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A Bike Designed By The Racer, Top Products Of 2021, Fork Offset & Trailside Dumps... MTB Podcast Episode 90 [Podcast]

The first MTB Podcast episode of 2022 is here! We first discuss how we will be supporting our friend Neko Mulally with his new World Cup racing program, followed by a quick recap of our Top Products of 2021 video. We then get into an impressive array of listener questions ranging from fork offset to the differences in varying RockShox fork models, why Jared chopped his wig, our favorite MTB tools and more! Tune in!

0:00 Intro

1:25 Neko Mulally & His DH Bike Project

14:33 Our Recent Rides & Jeff's Wild Adventure

25:14 Top Products of 2021 Recap

30:47 Listener Questions

MTB Podcast YouTube Channel

Worldwide Cyclery YouTube Channel

Worldwide Cyclery Instagram

MTB Podcast Instagram

MTB Podcast Website

Best MTB Products of 2021 Video

More about Neko Mulally and his project: worldwidecyclery.com/neko

Submit any and all questions to podcast@worldwidecyclery.com

If you are one strange human that would like to read a transcript of the podcast above, continue reading below!

[Music] ladies and gentlemen welcome to the mtb

podcast episode 90 presented and hosted by worldwide cyclery i am jeff i'm jared

and i'm liam in this episode we are going to discuss all sorts of fun mountain bike things

including our world cup racing friend nico malali and how we are supporting his project this year where he's

actually designing his own bike having it manufactured to his specs and racing it in the whole world cup season it's

pretty cool and interesting project and something no one's ever done before so it's a fun topic to discuss we're going

to talk about our recent rides and a quick recap on the top selling products of all of 2021 it's exciting is that

exciting yeah you excited about that yeah it was an hour long youtube video but we're going to sum it up a lot faster than that

and then of course we have mountains of listener questions ranging from a bunch about tools and bike maintenance fork

offset chamois that also work as diapers differences in the various rock shock fork models jared's nacho libre hair

haircut haircut yeah that's what i meant to say yes and trailside dumps oh and

all right there we go dj meatball as usual please play a sound effect [Music]

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right world cup racing friend nico

Neko Mulally & His DH Bike Project

so for a little back story nico malali has been racing world cups for man i don't know a decade he's a

longtime friend of mine him and i were roommates actually and racing buddies back in 2009 isn't that crazy how long

ago is that it makes me feel really old 13 years now oh wow we are old

so him and i've been friends forever and we we raced together and he's he stuck with it and got on a factory team

because he was really good got second place at junior world champs in 2010 as a downhill racer i think it was by .06

isn't that crazy it was some obscenely close margin that's nuts and we actually had the bike that he did that race on he

just gave it to us to have as a sort of keepsake and worldwide cyclery and it was unfortunately stolen in may of 2019

when we had that huge i think so yeah robbery thing yeah which is a bummer but anyways so niko's

been racing world cups always on factory teams for yeah probably over a decade now which is

pretty incredible he's gone from he's gone from trek world racing to scott to yt to intense i think that's all of them

right i think so yeah and now he's he wants to do his own thing so he's he's always been a tinkerer he's he's really

into he's probably the one of the most knowledgeable people i've ever met in terms of suspension design and

theorizing and talking about it albeit he is you know a world cup downhill racer so his brain

lives in a world that most of ours doesn't because he rides his bike considerably faster than almost every

human on the planet ever will end of story so it's it's interesting to talk to him

about that stuff and any racer because they do live in a different world of what they're demanding out of a bike

that the average rider would probably not even think about because they're just not pushing their bike that far

but regardless it's it's amazing how far he's come with his bike knowledge and now he wants to do his own thing so his

whole thing this year so we're a key sponsor of his i guess he's gonna make it a uci team and it's it's basically

him racing at the pro level at the world cup downhills and he's designed his own bike well two of them now one high pivot

one regular he's having him welded by frank the welder frank the welder's like an iconic famous like the most

