or your app says that the battery is low. But yeah, just try my stuff. If it continues to happen, send your lever back, they'll warranty it. Most of the time, unless it's not like ten years old. They're very good at warrantying stuff over here in the UK if something goes wrong. Um that's not an advert for Shram. Uh currently I'm writing Shimano. I really like it. So yeah, really, really like it. Is that an ad? No, just I like it. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I've got all the group sets on my bikes now. So I've got campag, shram, and shimano. So that it's kind of I ride all of it and then I can decide Okay, well thank you very much. It's been I feel like it's been an easy podcast for us, Jimmy. I was looking forward to this one because I knew we would have someone just ch chatting away at us for a while. Day off of you two before your holiday, an extended hol Well, day off for me, not for Emily. She's got to start editing now. She has to cut out probably about four hours of the stuff. Well no, this is this is why I was making an effort not to interrupt you, because I was like, if it's just a Nick dialogue, it'll be an easier edit. If we've been here for like what six hours now. Yeah, exactly. It's all going in. Yeah. It's all good. Thank you very much for your time. It's been nice to catch up. I haven't seen you for ages. I know it's been a year. Yeah. 'Cause we don't ever see each other outside of the podcast. Well no, it's I've been away for a long time so I like to combine my social interactions and my work. It's just more efficient and then and then it it gives me more of time to myself to play the I thought I was a loser. Bloody hell. Yeah. Well I've got lots of Sims in it, Jimmy. I uh on the subject of Nick's new look, I'm gonna be so disappointed if this isn't just you forever now. If I if I come to see you in work and you're not dressed like that, I'm gonna be so disappointed. Well you're gonna have to like I'm gonna have to get some more like outfits then. No, just keep wearing the same one. Just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier. Like a proper cowboy . No messing about. I was very disappointed when they didn'm your horse. Um but I mean As was your daughter. Yeah, yeah. And also I met Gary Fisher, who was also wearing the same outfit. So we're best friends now. You don't know who Gary Fisher is. He's the godfather of mountains . Okay, so I forgot to say this, just lastly before I go, like I met some absolute legends while I was there. Joe Breeze, Gary Fisher, I was at a party and uh uh Keith Bontrager was there, like all the like all the OGs from the mountain biking, well, the guys invente d it. So yeah. Nice. I saw a suspension stem as well. So yeah. People are right. Gravel bikes are mountain bikes from the 80s. I went to go look at it. So yeah. And they all looked really happy while doing it, so I'm sticking to that yeah, gravel bikes. Well, I think that's all for this week. Um as I said before, there is no show next week, but we will be back the following week as usual with Francis. Unless we don't get four hundred thousand subscribers for the channel. Yeah. In which case we're I'm on an extended hiatus. There's about seventy lights in here and like electricity is not free anymore. All the prices have gone up. No, I guess we'll be back either way, but if you want to subscribe, that would be nice. Thanks. Right. Well, see you later. Goodbye. Bye. Bye .