Hello and good day to you from episode 47 of our podcast series Project Breakaway, a metaphorical and literal time in the day. When we here at Predator cycling take some time away from working in the back shop to come and share with our listeners what we're doing, how we're doing it, what it takes to do it, our ideas, our innovative success stories and even our missteps and failures. If you find yourself with an interest in bicycles, composite manufacturing, out of the box design or even curiosities beyond. I encourage you to stick with us. Settle in and learn a little. I'm Courtney B, co-owner and project manager of Predator cycling. And I'm here with my partner Arm Goan, the other co-owner, CEO, lead designer and engineer and storybook trail dad. What, what? So we went hiking on the storybook trail. I have the hardest time saying that storybook trail. So most of the state parks here in Tennessee offer like a little half mile uh trail for children. And there's like a story along the way that you read. Yeah, and in most of them they're complete. Unfortunately, our trail apparently was under construction and about five pages in the story ended. Yeah, it was like towards the end. So I just made up the ending. What I assumed that the author would like. The Courtney's version of the author would like. Yeah. Um, yeah, it was fun though. The boys had a good time. I had a good time. And there's a little uh, um. And that that trail's more your speed. A half mile flat trail. Cuz you had some knee issues going into that. Yeah, I know. I guess I'm getting old. I came out of the car and I don't know what I did. And I'm like, oh my gosh. Like my knee just hurts. Um. But yeah. So. But it was good. Boys had fun. We got to go to the playground afterwards and run around and play. Mhm. So. All good. Okay, and also the Grammy's were last night. Apparently. What are the Grammy's? The music awards. The music. So, um, when I was a kid, I knew when all these awards shows were. And I sat in front of the TV and watched them. Now it's like, I don't know what exists beyond um Nickelodeon. And PBS kids and weird YouTube videos of other children unboxing toys. Well, I mean the concept that like we actually haven't watched, I mean other than like the occasional football game. Like we don't watch a lot of live TV. No. I mean if I'm watching bike races, I'm usually watching recaps. Or unless it's the tour, the tour is on. But other than that. It's not a whole lot of live TV watching. Anyway. Anyway, music is a huge part of sports. It's in arenas. This is true. Halftime shows. Next week. Super Bowl. Oh yeah. Super Bowl's next week. Rihanna will be killing it at the halftime show. Oh, she doing the halftime show? She is. The Chiefs versus the Eagles. Should have been the Bengals. Should have been. But, um. I digress. I guess I'll be rooting for the Eagles just in solidarity. I I mean, I don't really care. Either, but I just don't want the Chiefs to win now. So, um, and then music exists in, you know, your own personal training. Yeah. Usually got the pods in. This is true. Well, when you were training, they were probably not pods, they were like my first. Sony. No. No, I had the little tiny iPod shuffle thing that was like a little clip. A little clip on. You know. Oh, so you were training like in that was like that was like the end of college. It was like 2008. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was racing juniors. Yeah, I was right. I mean, I started racing. 2007. 99, 98. Okay, well, that's when you had your walkman. I mean, I didn't have anything then. I had a little boom box my sister and I shared. That's all we had. A boom box. Yeah, we had a little Sony boom box. It had like a tape player and a CD player. It was like. It was pretty cool. Can you imagine just today kids with an iPod shuffle? No screen. Like the original one. Well, the original had a screen. But it was just like a black interface. No, it was like. The original iPod. I thought it just had like a button and no screen. And you just had to. No, that was the shuffles. The shuffles. Oh, that's what I had. And you've seen me in the car radio like the next, next, next, next. That was me in the gym. It's annoying. It's annoying. And then I finally like. I had a friend in high school that drove me crazy. Couldn't listen to a commercial. She'd switch to channels. Yeah, that's me. Anyway. Uh, anyway. Moving on. So, Lizzo, my girl, she won album of the year last night. Oh, yeah. Good. Yeah. And I'm a big fan of her, even though I've never listened to the entire album. I did watch her documentary on Netflix. Oh, yeah, you told me about it. She seems like a very interesting. I like her style. Cool. And, uh, anyway. So if I was going to jump on the air go bike right now, I'd probably turn that on. Oh. Listen to some Lizzo. So that's me. What would what would you listen? Do you even know current music? I do not know current music. What did you listen? What did you listen to back in the day? When you were training? I was actually, so my sister. My sister used to make me little mixes. That's. Uh. Uh. So I I was a lot of like Zed. Zed Zeppelin. Zed Zeppelin. I love Zed Zeppelin. Such a great training. Um, ACDC, Queen. Okay, I got I had Queen. The other ones. Yeah, those are kind of like my go-tos. You needed just like the ruckus like screaming. Not screaming, but ruckus for sure. Okay. Um, yeah. That's