Gary Fisher

Episode Transcript:

Hottie (00:04)
The Marginal Gains Podcast is brought to you by SILCA creators of the finest pumps, drivetrain efficiency products, 3D-printed parts for bicycles, and now tires for bicycles. SILCA recently announced three gravel tires and one road tire with each tire in multiple widths. Josh and the team at SILCA spent years testing materials and construction and arrived at two key findings: First, they optimized ply angles by moving away from the traditional 45-degree orientation. Second, they went with a carbon fiber bead over Kevlar for better fitment and seal. Check out the RCG1, 3, and 4 and the RCR tires at silca.cc.

 I'm Michael Hotten, Hottie on this show. We are also sponsored by Shimano. Look, it's no secret that we are all about the day-to-day ride improvements you get with a well-waxed chain.

But the best wax system in the world is only as good as the chain it's coating. To say that we recommend the Shimano Dura-Ace Chain is an understatement. Your chain is frankly the most important moving part on your bike, and Shimano makes the best chain, full stop. Get yours at your local bike shop and learn more about Shimano at bike.shimano.com.

Hey, this is our easiest introduction to an interview yet. It's Gary Fisher. In cycling, and maybe anywhere, there's no other Gary Fisher. He is one of one, a racer, a pioneer, a thinker, and a doer. He is in the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame and the USA Cycling Hall of Fame. Josh and I talked to Gary about his whole career and his thoughts on the future of bikes, riding, and racing.

All right, Josh. Hey, it's rare that we have cycling royalty here and a real, I think, pioneer of the sport, but I think we can safely say that today because our guest is, as we said, Gary Fisher. Gary, thanks for being on the show. I hope we didn't interrupt any, like, Grateful Dead listening that you may have been going on as we try to get you to pull the needle off one of those great records and put it on some headphones and talk to us. But thanks for being on the show.

Gary (02:16)
No, I'll tell you reality? man. My wife, my doctor wife, decided she wanted to go to Burning Man a while ago. I'm helping with the kids. Now we got an au pair. She's German. She's eighteen. She's really good. But man, this morning my my little girl, the eight year old she barfed on the way to school. So

Josh (02:37)
no.

Gary (02:38)
she's gotta stay home today. So she might dance in and out of here, you don't know. You know, but it's like regular domestic duty men, I am marvelously busy.

Josh (02:51)
Ha.

Hottie (02:53)
Well, Josh, here's the deal. Like, I'm from Northern California. Gary's from Northern California. Grew he's a Marin County guy. Now look, he and I could really go down a rabbit hole and start talking about all kinds of odd Northern California references. You've already heard The Grateful Dead on this show. That's bad news. So really, Josh, you're gonna have to come in here and referee this because I'm liable to start asking about weird stuff. So dude, please help me help my

Gary (03:19)
I mean,

Josh (03:20)
is that we just kinda go off the rails. I I feel like every whenever I talk to Gary, it there's always we you end up somewhere and you're like, how how the hell did we end up here? Like what like like what you you travel with the dead? Like what I mean like what? There's I feel like there's a million of those. And that's usually starting from we're talking about 32 inch tires or something. So yeah. Yeah.

Gary (03:42)
No, that's that's more relevant. I mean, okay. You know, I started riding racing in 1962. I was really small, you know. And the first ride I went on with the club, you know, I refused to like, hey, I'm gonna ride a few guys. No, you're not. You're too little. You're too little, you're too little. I kept up. I rode. They said, at the end of the ride, they said, hey man, we'll make you a mascot. Mascot? I started crying, so they made me a regular club member.

Anyway, one of these guys is Tom Bruce. Tom Proce Far Bruce Pharmacy. He was part of that family. They used to supply the the LSD to Stanford University.

Josh (04:25)
Ha.

Gary (04:26)
And we met the Grateful Dead through a bike race, basically. And they did the bike race and I hung out with them and I ran away from home and I lived at them. I mean, Jerry Garcia taught me how to do one of these.

You know, it's like really great speaking with him. Jack Leary Leary, Timothy's son, same age. We hang out, do all sorts of stuff. You know, the Bear, I worked for him. He all those guys loved bikes. They really did. And of course Bobby Weir, you know, did a bunch of did some rides and I mean, big ride with John Oates one time up in Montana for like ten days, all this stuff. And then

Ron Rackow, he's still alive. And the carousel ballroom. Marvelous. Bill Graham watched him take over the carousel. And he was quite a good guy, as it turned out. We didn't like him at first. And Janet Joplin, oof. We didn't like her. She was like off the rails, you know? Like Mayor 2001, a Space Odyssey, we all went out to go watch the premiere. She sat right next to me.

