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| From my Instagram story. Image by Taiki Sakamoto |
Today I will be covering some bicycle scuttlebutt, some Unbound/Emporia news, and I will be discussing a new project I am entering into with a new friend I met from Japan.
First, the impact of Unbound on its host city.
"It's going to be chaos!"
We rolled into Emporia early on Wednesday morning and so we stopped at their local Walmart for some supplies. I hadn't been in town 15 minutes when I ran into Joe Reed. Joe was a host for myself and MG a couple of times that I have been to Emporia to race and to support MG in the first XL event.
Joe now owns the Mulready's Pub on Commercial Street. He indicated to me that the local businesses were forecasting a LOT of extra people in town for the Unbound events. Now, I may have misheard Joe, but I am pretty sure he said 25,000 extra people. Now I know that "officially" the Visit Emporia folks are estimating it at 12,000 extra folks. Let's say it is 15,000, but whatever it actually was, Emporia has already seen an overwhelming amount of folks run into and out of town in the span of less than a week.
Google says that the 2022 population of Emporia was just shy of 24,000 souls. So, yeah.... This town is affected by Unbound. Joe was thinking it might be overwhelming with this year's expanded race roster. "Chaos" was the word he used, and he was in a trepidatious state when I saw him that day. You have to wonder at what point does Life Time say, 'no mas!', pull the plug on growth, or move the event to another city with more infrastructure capable of handling a bigger crowd.
The impact economically on Emporia cannot be replaced easily if the event moves. It was obvious while we were there that business was brisk. One shop owner indicated to me that it was the biggest money-maker for them all year and that the wish was that this sort of impact could be extended further throughout the year. But things change, nothing lasts forever, and Unbound won't be the same in 2030 as it is today, if it still exists then.
Hey! You never know.
Pinion Drive:
Viral Bikes which is owned and operated by Steve Domahidy who was once the engineer and partner in Niner Bikes was in town as well. Steve chatted me up and showed me the latest Viral model, the Wanderer, which has a Smart Shift Pinion gear box drive train.
The Pinion Gear Box is an internally geared "transmission" for the bicycle designed to give the rider a 600% range in gearing. Steve explained it to me in simple terms by saying it would be like a 1X drive train with a 9T high gear and a 56T low gear. Crazy! While the drive train is amazing, the shifting is all electronic now and nearly removes the need to back off the pedaling to shift, which is a hallmark of internally geared bicycle drive trains up to this point. The Wanderer model utilizes TRP's electronic drop bar lever shifters and are wired to a battery in the down tube which in turn is wired to the controller in the gear box. I 'think' Steve said you can shift up to 6,000 times on one charge. There is also a mechanically shifted option as well.
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| The Wanderer frame features a decoupled seat tube design and a flex-plate. |
Steve designed the Wanderer frame in titanium with a decoupled seat tube and a flex plate which allows the seat tube and post to move or flex somewhat rearward giving the rider relief from washboard, rougher, uneven terrain, and the like. This view (above) is of a pre-production sample and the production bikes will look slightly different. Especially in regard to the flex plate, which is incorrect as shown here.
You can learn more about this model HERE.
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| "Bike peeping" is a past-time during the run-up to Unbound race day. |
Scuttlebutt: Things I heard about down in Emporia that are interesting included sightings of a SRAM AXS Xplr 13 speed set up on some Pro bikes that will be ridden in the event. You had to figure that SRAM would have something to upstage Shimano and their recent release of GRX Di2 12 speed. Hopefully SRAM will have the bugs buffed out of the system because 12 speed AXS XPLR caused all kinds of consternation on the mechanic's pages when it was introduced.
A new GPS computer contender is slated for release this month sometime from smart/trainer watch brand COROS. Dubbed the COROS Dura, it promises a very long battery life and ease of use. (Ha! I'll be the judge of THAT!) I'm hopeful that this one pans out because I have had dismal luck with the GPS heads out currently.
New gravel racing tires from IRC are on the horizon. I heard about this from a couple of IRC reps and there is a possibility that something might show up here to be tested soon. Stay tuned!
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| A gift from Japan. Thank you Sakamoto-san! |
Writing Project:
I spent about a half an hour, maybe a little more than that, with a Japanese journalist named Taiki Sakamoto who is an editor for "Bicycle Club" magazine from Japan. This was on Thursday morning right before I left Emporia.
This meeting was made possible by an event which goes back to 2019 and the C.O.G 100, the last gravel event I helped organize and was involved in. The women's category winner was Kae Takeshita. She has ridden in Japan with Taiki Sakamoto and when he was sharing his vision for a gravel oriented article with Kae, she told him to get a hold of me, based upon her interactions with me in 2019, she felt that I would be a good person for Taiki to talk with about this idea he had.
So, that happened at Unbound. Taiki wants me to write about the beginnings of gravel here, the culture of gravel, then, now and in the future. I am excited to give Sakamoto-san my best take on those subjects and hopefully I will be able to share this here with you all at some point.
With that I am wrapping up my trip report. Depending upon what the fall-out from yesterday's Unbound event is, I may or may not have thoughts to share on that. We will see. Stay tuned, if I do that, it might appear here later in the week. Otherwise it is back to the regularly scheduled blog for now.
Thank you for reading the blog!
2 comments:
Some friends and I rode the 50. Not racing, just pedaling along and having a good time. A couple of us hadn't been since 2019 and one of our group hadn't been since 2006 (he had also done some of the Flint Hills Death Rides). We all went in thinking it was going to pretty chaotic but it wasn't, not even a little bit. Everything seemed to be pretty much under control and it was impressive. We also knew it was a much different event than what we had previously experienced but when the Unbound branded helicopter flew over, that clinched it. Great experience overall though, I think we're all going to head back next year. One of things that seemed to work well was it did cater to people like us, just out for fun but meanwhile there was a serious race going on for some. Glad to see Lachlan win.
@Brett - Thank you for your comments. I appreciate the feedback.
Glad that the ride was successful and that you all seemed to have a good time. That was about as perfect a day you'll have at Emporia.
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