that's mostly what I listen to. You were listening to the uh late nineties, early two thousands, like poppy, uh, Backstreet Boys and saying. I mean, I had some I think I had an InSync CD. Like, but I think that's about it. Okay. I don't yeah, no. It was it was a lot of uh. My sister used to make she had a tape for me. And it was uh. It was good. I had a little race one that she used to do and I did it with all my like efforts and stuff. It was all timed out. Mm. Um, and then it used to end with we are the champions. Like cuz of course. Like right before you go off to the start line. That reminds me of um. Uh, I think circa 1996, uh, when my only year of bitty basketball. Fourth grade, Jock Jams. Do you remember Jock Jams? No, what is that? It was the CD. It was like the. I have no idea what this is. I played sports in elementary school, like it was it was what you're talking about. It was like a shuffle mix on a CD and it ended with we are the champions. Oh, that's good. I had it was clean, right? It started with. It started with, let's get ready to rumble. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. You didn't have Jack Jams? No, I don't know what that is. Oh, the CD, I want to find it now. Yeah, we should get it. I'm going to. I'm down. Let's do it. Let's do this. I think. Yeah. That's our that's our new. That's our new wake up morning. Let's get the kids up. Get to find a boom box. They don't need any more energy than they already have. Okay, so that's you back in the day. Yeah. You and your ACDC. Yeah. And your Zeppelin. Zeppelin. So, speaking of back in the day. Yeah. Um, I've been trying to do uh throwback Thursday post on Instagram. You've been doing a bunch of those. Uh, yeah, for an entire two weeks. Whatever. I've seen a couple of the pictures that you put together for him. Anyway, last week, I posted some pictures that were all the way from 2010. So now that's 13 years ago. Look, I did math. What? Simple math. Um, when you had your team Predator, not team Predator carbon repair, but just like team Predator, your first one. Yeah, our first our first real team that we put together. Um. And the picture I posted was specifically of, I guess you had like four bikes that you made, four or five bikes. Yeah. And those were like what your aluminum carbon hybrid bikes. Yeah, that was our like. It was not our well, it wasn't our first. But it was like one of the first generations um of it. Um, it was a really cool bike. It was a very it was an aluminum, it was all aluminum um joints. That were welded together and then um uh bonded in um uh carbon tubing. So, um it was the main the main triangle was all carbon and the seat stays were carbon. And then the bottom drive train was all aluminum. And what was it like a road team crit team? How big was your team? It was basically it was like a local team. It was just basically us. Um, that's it. Three of us, really. Um, that actually raced. How many people do you need on a team? I mean, technically you should seven or eight. But like we just did local rides, local stuff. It was local crits, is all we did. Um, it was like a group of us. It was um that race. And I'm sorry, I should probably know this after being married to you for so long. But is it it's a team and there's like a point system on placement, but is it basically whoever crosses the line first? Well, there there's certain series have points and then there's like the national. Like different series nationally that have races. But if you're like constantly like on the team, but you like worked really hard for the team, but you always come in last, you get points. No. You're just like a. It's individual, it's individual or point or team based. Oh. But yeah, it's not like uh like in other sports you like assists and things like that. No, we don't have that kind of metrics. Like in golf, there are six girls on a team, but they only count the four lowest scores, but still your score at the end of your kind of ranked you. They only count the four lowest scores for the tournament. you're in. But like you're still your score like counted personally. Oh yeah. Like at least in high school. No. No, I mean, yes, you got points on USA cycling, had a point system on your points and category as you as an individual. And then there was like a there is a point standings for teams in different categories. But we didn't really, that was nothing that we actually competed in or did. Yeah. Like we just. went and did group rides, had some fun. Um, you know, tried to win the local sprints on the group rides and then went out to the. local crits and did some crits. Well, I didn't actually want to talk about point system. I wanted to talk about um uh the bike. Yeah, it was a cool bike. You made bikes. Yeah. We made the bikes. You made the bars? We did not make the bars. That was. Stock bars? They were. Um at the time it was pretty cool, it was FSA's, it was called FSA plasma. Which was one of their uh one piece bar systems. Um it's kind of it's one of the things that launched me down the path of actually like the majors and stuff. Um because it was a one piece system and it was cool because it was a. rare at the time, it was a zero degree stem. So it means that the stem kind of went up a little bit. So they had really short head tubes. I mean they were they were. crit bikes. So if it was zero degrees, wouldn't it just go out flat? So yeah, if the head