Mountain girl sitting right here. Keep your hands off of him like that. You know, she was trouble. But incredible singer, you know, you know, obviously. And Ken Keasey. I spent time with him on his up in his place in in Springfield, Oregon. Built a geodesic dome with him one time. and I did light shows. It was crazy. My partner was Alan Cooper. He's the acknowledged as the father of Visual Basic. And

You know, we had ten people in a show. We'd burn a hundred a hundred dollars worth of bulbs a night in the sixties money. And like we'd draw a hundred and sixty amps. And I, you know, metal shop, I got straight A's in jewelry, I got straight A's in the only two subjects in school, basically. And I love making stuff, you know. And the whole thing went south. I mean, we did the carousel ballroom, that was six months. It only lasted.

The the whole hate scene was really cool for about six months. It was really about consciousness expansion with a side of spirituality. And we let the media represent it as sex, drug, and rocks and roll. Did we mention it's all for free? And these stupid kids, we'd call scrufflings, would come out and beg, and they still come out today. That was not the idea.

You know, however, psychedelia has you know, taken hold and we were doing too much excess. I worked for the airplane too, the Jefferson Airplane. Those guys were excess. Oof. And it was, you know, a hundred and fifty micrograms, a hundred and fifty; it's like people now, they do ten. That's all you need. And you don't take that stuff all the time. You learn from it and you get out of it. You know, that's it. And that was, you know

The nightlife was too much for me. I couldn't handle it. And I moved to Marin County, back to Marin County out of the hate with a band called New Riders of the Purple Sage. We used to call them nude riders of Purple Search on. And I lived with Ronnie, who was Awsley's one of his wives, and with

Willie Legate. And Willie Legate had been commissioned by Jerry Garcia to write a screenplay about Jesus Christ. And Willie was on the Bear Diet, which was that is Mr. Stanley Owsley, the would be beef, ketchup, spaghetti, and oranges. You know, I always had to keep those in the house and everything. And what would happen though is that the band would get

popular, you know, do well, and then they go get all their own houses and then the communal house was like shut down. You know, so I went from there and I moved in with Charlie Kelly. He was a roadie for the Sons of Champlain. And that was like if you're you know a musician, that was a musician's band. They were excellent musicians, unlike the Grateful Dead, which were actually they got to be. They worked really hard in the beginning.

And then things went sideways, you know, and I gotta say, you know, the drugs had a lot to do with it, the hard drugs. It wasn't a good scene. So I got out of it, got back into bikes and thank God, I'm still here.

Josh (09:13)
So is that when you met Charlie Kelly, or is that how you met Charlie Kelly? 'Cause I mean another legend, right? Yeah.

Gary (09:20)
That was Rose, who was she was the old lady of Buddy Cage. Buddy Cage was a steel guitarist that took over for Garcia. He was from Canada. And she said, Hey, there's this other guy that looks just like you, long blonde hair. I had long blonde hair. And, you know, wrote an orange col nago, just like I had. I had an orange col nago. I was also a road tester for Bicycling Magazine. I was their first road tester, and I challenge anybody to find an earlier.

copy of what did I say? It was you know laterally compli or vertically

Josh (09:55)
What is it?

Gary (09:56)
compliant and laterally stiff. I said that in an article about a Klein bicycle.

Josh (10:01)
So we can blame you we can blame you for fifty years of

Gary (10:06)
yeah, sure. Go ahead, blame me, you know. And it created a lot of words. It's like the whole standover height, the I mean that was not a serious thing, you know. It was like you'd have on the side of the box would say, if you can straddle this frame, you're good to go. You know, that's how like bike fitting was back then for most bikes and everything. It was a mess, you know. But go ahead. You guys asked me.

Josh (10:33)
So so how long I I guess I didn't realize you worked for bicycling. So and I guess put peg a a time period here, so like kind of

Gary (10:42)
bicycling I worked for for eight years and I I had to quit really around about eighty two, you know, 'cause of a real conflict of interest. I was making my own bikes.