iconic bike manufacturer yeah he was welding all those race bikes for yeti in the 80s and 90s and all sorts of brands

i mean yeah it's pretty incredible it's one of those names here and you're like oh yeah i've heard that name didn't that guy make bikes for missy jovi and all

these famous you know mountain bike racers over the last several decades so frank the welder is building niko's bike

and we should just have niko on the podcast next time because he could tell a story way better he did a podcast with vital mtb that was really thorough

talking about this whole project that he's doing and the bike and everything so if you're super curious check that

out um that was a good episode that vital did and kind of interviewed him on all that stuff we'll have them on next

episode hopefully so we can dig more into the details of this but yeah it's just a cool project and we're really

just appreciative and grateful to be a supporting sponsor of them and the bike so we actually have now if you go to

worldwidecycler.com nico we made a little page for niko because he is going to document his whole season

his testing of the bike and everything all on his youtube channel which is little brother logan malali who's a

former wc employee worked here for a couple years another good friend of ours he's going to be making all the videos

and editing them and they already have what they use for at least the first one right yeah and the trailer and the first one so yeah check out niko's youtube

channel for all that the bike it's pretty cool so i don't know how many of you out there that are listeners that are downhill bike riders

have you ever ridden a downhill bike like full blown it's been a while but yeah yeah what about you liam

never liked the full-on hardcore it's funny so many people have never ridden a full bore downhill no i haven't i

actually it's kind of a rare like why would you unless you're really into it for some reason i think later this year

next year i might build one because i'll have an e-bike what's the point of having a pedal bike whatever tangent but

yeah i want to yeah yeah it is kind of a rare bike because it's pretty much useless aside from

going downhill as fast as you can so they're eight inch travel long low slack monsters of bikes and

that's what i grew up racing downhill and i also did super d which is kind of evolved into an enduro but yeah most

people i mean i haven't rented down a bike and when did i have that i had that transition i built up three years ago

probably 2019 i didn't even 20 man it might have been 2018. yeah i haven't i

used to always like to have a downhill bike in the summer and take it to the various ski resorts the local ones in

whistler which is always fun but oh yeah i don't know i kind of it's hard it's hard to like put together an entire

downhill bike every season and do it and yeah it is a rare bike to ride but people who ride them love them because

they are fun i mean there's there's no bike that the f1 yeah yeah you're right yeah it is it's

when you're when you're crafting a bike specifically for downhill speed that's what downhill bikes are so it's it's

pretty cool and it's where everything comes to life in terms of suspension platforms become way more relevant the

faster you ride the bike and the more travel the bike has so when it comes to downhill racing at the world cup level

these bikes are really important to these racers which is part of why niko wanted to do his own thing and design

his own bike so his bike which is just a raw aluminum bike horse link suspension design 63

degree head angle 52 mil fork offset 475 reach with a 40 mil stem uh he is going

to do a mixed wheel size so 29 in the front 275 in the rear but i think he's going to be testing that he's going to be testing all these things testing high

pivot versus basically regular without the high pivot and uh yeah i mean he's gonna test a lot

of stuff it was funny because the other day i was talking to him and he was uh what did we asked him about the rear hub spacing and he went on this rant about

how he's gonna have 12 by 148 on it because it's easier for swapping wheels between his other bikes and he doesn't

see any legitimate difference between the 157 and it's it's just cool hearing his perspective on things like that

because if you hear a world cup level downhill racer tell you that he doesn't notice a difference between a

quote-unquote booster super boost rear end then it's like oh probably no one else ever would i mean these are the

guys who push the bikes to the limit more than any one of us could and and they're so much more sensitive to every

little tiny bit of it so yeah that's that's pretty cool to see so i don't know i mean when you saw this

jared what did you think when you like looked at this bike and looked at the specs what were your first thoughts i my first thoughts where this thing has just

got to be an absolute riot like it looks like so much fun to ride i mean i love downhill bikes i have last

