Latest / Spokes & Strategy: Marketing the Bicycle / EP 25: Why Tall Riders Get the Speed Wobble, and How Lennard Zinn Solved It
Transcript
- Lennard Zinn: I'm just gonna start making my own bikes. I can do better than this myself. for a while that became my mission to try and figure out how to make bikes for really big people be super stable and be able to go as fast as you want on and take your hands off the bars and do whatever short people can do on their bikes and not have problems. Brandon Morphew: Welcome to Spokes and Strategy, Marketing the Bicycle with Brandon Morphew and Chris Melman of Miso Partners. Welcome to Spokes and Strategy, where the business of bikes meets the joy of riding. There are people in cycling who understand how the bike works, people who understand how an athlete works, people who understand what it means to build something with your own hands. My guest today has spent more than four decades living at the intersection of all three. But what interested me most about Leonard Zinn's story is Is simply everything he knows about bicycles, it's not just it's what happens when someone who has built a life around riding has to rethink what riding bikes looks like and then find a way to keep the joy of it. I'm Brandon Morphew, and today I'm joined by Leonard Zinn. Leonard, we'd like to start with w what what the bike is for you today and what you're riding. So first thank you for being here. Lennard Zinn: You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Brandon Morphew: And what are you riding lately? Whether it's the bike or or the places? Lennard Zinn: Well, I I I ride my titanium gravel bike. I actually have two of them. Two gravel they're both e bikes. Titanium gravel e bikes and and yeah, I I love them. Yeah. Brandon Morphew: You just got back from the Grand Canyon. Lennard Zinn: Yes. Brandon Morphew: what do you get from a a place like that? Lennard Zinn: it's very for me pretty deep spiritual experience. You know, the it's my ninth time either rowing a raft or kayaking through the Grand Canyon. And, you know, it's a long period. this case was 16 days, used to be 18 days, now you're limited to 16. And and it's you know, yeah, there's big rapids and and all that, but a lot of it is just very calm, still. moving along in this unbelievable place, these incredible canyon walls at night. You know, I've got a a tent that's kind of like a a Kwanzit hut that's completely clear on, you know, the the the screen is all the way around so that I can see the entire sky 360 degrees and and you know you're looking at this at this sliver of the sky that There's no ambient light, so you're seeing the you're seeing the Milky Way there. You see the the big dipper framed in the in the canyon walls, and then and then you know it looks like they're moving, but of course it's that we're moving and the canyon walls move past and and then the picture changes and and and it's so much light from stars. That you can see just fine at night. It's amazing. And and then yeah, and then the the river, the movement of the river is incredible. This year there was a huge flood at Phantom Ranch just before we went, two days before we got on river. While we were driving, we were just in this pounding, pounding rain across the Navajo Reservation. And and that resulted in this huge flood that ripped apart Phantom Ranch, which if anybody been to the down in the Grand Canyon, that's probably where they've been and have fond memories of it. And it's it's pretty devastated. And we were just seeing pieces of it then the rest of the way down the river, whole whole dumpster dumpsters full sitting crosswise in the middle of the Colorado River and mattresses and refrigerators and and mangled backhoes and all sorts of stuff. So yep. Brandon Morphew: Do you s do you experience adventure differently today than you did you know when you think back to when you were racing? Lennard Zinn: yeah. And then that certainly applies on the bike and it also applies in the Grand Canyon. You know, in the Grand Canyon, all the side canyons, you know, there's these amazing waterfalls and they've sculpted these incredible in the limestone, these super smooth canyons with with pools, you know, and and and it's super slippery and there's always heights involved that you could really injure yourself and boy, you know, thirty years ago I was completely different in how I how I went up those things. And the same with the rapids, and focusing back then much more on on, you know, hitting the biggest things and the most dangerous and now like avoiding the most dangerous things. And and on the bike, you know, it's similar. I mean, even till it was kind of ridiculous, even up to age fifty five. Seeing how I almost had the Strava KOMs on a bunch of the descents around here. That you know, there were just a couple of pros that were ahead of me. it was about then I was like, is that so wise anymore? You know, I mean, I I always try to go as fast as I possibly could down. Now it's nothing like that. I'm I I don't have this feeling that I'm, you know. gonna live forever. I have much more of a perception of, you know, I don't wanna fall down. I wanna it's it's much harder to get back up, much harder to heal at this age. And I just I love this too much to wanna be, you know laid up because of it. So yeah. Yeah. Brandon Morphew: Yeah, I actually I do know. It's it's all too familiar. The the lost the lost weeks and sometimes lost months that that occur with with injuries and and illnesses. I think this is these are things to be aware of at any age, but Lennard Zinn: Yeah. Brandon Morphew: more more more so as you age, I think. Lennard Zinn: Exactly. Brandon Morphew: Yeah. Leonard Zinn is a former US national team cyclist, a physicist by training. Founder of Zinn Cycles and the author behind Zinn and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance books that generations of riders and mechanics have kept on their workbenches, including myself. He's also the co-author of The Haywire Heart, which grew in part from his own experience of having his relationship with endurance sport fundamentally changed by a heart rhythm condition. Leonard, welcome to Spokes and Strategy. Lennard Zinn: Thank you. Brandon Morphew: Before