White Rim Micro-Invitational – Feb 22nd

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

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The Tour Divide, Day by Day

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

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

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Adrian’s Story

Para leer esta historia en Española, haga click aqui

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

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Doble Medalla de bronce en el CNBC

El Campeonato Nacional de Bici-mensajería de Colombia (CNBC) es un evento anual de ciclismo urbano que reúne a los mejores mensajeros en bicicleta y ciclistas del país y el continente. Los participantes compiten en una variedad de eventos que ponen a prueba las habilidades, la resistencia y la determinación de los ciclistas. El punto crucial del evento es la Main-Race, donde se simula la rutina diaria de un mensajero en bicicleta en carreras de clasificación y final durante dos días en un área delimitada por un circuito abierto al público. 

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Iceland by Skis. Iceland By Bike.

Cody Cirillo and Matthew Tufts approached us early this year with an inspiring pitch: They wanted to spend a couple of human-powered months riding the outer perimeter of Iceland on Rodeo Labs bikes, all the while carrying their skis, and peeling off to notch seemingly innumerable ski descents along the way. We get plenty of project pitches at Rodeo, but this one stood out because it combined a world that we know a lot about with a world that we know very little about, all in a land that we very much want to explore ourselves someday.

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The Rodeo Podcast: Tour Divide Recap

We sat down with two Rodeo athletes, Edyn Teitge and Cade Reichenberger, who both completed the 2,700 mile 2024 Tour Divide with class, and both in with their unique style. Cade rode to a 4th place overall finish in 15 days on his Rodeo Labs TD4, an incredible achievement on it’s own, but even more so considering that this was Cade’s first go at Divide as a relative newcomer to the genre. Not to be outdone, Edyn rode to the finish in 20 days, also on his TD4, becoming, at 15 years of age, the youngest solo rider to ever complete the event.

With stories this diverse it’s hard to fit them both into a single episode, but we gave it a good shot with hosts Logan Jones-Wilkins and Steve The Intern tossing in questions from their own cycling perspectives.

Here is a photo breakdown of Cade’s TD4, which featured flat bars, a Tailfin rear rack, and a Fox 32 50mm front suspension fork.

Edyn chose a different built type for his TD4, leaving it in drop bar configuration, and foregoing a suspension fork in favor of Redshift suspension stem and seatpost combo. As a Tailfin supported rider, Edyn enjoyed a particularly cool array of bags built specifically for his bike.

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Edyn’s ride in particular has been well covered in the media at the following links:

Bikepacking.com

velo.com

Bikes Or Death

Both Cade and Edyn wore our Explorts Expedition bibshorts, which are design with the demands of bikepacking and ultra racing in mind, and each also wore RDO lab jerseys with Edyn chosing our SPF Highlighter jersey, and Cade option for our Merino wool short sleeve jersey.

Both riders also ran our Rodeo 2.0 wheelsets.

Tracklo-Bikepacking: Escapada al Alto del Sifón

Editors Note: This Journal entry was published by Rodeo athlete Juan Camilo Cobos Cardozo, who resides in Bogotá, Colombia. We hope to add more Spanish language stories as time goes on. Enjoy!

El Alto del Sifón alcanza los 4.149 msnm y atraviesa el Parque Nacional de los Nevados, es considerado un puerto de fuera de categoría. Inicia en el peaje de Armero, en el Tolima y termina en el alto el Sifón en el Parque Natural de los Nevados, cuenta con 89 km de longitud con una pendiente promedio de 4,3%, es considerada la carretera pavimentada de más altura sobre el nivel del mar en Colombia, por esta razón me pareció perfecto para darle la bienvenida mi Rodeo Labs TD4 adaptada para hacer tracklocross.

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