tube is, you know, straight, it's completely perpendicular to the head tube. So usually it's a negative eight degree so that the bar like the stem goes kind of flat to the ground. ish. But a zero actually gives you some vertical tilt. Um. So it was really cool, so the bikes were really short head tubes. Um really stiff bikes. I mean they were fast, they were fast crit bikes. Did you win? Uh I mean I I don't I think we got a couple of like top threes in some of the crits and stuff. Top fives. Um I know Autumn, the other Autumn, he did pretty good in the CVR series. What about this Autumn? This Autumn didn't do anything. He won some local group rides. He made the bike. He made the bike. Um. We won some sprints. Um we won a lot of the Lagrange sprints. We actually I think I won. There was a there was a nickel's ride. Um and I think I won that sprint. Is that a mountain? Is that a street? Is that a person? Is that Nick? Excuse me. Um yeah, it was it's a mountain, it's a it's a climb. And then at the end of the climb you kind of regroup. And then there's like a downhill down Sepulveda. And there's this like really long sprint finish. Um. That's fun, it's like a slight 1% downhill sprint. So it's just super fast. You're talking like what did you say, 2007, 2008, 2009? I wouldn't do it in 2023 down those streets you just named. Oh, it was not a good street to come down then. Oh, back then there was less traffic. Now I'd never do that. No, it was still traffic and potholes and there was constructions, there's construction barriers all down the sides. But it was all right because I had like literally. I had, well. CJ worked with me then. And uh CJ was there with me always. And me and CJ like owned that thing. And then. Lagrange ended up actually bringing out a whole bunch of heavy hitters to try and beat us in that sprint. And um. So I called. bottom and I was like, dude, you got to help me. So, and he's he's a powerhouse, so he would just literally go to the front and just drill it. And we would just single file that thing. And I I think I only lost that sprint like a handful of times during that team. Like I mean, I I didn't lose that sprint very often. If ever. Okay. Well, um, so you made the bikes, didn't make the bar. So. There's actually a YouTube video of that sprint. Of how we do that sprint. On YouTube, one of our old it's like a 13-year-old video. But there's a video of the lead out CJ leading it out. I think it I don't might be in it. I don't know if Adam's in it or not. But anyways, we're in the kit. We're rocking it. Anyways. Um, so and then after that you had another the team Predator team carbon repair. Which those were just all carbon repair bikes, but. Yeah. Um, in the post that I made this past Thursday. I was like, oh, you know, our team in LA and you know, so sunny. And you know, maybe a team in Nashville. But like that's A, we don't have time for that. And B, but like the weather is pretty horrible here. Oh. I mean it gets better. Yeah. It gets really, really hot. And I don't know if you'd want to ride. But let's say that you had a dream Nashville team here. The Mount Juliet, I don't know. What you I don't know you call it. Well, it'd be Predator team Predator. Uh, yeah. Uh. Anyway, um. Dream bikes. How I mean, obviously the R 20 wouldn't be a bike for that. Would it? Yeah. A race bike? Totally, totally. Okay, so you take the R 20. And then talk about um, you know, the build that you would do. For a team and the bars and what not. Yeah, so I mean it would probably go back to like what we originally did. Um. Like I we talked about like on my dream build. I you know, to be honest, I'd probably do I'd do the R 20. Um, obviously I would do the the the pilot um, I'm sorry, the road major cockpit. Um, and then I think I would probably go with like some deep dish zip 808 set up. Every time you say deep dish, I still think pizza hut. But go on. Oh. We should get pizza tonight. Sponsor. Yeah, sponsor. What was the team in Nashville that sponsored? What was it by? A chicken place? It was like a hot chicken place or something. Something, it was something funny. The greatest sponsorship ever. Yeah, it sounds like a really good sponsor. I don't remember what it was. Like team hot chicken or something like that. Yeah, it was like I don't remember what it was now. But it was really good. It was a good sponsor. Um, yeah, I would probably do that. I would and I would, you know, either go with some Shimano or SRAM group set. Um, keep it pretty basic, but just fast, reliable set up. And if you're doing crits, I mean, I don't know. I'd look at doing like a one by now. But what? A single front chain ring. Not having multiple chain rings in the front. Chain ring. The front gears. Yeah. Like on your old bike, your bike you have now has the three gears in the front. Most road bikes have two. But now some of them are doing one. Again, you never told me that you just all my gears. Yeah, I told you to use all my gears. Is that the left hand, is that the left hand that does the front? Yeah. So I don't know what those do. Yeah. So, um, anyways, that's probably what I would do. If you're doing crits and stuff. Um, there's some crit racing here. There's some road racing. But um, And then there's the speedway. Is that considered track? It's not a track. You wouldn't ride track bars on that? No. You'd ride a road bike, a standard road bike. Okay. Um, they have