I was honored on Tuesday of this week to speak with Sam Alison of Singular Cycles. I wanted to get him on the Guitar Ted Podcast since he has spent plenty of time designing bicycles and has a deep background on geometry and how to apply it for certain characteristics which are desirable in a good handling bicycle.
Sam also has a fair amount of time on the new-ish 32" wheels which are about to hit the cycling world in a big way here in about a month.
If you'd rather skip the rest of this and head on over to the audio, here is the link on Spotify for the episode.
I should mention we had an idea for saving Sam from having to phone in his interview and end up spending an exhorbitant amount on the call. The idea was sound, (no pun intended), but my audio was the side which suffered. It sounding like a digital phone call even though I was working through my PC here with a USB condenser microphone.
Oh well..... If I continue to have opportunities to speak over the oceans with folks about cycling I probably will have to invest into something like Riverside FM, or another platform instead of trying to get by not spending money on something I don't often do. We will see. But enough about the technical difficulties.
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| The Singular Albatross 32" wheeled bicycle. (Image courtesy of Singular Cycles) |
Sam said something I had not heard before about the early development of 32"ers by Trek. Yes......Trek. Apparently Travis Brown was dabbling with these bigger hoops. Sam said something about stitching tires together and rolling up bigger aluminum rims to test this out with. That's a story which I would like to know more about someday.
Other than that nugget, Sam did a great job of presenting the good and the maybe not-so-good of 32" wheels. He gave us some great insight on the geometry changes from 29"ers to 32"ers, and he spoke to who might benefit from bigger wheels.
Sam also seems to think that Sea Otter will be where this 32" thing will blow up big time. What gets revealed around mid-April should be pretty exciting. I know about one surprise which is coming out, but there will be several, I am sure, which will knock us all back a step due to the impact of the introduction.
Sam expressed excitement about all of it. And to be honest, this might be the best thing about 32" wheels. That something is worth anticipation and excitement. We really haven't had that in cycling since this decade started.
And we all know this industry could use some positive energy now.
Stay tuned......
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