Josh (10:54)
Yeah, I could see that. So, so, so why do you live with Charlie Kelly? You both have orange colonagos, which I love the mental image of. so when when do you guys start thinking about making bikes? And also, I mean, then the mountain bike thing happened, right? And like that clearly was that was you guys, right?

Gary (11:16)
You know, it was like it was funny. You know, I was at well this bike shop, Sunshine Bikeworks. I could work at any bike shop I wanted to in Marine County. I was a good mechanic. And it was at Wheels Unlimited that I put together my first clunker, you know, with multiple gears, fat tire bike. It was like all that stuff came out of the Larksburg Canyon gang. I was in I went to Redwood High School. So did those kids, class of sixty-eight.

And they told me, hey, you gotta check out what we do. We know you're way into cycling. You gotta check out what we do. And it was like crazy. It was a culture, you know, in that there were all everything was open, you know, out in the west, all the water district and everything. It was incredible. You could drive a truck out there, anything you wanted. Then the hippies started camping out there. Then the water district and all those lands, they put up chains. Well, you could take a bike.

You know, you just put it, you know, over the gate and everything. Boom, there you are, go. So it was wild. It was like, wow, this is incredible. And I'd ridden everything on the road all around that place, but not in that place. That had a big attraction. And the culture was, you know, they did you do Derby night and you go out to this big wide spot where a few fire roads came together, and you start, you know, somebody get a keg of beer and you start the first hour as cocktail hour.

And you'd ride around with one hand, the other hand in your cocktail, and try to get somebody else to spill their beer while you're not spilling yours, right? So and then after that got the serious derbying, you know, it'd be all about stopping people and they put their foot down, and then would come the bike pile, you know, pile the bikes up on top of each other, and you know, and then it'd be a moonlight night. And I mean, people I mean

We didn't have flashlights like nothing. I mean, there were no lights to speak of. And you know, you drag these, you know, half the people dragged parts out of the the woods, you know, it was like the bikes didn't really last that long, you know. So it's into, you know, I worked started working at Sunshine Bike Works, and there was Craig Mitchell. Craig Mitchell was an instructor at the College of Marin for a metal shop and everything, and also a bike freak.

And he did a ton of bikes. He made the first 26-inch purpose-built frame that was unsuccessful, says Charlie Kelly, because Charlie Kelly belted up in a bizarre way. What can I say? You know, it was a beautiful piece. Craig had the one of the first TIG welders. He had the first TIG welder in Marin County. And, you know, and then there was White Industries. Doug White was working there.

And he put together bikes he called paper clips. They were like, they were like spread stays and forks and everything. It was all a combination of things to get a bike to work out there. And it like 26 by 175 was a maximum size. These guys, and then Paul Brown, and Paul Brown's still around, he's like a historian, you know, total historian. And that's where the major development went and was going and everything, and Ed

Christensen, the owner of the shop, man, he gave us a long leech. God, God bless him, you know. And they had a roommate as a road racer still, Kent Bostick. Kit Bostick, only guy on the team that like acted like a team. We we do things we would combine with Roy O'Reilly, or not Roy O'Reilly, with with Keats Viera, a couple other guys and split prizes. Four guys we could control the race. It was nuts, you know, and

Kent, I mean Kent was five times national road champion, five times national pursuit champion, four different Olympic teams, and man, he had discipline. It was so much fun riding with Kent. And that was sort of like like I when I finally quit and everything, you know, road racing, because I wanted to start this company. And I didn't want to be a frame builder, really, be because that's like I love work-aleb metal. It's called metal therapy, you know, but

I wanted to build a company, really.

Josh (15:36)
And so the the company that comes out of this, and y it was fun, you shared a bunch of your early images and and some ads and and so this was mountain bikes?

Gary (15:47)
It was called Mountain Bikes. The first ad I did was like a 12-page in bicycling magazine. I did it myself and everything. And I did a number of ads with David Ross. And then into the shop walks Bernie Van Gren. Ho. Do you know who he is? One of the principals of foot, cone, and building. I want a bike, Bernie. I'll give you a bike. I gave Bernie a bike.

It was a beautiful bike. And he did an ad for me. It was like the best all-terrain vehicle for under $35,000. And he did the Ritchie Mountain bike.