done track races on speedways before. But it to be honest, It's too long to actually like need a track bike. No, you could do it. You could do it on a track bike. Um, but it's just it's just a different dynamic. It's just a whole different. Well, isn't the nearest track here in Atlanta to Nashville? I believe it is. I mean, I think that would be the closest track. Atlanta. Okay. Um, okay, so talk about the bars. You would use would be your road majors. And then for you're actually in the process of making some uh uh road pilots, which are the track bars right now. Yeah, we got a couple in the works right now. Um, and um, as soon as I'm done with those, I have a road one and got some arrow bars too. So I'm I guess question for those track bars that you're working on right now. I think was like sizing. Yeah, sizing is always a tricky one on those bars. Um, because it's such a non-standard cockpit. Um, because the way that that stem, it kind of makes that point at the top of the bars. Um, like in the middle where that's that stem system joins. And it's kind of spikes back. Um, because of that, um, it it gives you this misleading idea of where the bar connection point is. So like, you know, you need a 110 stem, but it looks like it's a 120, 130 stem. Um, so it's a little misleading. And then because of the way we did those tops on the bars, um, the drops are very much. They're not quite standard, they're not in the in the in the place you normally think of as the drop. So, um, it gets a little tricky to size them up sometimes. Um, But yeah, that's that's the number one question. So I was ease dropping on uh, So if you ever have a a need or a question about bars, your initial step is basically to have a conversation with arm. Uh, video conference. And um, which many listeners may or may not know is I'm usually on the side ease dropping. I'm not ease dropping, I literally sit across from him. So. Um, anyway, I was listening and um, I was listening to you basically tell a future customer or potential future customer about um, like the uniqueness of your the pilot bars. Yeah. Yeah. Basically they were like, you know, we this person does a lot of bars and testing. And like what makes your pilots different? Like how is your testing? Because they were talking about how they get these bars and they're not actually like computer tested. They're just like. Personally tested and then they're like, ah, we don't like these. Right. So like, I mean, the thing with us is is, you know, there's a lot of different things. I mean, the your conversation you're referring to is is the pilots. Um, and in the pilots are very unique system. Well, I guess it's all our bars. You know, our bars are not designed, none of the equipment that we design is meant to be used in a single static situation. So what I mean by that is like, you know, this quote-unquote like race position. The perfect position. and designed around it. They're actually not designed like that, they're designed to have multiple holding positions, multiple places to grab the bars. And thinking about the overall efficiency of a rider. So like, on the pilots, you know, it is a race specific bar because it's it's, you know, most people don't ride track casually to not race. Like most people race track. Um, even if it's practice. You mean race to race? Yeah, you you race. Yes, race to race. Like professionally. But not even professionally. Like if you're just like a local Joe Schmo riding the track. I mean, like, you know, like I would be now. Um, I mean, I would still practice, do a practice run and then, you know, practice racing and I'm still racing. Um, so like the idea being that there's positions to hold on the bars for different scenarios. So like if you're trying to break away off the front or be as arrow as possible, to get like maximum top speed. You know, it has a position for that, you know, that fake kind of road. hood tops. Um, you know, if you're out of the saddle sprinting, it has a really, it has two really good spots to hold in the drops. Um, for different types of positions. Um, if you're riding relief, you know, there's actually sections that are designed to be able to ride relief and, you know, open up your back and take a breather and, you know, just catch your breath and stability. Um, there's spots that are designed specifically for Madison exchanges. You know, there's all these types of different parts of the bar that are designed to use to be used the way you ride it and race it. Um, Where's the cup holder? There's no cup holder. There's no cup holder on track bikes. No, on the bar. There's not, there's not, there's not. Actually jokingly, I tried to, we tried to make one for our Starbucks coffees back in the day. So that we could put our bars on it. I made some prototypes, but I never finished them. Um, I always thought it'd be hilarious to have a little cup holder on the front of your bike. You don't put like a computer on a track bar, right? You're not allowed to, you're not allowed to in racing to have a computer. on the front of your bars. You can have, um, we make a computer mount that goes behind your seat. Like a phone mount? Phone mount. Yeah, no, so you can. So you can watch your dead dead Zeppelin videos. Yeah, right. Or your Grammy's. Um, but no, no, you cannot. Um, anyways. So yes, that that was the conversation. It was kind of around that idea. Like, you know, because