downhill bike i rode it was like a v10 santa cruz um maybe like 2019 or something like that um and that was a

fun bike and pretty similar setup like suspension-wise and everything to this so i mean yeah i saw this thing i was like wow it

just looks so fun and it's super rad that he commissioned frank weller to to build it i mean yeah you just don't

hear about stuff like this yeah yeah it's it's pretty traditional for all these you know highly skilled talented

world cup racers to kind of stay on a factory team for a while or go from one to the next and they just kind of

they're beholden to that brand that bike brand and those component brands that they're sponsored by and they just say

hey here's your bike it's the best bike yeah ride it as fast as you can please yeah and we'll pay you and if you don't

then we won't pay you yeah it's and then you can like change links here and there and the shock too yeah like fine tune it

but you're not like changing it all up you know so yeah i think this is especially cool because

so much of the time you hear about racers um they they don't have freedom of speech to talk about their setup or

like oh yeah yeah i checked the fox stuff because i love the fox suspension like nico picked these parts at least

how i understand it because he likes these parts and he feels like he's comfortable with them which is really

cool so um yeah he's got his freedom of expression on the bike which is as a racer and like as an

enthusiast is pretty cool yeah yeah that is i mean that's that's totally something different than a traditional racer would sort of have the ability to

do totally for sure and what i like so much is that he can disclose everything so like you were saying racers will

often time can't say that you know especially if a racer's writing some type of prototype thing or they ask the

brand to make them a custom link but just for them and don't tell anyone whereas niko's just it's all out there

yeah it's like here's the exact specs of this bike and everything i change everything i test i'm going to tell you all about it in thorough detail on my

youtube channel yeah and that's no one's done that no eraser has done that so yeah yeah that's going to be cool to see

what what did you think liam when you saw that because you pay attention to the racing world a bit yeah i mean i thought it was awesome like looking at

the numbers and then hearing niko talk about it i just it's like kind of every bike nerd's

dream to do what he's doing yeah you know so like that's true um yeah i i love all the details of it and like you

know we kind of knew about it beforehand and like got to see some numbers and and some designs before it all kind of

came out which was really cool so yeah i think it's awesome and like the whole point of it is to show

what works and what doesn't and like filming every step of the way is super rad instead of like this is i think

there's a ton of videos now around the world cup and behind the scenes of world cup and fox style does a really good job

about that but yeah it's not showing what works and what didn't work it's just showing what works yeah yeah

you know they can't really disclose to you exactly what they've chosen why and what yeah i just think like the realness

of his program and like i think that's gonna be the most exciting thing to watch is just like yeah the authenticity

of it yeah yeah totally yeah like his last i think it was instagram post where he was talking about how the pros and

cons of the standard pivot versus the high pivot yeah and like you don't you just don't see that like him i know you

told me he would go ride stuff back to back like all the time just all day try different tires and suspension and stuff like that so

for him to ride the standard pivot and high five back-to-back and give you his 100 like you know authentic opinion on the

performance of each is just like most people and brands are not gonna do that they're gonna be like oh hi pivot

it's better you want it because we just made a bunch of them and we need to sell them yeah we made it it's the hot thing you want

it but like he's like it's it's good in some places and not as good in other places and it's like thank you yeah so i

mean sometimes these bikes already made before they get to the racers like carbon molds are already set and they're like how do you like it it's like oh

it's not that good well you're riding it next year yeah you know like yeah they don't have a choice

enjoy it yeah and you're not going to hear a racer like oh yeah i got my new frame and it's just not quite where i

wanted to be like you know you're on your new team and you're stoked no matter what like yeah you're not going to say how you

actually feel yeah yeah i think it's good because niko's so well spoken in the way that he describes the stuff too

because even that instagram post you were just mentioning where you know that was i don't know maybe two paragraphs or it wasn't that long but he really

clearly laid out sort of the differences that he felt tangibly between those two bikes and the

different types of trails and how and why and it was just it was digestible it was understandable and i think his