Josh (16:27)
So were you guys like partners in the beginning or I guess helping

Gary (16:31)
Yeah, we were fifty-fifty, man. Okay. And like, okay, we started with six hundred dollars. And I you know, and we were taking a five hundred dollar deposit. I mean, the bike out of the gate cost thirteen hundred and twenty dollars, you know? Retail. And like at that

Josh (16:50)
In what year? This would have been early eighty?

Gary (16:52)
Like  eighty, nineteen eighty. Okay.

Josh (16:54)
Eighty.

Gary (16:55)
Nineteen seventy nine, nineteen eighty. And you know, you could get a custom Ben Serotta for nine ninety nine. beautiful Mavic rims, all campy campy, you know, record and everything. You could get now they had like you could get a Colonado for like four hundred and fifty bucks because this is what Campagnolo did that was a big, big mistake. They would pay the teams with groups.

Okay, the team can sell it forever they want. And that's what happened. There was all that gray market happening for Campionella. What a mess. Well, we established a real high price on a thing. You don't want a cheap parachute, do you? And then I would ride I would drive down, I had a BMW sixteen hundred that I took the back seats out of. And I could get about twenty-five frames in there. And he had Dave and Devin working at his garage.

And he could do 50 frames in one size of one size at a time. Now these frames, no fork, you know, minimal braze ons, if any, and no paint, you know, and they were like Tom did Dave and Devin would cut the tube and tack the frames, and Tom would do the finished brazing. And Tom got really good at finished brazing. We would paint those frames, you know, metallic colors, and it doesn't show the

The imperfections. You wanna show imperfections, you paint it shiny black. You know.

Josh (18:24)
Yeah. Yeah. So so when I guess how how long were you guys together there and then when like when did you

Gary (18:30)
Until like it was what was it, January first of nineteen eighty-four is when we just totally cut the cord. What happened was fabulous. And it was Mike Siniard has become a friend of mine.

Josh (18:46)
Okay.

Gary (18:47)
You know, a good friend. Yeah, he was a competitor. And like my guys were livid when he sort of copied our bike. I said, Hey, how could he not? It's a great thing, you know? And Ben Lowy.

And Randy Ross, Ross Bicycles. my God, they used to put on these great races. And this guy is John Kirkpatrick. Great marketer. Great marketer. So's Mike. Mike Sinyard. Holy Toledo. We all went to the Japanese. We went to both the Shimano side and the Suntour side and said, this is the stuff. This is going to happen. Make the equipment and invest. Invest in the marketing, in the teams. And they did it.

And it worked. And that's what it takes. You know, as I always say, it's a three-legged stool: a lot of great design, a lot of hype, and delivering the product.

Hottie (19:40)
You know, during the development of the mountain bike, it's a pretty well known story that you guys were kind of forced into twenty six inch tires, that you couldn't source twenty nine inch. First of all, is that true? And second of all, if it is true, I had you been able to source twenty nine inch rubber, how do you think that would have changed the course of of mountain bike history?

Josh (20:00)
Well

Gary (20:01)
Well, okay. Ritchey did make 10 29 inch, well, 700 C wheel bikes for me and six 650Bs. And we got tires from Hakka Vavalta in Finland. And they made a 44 millimeter wide tire, you know, in both of those sizes. Okay. the tires cut sort of easy, and at retail I'd have to charge $110 each.

And at the same time, you could walk into any bike shop in the United States and get a unoroil knobby for eleven dollars and ninety-five cents. The whole thing would make us look like idiots. We just didn't have the wherewithal to like develop a tire at that time. And, you know, and the whole thing, I mean, like the the rims as well, there was nothing, you know, really substantial. Well, six fifty B you could get a pretty subst you could get an ambrosio. I got these ambrosio rims that were really light, you know, in twenty six and everything back in the day.

but it was just that. And the bike, now it it could have changed the course of history. Do you know what with a 29er? You know what I had to do with that? I went to the UCI and had the rule changed in 2000. In 2000, there was like a rule that you couldn't have a wheel size any larger than 26. I went to the I went to their offices in Switzerland. I went in the first meeting I had with Hein Verbugen, and he

Just he and I. And you know what you do? You don't insult the boss. What I did is say, hein, hein. And you know, because I've been in USA cycling for almost 20 years. That was a mess. Anyway, Hein, you have a tremendous opportunity in BMX. Both the federations are a mess. You should go in and buy one. I do? Yeah. Yeah. You know what? He did. It worked for him.