we're not statically testing things. in a single situation. We're we're testing in a much more dynamic manner where we're simulating multiple positions. and actual event type scenarios to figure out the optimal bar system. Um, it's very different. Um, and on the track bars themselves, the pilots. You know, we're really looking at, um, the cockpit itself. Um, the the hand position points. What the the bar would be. Um, we kind of leave that relatively stock. Like we don't really change that ever. Um, unless there's a really big need for it, we can. Um, but it's really the customization is on the stem, angle, size, length, um, connection points. That kind of stuff. Cool. So. Yeah. It's a cool, it's a really cool system. Yeah, and I think if you're actually genuinely interested in a in a bar cockpit system road or pilot, um definitely hit up Arm for a phone call. Cuz he will explain every single thing about it to you. Yeah, well, I mean, we do design, manufacture, test. Everything all of it in house. Right. So if you have like special needs, like he's the guy who's going to design it and make it and cover it all in the entire process with you. Yeah. Um, it's actually interesting because like one of the people that we've spoken to recently have um an issue with of how they hold the bars. And um it was interesting like how the problems that they were facing with their bar system that they have um now and and the solutions that they're looking for. Um, so it's just cool. It was cool, it's interesting to see what people are using and what they need and you know, everyone's a little unique. So everyone's a little different. Everyone is. And Lizzo would say that's what makes you beautiful. That's nice. Um, so anything else to mention before I wrap it up? I don't think so. I mean, I was um, yeah. I don't think so, yeah. Yeah, get through back Thursday. Um, I have some things to mention. Oh, what do we have to mention? Um, on the last podcast, we talked about your participation in the Nvidia Omniverse live stream. Yes. Um, we are getting ready to send out our weekly, I'm not going to say weekly. Our sometimes weekly newsletter. I'm sorry. Um, this week. That's monthly. And there will definitely be a link to the recording from the live stream. Cool. Um, and then there will also be a link to last month's by podcast that you did as well. So in case people didn't take initiative to like search for it. Yeah. I'm gifting you the link. Cool. Um, so those will be available for you to check out if you are on our newsletter list. If you're not, go to predatorcycling.com. And hit the little newsletter button. Yeah, there's one thing in the bottom of the footer, there's one and there's one. Sign up and you will get my weekly not so weekly newsletters. Um, also next week, we will be heading to the Music City Center here in Nashville. Courtesy of our friends at Lenovo to check out the 3D Experience World conference. Oh yeah, that's going to be cool. I'm excited for that. I know you're excited for a conference. Oh, because I love conferences. You love conferences. And it'll be a great, it'll be a great Valentine's Day day. I'm looking forward to. Yeah, look at some uh solid works and demos. Yeah. Nothing says Valentine's Day like modeling. Yeah, well, maybe they'll have some uh free snacks. I don't know. Uh, we'll see. Anyway, it's at the Music City Center, so I do know that there are bars in every single direction from that place. There are, you're right downtown Nashville, so it's cool. So that'll be fun and we'll see what's cooking in that end of the tech world. Yeah, I'm super excited. And then I assume that the following podcast will probably be a review of what we find there. Yeah, I'm sure we'll find a lot of cool stuff. I mean, yeah. I've not used a lot of that, a lot of the software there, so I'm very interested to see kind of what it is. Play all works a little bit, but not that much. Um, it should be interesting. And I'd love to see some demos of Katia. You love demos. I want to see some Katia demos. Yep. That would be cool. So, okay. I want to talk some composite simulation demos. Ooh, that'd be cool. I don't know. I have a feeling we're going to come back with a lot of cards. Oh, they don't do that anymore. They scan badges. No, we're not. If you knew how much a seat of Katia was, you would know that we're not going to come back with anything. Or free sponsorship. Anyway, let's wrap it up. We thank you for choosing to take some time with us. And we look forward to future breakaways. Look for us on Instagram and LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and in person here in Tennessee. We ask our listeners to please share, like, and subscribe. We're available on all major streaming platforms. Thanks for listening, have a good one and find some time to break away.
EpisodeFeb 6, 2023 · 25:02
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Project Breakaway with Predator Cycling
47: Throwback, Throwdown, & Ordering Bars, EP. 047
Join Courtney B and Arm Goan as they kick off episode 47 by reflecting on the Grammys and a family hiking adventure. They then dive into a fun "throwback" discussion about their favorite training music, from Jock Jams to Lizzo. The conversation also revisits the early days of Predator Cycling, specifically highlighting their 2010 aluminum-carbon hybrid bikes.
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