youtube channel this year is is going to blow up and it's going to be really educational and fun for true bike nerds

to watch other racers aspiring racers and also just the general enthusiasts i think could glean a lot of information

about bikes from watching his youtube channel totally although some of them might be just like whoa this is dense

you know like even some people said but yeah at the same time i think it'll shed light on stuff like

like what jared was just saying like the normal bike and the highest pivot bike he's like uh you know it's not a

huge difference this one has a little bit of uh you know a little bit better here and then the other one's a little

bit better here like yeah pros and cons on each terrain yes but i think the average consumer is gonna see like

there isn't a huge difference sometimes yep between two parts or two different kinds of bikes he did the same thing

with the 29er last season when he was on intense and he pretty much said like it's a wash

yeah you know 29 and versus the mixed wheel yeah yeah i think it'll definitely help some people like at least demystify a little

bit and like maybe cut through some of the like there's the marketing stuff that they're hearing all the time you know but what's

better just because it's new exactly yeah i agree i think i think our job as sort of a key sponsor of his program and

everything he's doing and our media outlets are on our own worldwide cyclery and in terms of the podcast and youtube

channel and our emails and stuff i think what we need to do is take some of the ultra nerdy stuff and

and bring it back down to the because nico really does speak to racers and people who i mean he says things like on

his he noted on his bike right it's like thirty percent progression fifty percent and a rise on the low pivot bike sixty percent and rise on the high pivot bike

uh does that matter for most people does it not okay let's break this down right so i think i think our job this year as

as we follow nico's race season and his project we're we're going to try to on our podcast and our media channels uh

demystify it for the average mountain biker and help people understand sort of the things he's talking about

but yeah anyways tune in to that that's going to be really cool it's something we're really excited to be a part of and be supporting this year

so keep an eye out for that nico malali it's m-u-l-a-l-l-y just hit him on youtube um you also have

worldwide cycler.com nico if you want to check that out okay moving on

uh way less glamorous than nico's world cup racing is our own recent rides

Our Recent Rides & Jeff's Wild Adventure

uh it's just funny to think because like my whole brain has been thinking about niko just slaying bikes down woke up

tracks and now i'm thinking about us three not that cool

yeah mozing around on our local excish trails and relatives former coyote trails really turned into hiking trails

it's cool right yeah but some people aren't even able to ride right now so there you go that's true yeah we're luckily we've got some decent weather

going on yeah um what do you got jared what are your recent rides um well today i was actually out for a fantastic ride

because we've been getting some some rain um but i mean just as a quick psa to

everybody in southern california if it's been raining a lot in your area um just you know check out the trail first

before you go send it because i was down in sycamore canyon today on some single track and

the trail was totally washed out and i came around this turn going mock chicken and uh i pretty much hooked and prayed and i

left to tell the tale that like yeah definitely uh interesting um the conditions have changed quite a

bit since i mean i haven't been out in just like a couple weeks but the storms were so gnarly that it was enough to like erode a bunch and um

yeah just change the landscape a little bit so yeah it's a funny california-like

problem because i think here we have those flash flood issues and whenever there is rain there's these huge washouts and then there's these giant

rain ruts or creek beds of water that didn't exist for four years because there hasn't been that much rain in four

years and all sudden there was and now there's a creek where there wasn't a creek and yeah i don't think that happens that much a lot of mothers don't

think that happens i think that's a pretty southwest yeah that's a southwest issue i don't know like the southwest is

where you see those hilarious things that say like flooded and flood danger and you're in the desert what

and then you realize that oh this actually could just be six feet deep under water because of one because nothing drains well whereas you go out

you know we get an inch of rain and it's an issue yeah if it happens quickly where you go out to places where it rains more and they get into rain and

it's just the natural landscape absorbs it and the gutters and everything's just

they're built for it too like yeah we're here like almost all of our canals and rivers and waterways were