So the second meeting was with the technical committee. I come into there and I say, look, this size, I've been doing a lot of testing. It's about 3% faster, even on the pavement. It really surprised me. And you know, I've been using a polar heart rate monitor, and I go out, I had two bikes. And this bike I built with Steve Potts, old friend. You know, I did the design and basically, you know, made it the geometry almost identical.

And then my friends at at it was Manitou, they made a fork for me. I still got that fork and it just fit. You know, I made it as short as possible and everything. And I go ride the two bikes, A, B, A, B, you know, this course, that course, this about six months period. So I told the guys, it's this much faster and it's safer. And because it's safer, you're gonna get sued left and right by denying people to come back, come with it.

And then they said to me, Well, you know, we're worried about people coming on cross bikes. I said, Yeah, because your courses aren't mountain bike courses. They're frickin' pea gravel, dude. That's not a mountain bike course. You gotta change the courses. So it's funny. Then they put it up for a vote with all the all the World Cup teams. I mean, the Fisher team said yes, the track team said no, because

They were afraid they'd have to buy, they'd have to bring along 26 and 29 inch bikes, you know? And yeah, I'd understand that. But no, no, these are right, you know. brother. So then they said, okay, we'll do it. And I just don't, you know, in the OPEG way, it about three weeks later, they'd send me an email and say, Hey, you're on. Let's do it. And the courses, okay. The courses. There's an unsung heroine here.

And that's Sharon Fuller. Sharon Fuller, I met well, she used to do BBC sports, then she did ITV4 sports, then she worked for Red Bull. She was the head of the Red Bull Media House. You know, it's really funny. Media house people they refer to the Media House and the CAN Company. The can company makes a billion cans every four months. They sell in 200 countries.

And they have the they had this event where they only had a partner. They don't you know, one of the problems with all promoters is they have to deal with these pesky things called sponsors. So that's why road races and stuff wind up on the wrong roads in front of somebody's venue and stuff, you know? But it's like clearly and I know this, the UCI values the sponsors more and the promoters more than the racers.

This is a problem. This has gotta change. You know?

Josh (25:00)
Sadly, yes.

Hottie (25:01)
Don't get Josh started.

Gary (25:05)
It's crazy. But yeah, yeah. So I'm not afraid to go in and ask.

Hottie (25:11)
Yeah. So now we're now we're on the doorstep of thirty two inch. w so where does this sit with Gary Fisher?

Gary (25:18)
Well, it's like what is it that it's fun. Everybody who rides us says this thing's a blast and it needs help. It's like a you know, there's I'm going with I'm actually making some. One of the big things is I gotta be able to fit a rider that's a a normal size. And you know, this is the thing. You look at the whole industry and it's a bunch of tall guys. Guess what the bikes are like for tall guys, you know.

It's for real. And you know, it's like you go into what's the average size? What I wanna hit ninety five percent of fully grown humans, you know, worldwide. And like when you do that, it's more like four foot seven through six foot one. And the industry makes bikes for people, you know, five foot two through six foot six. You know, we're skewed that way. So I'm really dedicated to that. You know, I'm gonna I'm going to do that for sure. So

I've got a new front end, you know, that it's sort of like a a one piece fork and stem. Which is a different thing, you know, and it's really interesting. That other people are a lot of other people are doing it for the aerodynamic advantages, and I'm going to do it for I'm gonna try to make that core area as stiff as possible. See, that's the thing. It's like you want like the ends of it, like your tires and your grips to be the softest things.

And everything in between it's gotta come to the you know, where it's the center of it. You know, it's like if you took a a fishing pole and it tapers out and you take the handle part, you put it across some dirt, and it'll go skitchy skitch scchchitch sort of predictably. Do it the opposite way, it'll load up and go boing, load up and go boing, and it's unpredictable. It's like you need to have certain amount of control of that little patch of rubber in front of you right there.

but it needs to be stiff, but it needs to also move a little bit so it hooks up better. And they found out on the rear ends, you know, they're they're letting the rear ends move around a little bit just so they hook up a lot nicer and everything. And so it you know, I I love like the downhill stuff just because people are not afraid to develop things at the drop of a hat, you know, that that's like non-traditional but actually works in things.

I love that stuff. It's like, you know, I visited Vittoria Tyre in Italy about a month, two months ago. Unbelievable. You know, the I saw their test machines, and basically they've got this outdoor area where they they do they mimic all the different types of of surfaces and everything. And what comes out of that is the vibrations. And it's almost like these

Their testing devices are more like they man. It's like they like a speaker. They gets the actual vibrations. Really interesting, you know, what those guys are doing. I'm interested in what you guys are doing. And, you know, I know that there's better and better, you know. It's amazing what's happened in tires. It's like, I developed a few tires, they're terrible. You

Josh (28:41)
yeah.

Gary (28:41)
know. I didn't

I just scratched the surface. I had no idea what I was doing. That you know, my my hat my hat's off. My hat's off to you, Josh for even No,

Josh (28:50)
Thank you.

Gary (28:51)
I really you know, then you know, so

Josh (28:54)
It's true, though. I think so much of it is the technology for the tires have changed, but our thoug our thinking and our ability to measure things has has changed. And you know, so I think it's a combination of thinking, maybe we should look at this more as like a vibration attenuation problem and not just a pure stiffness problem. Or you'll appreciate with your background, I was at with my students at Purdue a few months ago and we we were working on something and they're yeah, you know it

These certain points we just get these weird harmonics set up. And I'm like, okay, here's what you're gonna do. Like get some guitar pickups and we're gonna put them in there to and they they literally all looked at me and they're like, What's a guitar pickup? And they're like, and they're like, Well, can you just like plug it into a computer? I'm like, no, it's analog stupids. Like like so then we had this whole lesson of like how the pickup works and how you know, and I'm just like, this is fun, like old school engineering. but it is fun the the balance of

Gary (29:53)
Th there well there's always gotta be the interface that b between the human and our computers. Yep. I mean that's what we're talking about here really. You know, in that you're well, and then the human element of things. You know, it's just like you know, the act of you know, it's like bike racing back in those days, there weren't any follow cars to speak of. So you carry spare a lot of the time. And we got really good at changing a tire quickly and pumping it up with a hand pump.

Man, we didn't have we didn't have inflators, you know? And we just the good old silica ham pump, man. That was the thing you had to have and somebody that knew what they were doing with a tubular tire.

Josh (30:35)
Let's I I do want hit on you talked about Shimano and Suntour making parts for mountain bikes. And I think for a lot of our younger listeners, they're they probably only ever know Suntour as like a relatively low-end mountain bike fork, right? But I mean but back in the day, I mean there was SunTour had especially like on the well, mountain and road, I mean, they had components to rival you know, XT before XTR happened. And and I mean their SuperbPro was a Dura Ace Level

Gary (31:05)
Well they they had the slant parallelogram you know, patent before Shimano did. You know, that was a big deal how it worked there. No, they they were crazy. It was great. You know, they did a lot of things and then it was like a bunch of stuff went wrong all at the same time and they went bankrupt. They didn't you know, it was nuts. You know, I don't know exactly all the different stories, you know, but it was, you know, a bunch of things that went wrong all at once. You know, but some of the you know, Sugino's still around, San Shin's still around. You know, it's really nice stuff.

Josh (31:42)
And you're you're still doing work with the Japanese, right? I think last I saw you you were working on with Tange.

Gary (31:47)
Well Tange is no longer, No.

no, no. It's Hank in Taiwan. But they're like one of the few Taiwan companies that doesn't get their stuff made in China. And that's the reality. You know, it's like most of these guys, yeah, we make it. No, they don't. You know, and they work really tight with the Chinese. Government? yeah, that's something we all have to deal with. You know? That's sort of their attitude. It's amazing. They get along so well. They work so well together. But

Hank at Tange, well, they're a bunch of crazy guys in Taiwan and they like to do good work, you know, and their stuff is nice. So I thought, you know, what the hell? It's not about money, it's about having a good time with this thing and make a steel frame. And I know how to do steel stuff, and they're doing a beautiful frame. And it'll be a you know, I'm basically I'm using 60 or what 56 millimeter chain line. So it's a mud bike, basically, because if you get your chain too close to a big fat tire, your chain becomes a

Vere built of mud. You know, we used to take bikes and we had this big muddy spot behind the office. You know, we take bikes out there and you know, a bike could weigh, you know, an extra twelve pounds or it could weigh an extra six pounds, you know, and the wheels will turn. That's a big deal. You know, and you see sa how many people, you know, at the last what the last unbound and everything, like where they're they're like mudding up and everything. Dude, you had it in the wrong you had it in the wrong cog.