overflowing yeah in like a day yeah the southwest is

notorious for these huge sort of uh water runoffs and water bypasses that

just sit empty and dry all year round even that massive underground tunnel network in vegas there's a documentary

about those homeless people that live in there wow it's crazy like huge underground tunnels all for when there's flash floods but there isn't a lot like

almost never so there's always people living in these tunnels really yeah it's it's pretty interesting if you youtube some of that but yeah there is i mean

even around here there's these giant right over on reno road there's a watershed yeah this is this huge you

know 15 foot by 15 foot massive thing and it's mostly it's i don't think i've seen water in there for 30 years yeah

there's a quarter inch deep of water in it there's a little bit it's 15 you know

yeah but it's yeah but it's new yeah there's no water it's it's a good psa yeah if you're in the southwest yeah if

you haven't ridden your trails since it since you got some gnarly rain just check him out first and try and avoid

what i did so yeah your ankles will thank you yeah

well that's all i got jeff what what was the last time you rode your bike man why'd you ask me that's embarrassing

i i have for some reason just not ridden mountain bikes very much and i'm i'm kind of upset with myself on it uh i i

was all focused on actually going out to raise mtb in ohio with with

nico and logan and some east coast buddies and riding the indoor mountain bike park which was really cool that was

in just after thanksgiving i think and i have literally not ridden mountain bikes since then i've just been running and

hiking and i did a tiny short mountain bike ride doesn't even cows on my it was on my makeshift gravel bike that looks like a

mountain bike so i don't know i've got nothing but i i can tell you that at present my almost

my entire body is covered in poison oak because i've been planning out these gnarly hikes i recently read i'm just

about finished with this book called the comfort crisis by michael easter fantastic book i highly recommend it

it's it's just a lot about how human beings in the modern day don't spend enough time outside and they need to be

outside and be disconnected more and the value that nature can bring to you and a number of different things around mental

and physical health and exercise and you know stuff like that so i've been stoked on that so i mapped out this hike uh in

the santa monica mountains where we where we're at here in newbury park in socal and i i purposely mapped out a

bunch of stuff but there was no trail and i was like i'll just bushwhack it won't be too bad i'll take a machete with me and i'll just deal with it and

it'll be a challenge and it was it was substantially worse than i thought there there was actually a running creek

because it hasn't been running forever the one that feeds into sycamore canyon like the very far end of that where that starts

so within four hours of the hike i'm like all right now i'm into the thick of this creek i'm in you know actually a

couple feet deep of water my feet are soaked i'm just like crawling through this creek for an hour and it was all good and it just got denser and denser

and denser now i'm probably three four hours into this and i'm just like slogging through

these ridiculous branches and overgrowth and i'm moving so slow i'm probably moving i think i actually have my

garments i was moving one sixth of a mile an hour i mean i was cr i was literally crawling hands and knees

and i knew i was covered in poison oak and now i'm so far into this and i'm so committed that i'm saying to

myself i'm not turning back i'm gonna try and follow this route and it's starting to get dark and so i

go to set up camp and now the only place i have camp i'm still so far away from the trail i know where i am because i got gps goings like i know where the

next trail is and that's where i'm trying to get to but i'm just crawling up this mountain through the overgrowth just mangling through poison oak and

then i get to this one spot where i finally it's 4 45 it's getting dark a bunch of rocks little creek bed little

patch of sand i was like i'm just gonna sleep here pull out my my little tent i don't have my trekking poles and my tent sets up

props out with trekking poles it's like all right well i guess i'm sleeping in a collapsed tent and it started raining it was actually raining so now i'm all wet

and i'm in a collapsed tent and so i try to sleep in the tent for a little bit and i start hyperventilating because

it's just laying on my face and i was like alright i gotta prop this up a little so i like have a stick set up and some strings and i just get it to

elevate enough and and go to sleep my watch didn't even record that i slept but i think i slept

for a while i mean i made it to the next morning and then i woke up the next morning packed everything up soaking wet all miserable and then