Ha ha sometimes that, you know, it's really funny.

Hottie (33:21)
my first mountain bikes was actually a Gary Fisher. I had a big Sur, right? Good bike, Genesis Geometry. I remember the story about Genesis Geometry that you endoed over the bars of a bike, a previous bike, and thought, there's got to be a better way than this. Why am I flying over the bars? And hence you made Genesis Geometry, which kind of I think, as I the story recalls, put a little more front center on the bike, like extends you out front center, right? And and kept the bike from trying to endo. Anyhow

That bike, that mixture I had, actually fell under the Trek brand or the Trek Umbrella. It had Bond Tracker parts. And but I wanna my question is what's what's going on with the Gary Fisher brand now? Are you building new bikes, different bikes? Are you trying to again be your own guy and be your own brand?

Gary (34:10)
It's like I you know, it makes things easy when I use my name to some degree. You know, like I don't want to incite anybody. You know, I like to share with people. And you know, my my former employee, if they wanna if they want to work with me, I got no problem. I don't want to like piss anybody off too much. So we'll make it work. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna take sales away from They'll zig, I'll zag, you know, how it goes. But it's great. I mean I talked to a lot of the employees, the current people, the head of the head of their mountain bike group is a really good friend. You know, and we'll always do each other well. And he's he's the one saying, we're gonna go fifty five offset is a big deal right now. You know, and he says, Gary, don't go too far out because the wheel gets grabbed in the mountain bike. It I don't think that's the same in a gravel bike and it I'm more like I'm gonna go

Like I think fifty eight and with a seventy degree. All that stuff, every time you change your head angle, every time you change your tire, ideally you'd change your offset. You go to the Moto GP guys, they have adjusters. And they say every six millimeters is a a sweet spot and then a sour spot, a sweet spot and a sour spot. So the different things that work, you know. And this animal is a different sort of animal.

You know, it's significantly larger than twenty nine. You know, if you just you know, that that's a thing that people don't realize. It's a lot larger. It's like that was funny. I mean, like six fifty B, it was only about an inch bigger than twenty six, you know, and and yet, you know, it's it's sort of taken over. It's it's funny. And then it's disappearing, you know, where the people will go where the numbers are and everything. It's like, Josh, you're making seven hundred C and and thirty two, is it so?

Josh (36:03)
Yeah, it's been interesting. We've had a lot of people ask for 650B, but then you talk to the people making tires and they're like, we haven't made six fifty B tires for a year because there's so many in the market and those bikes are older. But but yeah, you're right. I mean when you see the thirty-two in person, it really hits you. You're like, that's three inches bigger. That's a lot. That's a lot.

Yeah, we had we had Darren Baum on the the show a couple couple weeks ago, talking 32, and he he built a bike with for his own testing with adjustable offset to to try to sneak it in. It's really clever way of of of managing and adjustable chainstay. And so he talked about spending a lot of time try- you know, playing with that. And like you said, it's you know, th these are big changes and

I we just don't have it really figured out yet what the right what the right answer is gonna be.

Gary (37:06)
gonna I'm not gonna rag on you because you're riding the wrong bike. That's like no good. You know? That's no good. People gotta be nice about stuff, you know, first and foremost. That's the thing. You know, and the truth of the matter is is like if you go out and spend a lot of time riding, you're just gonna be faster than the average Joe. There are shortcuts to some degree, but not a lot as far as just developing horsepower.

There's not a huge amount, you know. It's more like you gotta pay attention to yourself. But it's like I really enjoy like not riding stupid, you know, because you can do stupid things and wind up in a big, you know, a big mess. It's like, yeah, I've been adherent of tubeless for quite some time. And I gotta say, it's amazing. You know, when you consider like the shape that our roads in, that there's more crap on the roads than ever before, you know, it's it's a really good thing. But at the same time, it's like, nah, for my kids and my wife, you know, she doesn't care about going fast at all. You know, like I get her on an e-bike and a e-bike that'll do, you know, thirty miles an hour and she'll be going fourteen. That's what she wants to do. And that's what people want to do. If you want to ride slow, man, I'm cool with that. They're riding. Yeah.

Josh (38:30)
No, it it speaks to I mean, you you talked about your story of, you know, get getting bikes banned in areas, right? I mean I I worry about that. I I was just out in Colorado and got to ride one of these new Amflow fifteen hundred watt like mountain bikes. And I five minutes and I I came back, the guy who owned it, I'm like, this is gonna get all of us banned forever. I mean that thing'll it'll climb off road at twenty eight miles an hour. Right.

Gary (38:56)
Right, right, right. It's crazy. And like the other thing that's wild about that, that's like a Tesla. They can just reprogram it for you. And sort of geofence and everything. Okay. You take a totally different approach. It's whoom. Yep. The kid's e-bike. You check that out. You know what they do? Kid goes too far, his bike slows down. interesting.

Josh (39:20)
Ha ha.

Gary (39:21)
You know?

It's a real interesting a different approach. Same technology, but a different approach. You know, and that's the thing that sort of blew my mind about, you know, everybody in the brothers get an Amflow bike. They all sound the stinking same. They all like make like standarded sounds. You know, it's like they're so boring, I can't believe it. And the same with like ULSA. They're spending a ton of money and I look at it and I go, like, yeah, man, you think that seat and that connection, that whole thing is gonna last? Ha!

I don't know, I think you're gonna have problems there. I just look at it mechanically. And but the other one is that like I see them running around, you know, the shows and they just sound like everybody else's. It's like, why do you do that? They sound and look like everybody else's. It's like there's so much opportunity in the whole thing, you know, to to change that. And yeah, I just any it's like, you know, our flashing lights get programmed by the by the tech people. And I want my flashing lights programmed by somebody that does this all the time.

music and things. You know, I'm gonna find somebody that's much better and makes things that are fun and interesting. You know? That's that's you know, bringing a human element into the thing.

Josh (40:33)
Flashing lights to the to the dead. The beat of to the

Gary (40:37)
Well

yeah. Well, I was good at it, you know. That's the whole thing. you can't have strobe lights anymore. It's people in an epileptic fit. You know. And there are things that should

Josh (40:48)
Is this a new company, Gary? This is the the Gary Fisher Light company? I could.

Gary (40:53)
You know. I like doing lights and all that.

Josh (40:56)
Yeah.

Gary (40:58)
I like it 'cause it's like it's convenient too. It's like a lot of the lights we have in the house that come on and go off by themselves so the kids don't argue about it's bedtime.

Josh (41:08)
Yeah. that's a good that's a good way to get a right. Well you see you know I

Gary (41:12)
Use

technology for you, or you're gonna get used by technology.

Josh (41:17)
Yeah.

Gary (41:18)
Insist. I mean, that's what Steve Jobs did. He made the promises come true. I mean, my brother's a geek, his family's geeks. You know, they won't touch an apple. You know, they don't need it. They get more horsepower and they know how to do everything. And Steve Jobs, he his shops, they basically, you know, you had the crowd there, lecture, you had the the one on one, you had the genius bar, and at the end of the day, the promise came true, you know, because like half the people couldn't make the programs work, you know? And they needed to be trained. You know, and that's that was, you know, the number one value and just to, you know, focus on just fewer products and not make printers and scanners and every other darn thing.

Josh (42:03)
Well, and they offer classes, and they build community. I, I, yeah, I see that with my own parents now. Like, we went to this class at the Apple store to learn about our new phones that we just bought. And it's I think that's just so impressive, right? And that, you know, I talk to a lot of bicycle retailers. That's we need to be doing more of that, right? We need to get people on bikes and then we need to make them feel part of a community. Correct. Correct. So we can keep them on bikes. Yeah.

Gary (42:29)
Yeah, well that's you know, and you know, I used to be lone rider all the time, but man, these days, you know, it's much safer to ride in a group on the road if you get a ride on the road. You know, and it's amazing. Around this county, there's like five shops that sell Uber bikes only. Like it's unbelievable. And they saw a lot of high-end clothing and everything, and it's like that's like what the industry was dreaming about, but this is a bubble.

Josh (42:58)
Alright.

Well Gary, it this has been an absolute pleasure and it's always great chatting with you, catching up. Hopefully I'll I'm sure if I don't see you at Taipei Show or Shanghai or we'll run into s each other somewhere this year. whoa but

Gary (43:13)
Well,

Josh (43:13)
thanks so much for coming. It was always a great time talking with you and for everyone out there, thanks for listening to another episode of Marginal Gains.