slogged through bushes and hell again for another two hours until i got to the trail and then kissed the ground when i got to the trail i was so glad

it was miserable i was outside i was completely disconnected outside in those mountains by myself for 30 hours and it

was uh but the hike wasn't even long it was only an 18 mile hike it wasn't that long of a hike but at 5 000 feet of

elevation it was just miserable but it was just because the route i mean next time you're on a trail look over at the

dense overgrowth and imagine just slogging through that for five hours of your life and it was that's what i did it was a terrible idea i don't know why

i do things like that i still don't know if it was a great decision or it was a horrible decision because you're reading the book yeah

it's because i was all inspired by reading this book i'm gonna go go some hardcore [ __ ] you know now i'm covered

in poison up recording a podcast that's amazing oh it's it's brutal but you know

that's that what do you got liam hopefully something more enjoyable um yeah a little bit more enjoyable than

that it depends who you are though i uh this time of year i try to put in some

road miles and i had a shoulder injury so i was off the mountain bike so i think a saturday after christmas was it

i had no or sunday maybe i had nothing to do i'm like you know what i'm just gonna ride all day

so i just loaded up the road bike packed it full of goodies and headed up the coast i

literally went straight up the coast until i hit 51 miles and then i turned around and rode home

so i rode 100 miles wouldn't that be 102 it was like whoa i took a little bit longer it was like 101

miles i'm just thinking you're trying to dude i know gps's aren't even that accurate at the time

and yeah it was like six hours on the bike for six and a half hours for like hundred miles and i was by myself and

cranked out some audiobooks um so yeah that was fun i guess type two fun

depends who you are and then uh the other one we've been looking at this

route for a while uh we kind of wanted to ride like we have a backbone trail that runs along

the santa monica mountains and it's you know pretty well known we wanted to ride pretty much like

the entire ventura county side of it on a gravel bike so we started on this first like crazy

fire road that drops down and back up to like zuma ridge connects that to back bundle we took

backbone all the way back home um and it was like nine

over nine thousand feet of climbing and like another like six hour day on the bike and i haven't done that much

climbing in a while so i kind of hit a wall like seven thousand feet and so like two thousand more feet to climb and

it was a good time it was fun yeah those are good winter training rides yeah exactly yeah

that sounds sweet gnarly well we're still getting after it excluding myself i'm just hiking and crawling through

poison oak like a [ __ ] we're still getting after it it's funny because i i while i was doing that i was like why

don't i just do like what you guys are doing like liam's doing these glorious backbone gravel rides and jared's out

there hucking water bars or on his mountain bike and i'm just covered in poison oak i should just stop hiking

just cut my losses while i'm at it hey you figured it out finally dude i'm not stopping i i enjoy it and

i'm still i'm still trying to what's funny too is the the day before i started that hike i was running i was

running intervals because i'm still trying to run a sub 5 mile which i'm still not even close i'm like in the 5 5

27 i think i got to recently but i want to run a mile at under five minutes so i'm still trying to do that

and i was running intervals so i started that hike on on sore legs sore like fatigued legs

that didn't help my car gets worse and worse this story yeah i know it's bad yeah it was fun i just should start

riding mountain bikes again more because it's a lot more fun even today i just i rode to get lunch day on my mountain bike on my ranger and i was like this is

awesome i don't i just go through phases it's like why you started a bike shop yeah

yeah it's like gosh that's crazy yeah sometimes i just forget to ride mountain bikes and get all hung up on other stuff

and then remember and then i'm yeah you know those are my own personal problems

it's a nice gift but more importantly yeah the top products of 2021.

January 25, 2022

MTB Podcast › MTB Strong › Neko Mulally › Video ›

A Bike Designed By The Racer, Top Products Of 2021, Fork Offset & Trailside Dumps... MTB Podcast Episode 90 [Podcast]

If you are one strange human that would like to read a transcript of the podcast above, continue reading below!

January 25, 2022

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