there was Zinn cycles or the books, who was Leonard Zinn on a bicycle? Lennard Zinn: well I used to like any kid, I mean, especially a kid in the in the 60s and 70s, you know, I just grew up riding bikes and originally on Schwin stingrays, and then, you know, eventually 10 speeds. And then and and and I lived in a place, Los Alamos, New Mexico, which has incredible bike riding. And this was all long before mountain bike. So you know, don't think about mountain bike riding in this context. This was road riding. And and and then yeah, I I went to Colorado College and I was on the Alpine ski team there freshman year, injured my meniscus, tore my meniscus and one of my knees and and and at the time that surgery would have been to slice the whole leg open, take the entire meniscus out. It was before arthroscopic surgery. And had they done that, like they suggested, that was 1976, 50 years ago, I would have had umpteen new knees by now. You know, I would have been bone on bone from that point on. And fortunately there was an orthopedist in Santa Fe who said well you could try riding a bike and maybe It strengthened it up enough that you don't need to do this surgery. So I got much more into it, got a better bike, you know, and and then started racing and started being quite successful at it. And yeah, then I mean, by the time I graduated from college, I was on the national cycling team, which coincidentally Colorado College is in Colorado Springs, so is the Olympic Training Center, which is where the residence training program is for the national team. And so, You know, it was all just sort of all fell into place quite easily. And and then yeah, then again it was an injury that I got in the tour of Ireland that took so long to heal. And in that interim period, I drifted off to Northern California and I started working for Tom Ritchie. And that was the very beginning of mountain bikes. And he was the first guy making production level mountain bikes, you know, there were there were, you know, clunkers made out of old schwins with coaster brakes before that. And then there were a few guys, Steve Potts, Charlie Cunningham, Joe Breeze making a few bikes. And then there was Tom who was making a hundred bikes a month, a hundred frames a month, and he was in partnership with Gary Fisher, who had this bike shop in San Anselmo, and they and and and Bike shop was called mountain bikes, and we'd be cranking out these frames, and then Gary would build them all up. And it was before there was a there was a mountain bike group, you know, there was a combination of of you know French road derailers and cantilever brake, French cantilever cyclocross brakes and and and you know German motorcycle brake levers and and Tom was making We were making this the this combination stem and handlebar, the bullmoose stem and handlebar. And and then yeah, twenty six inch knobby tires, which were a revolu revelation, you know, that people could ride anywhere and so yeah, and then and then my knee injury didn't heal out there and I came back to Boulder and My grandmother left me ten thousand dollars and I started a bike company with it, originally just making mountain bikes. But then by the end of my first season of doing that, in nineteen eighty two, the specialized had introduced the stump jumper, had taken a bunch of richie mountain bikes to Japan and had them copied and and and had a whole grupo, a sun tour grupo that that was everything. for a mountain bike all in one and the price was something that I couldn't possibly compete with. So I started making road bikes and, you know, I'm still at it. Brandon Morphew: think about competition and sort of like the role that that plays. what do you think it gave you you know, as you sort of started this burgeoning business and and w what do you think you took from that professional c competition? Lennard Zinn: Well one thing for sure is about stability and safety of the bike that you know at the time I was six six. Now I've shrunk a lot and from losing discs in my back, but but and You know, I just happened to have a b the first really good racing bike I had was this Mozzie that was just fantastic. And I could, you know, I was an alpine ski racer. I loved going fast downhill. And and so nineteen eighty, you know, at the time the Durango Hir Iron Horse stage race was big stage race, but the but the iron horse classic, the the the Durango to Silverton race against the against the narrow gauge railway, which is how it started, called the Iron Horse. That that was a really big road race in this country and and I and I won it in nineteen eighty and set the course record and and there was one guy who'd stayed with me on the climbs, but I just drop him both times on both the descents real easily. And and then the following year Came back and now I was on national team, but I was also on this Panasonic Shimano trade team that and they'd I'd been given a a bike from them and I'd just, it was the first time I'd ridden it in the mountains, and I get over the first pass with the group and it just starts shaking uncontrollably on the downhill. Just this high-speed shimmy, which I'd never experienced before. And people who are tall often are very familiar with it. And and especially the taller and the heavier we are. I mean, I was only I was six six, but I only weighed 156 pounds at the time. But people that weighed a hundred pounds more than me, this was something they experienced all the time. And and that was the moment, you know, I'd I'd actually I'd actually made a one frame by before that point for my girlfriend who's now my wife. using the shop at the physics department of Colorado College and and and learning from a you know the Proteus frame building book and and I used to teach jewelry making in at Colorado College as well in the leisure program there and and you know I just knew how to work with metal and and so when this bike started shaking on me. Plus, I did my senior seminar for my physics degree on the stability of the bicycle. And I'd studied it and had these all these theories about it. Had had built a an unrideable bike, a bike that would no matter what you did, you couldn't keep it upright in order to show what it was that made a bike stable. And and I and so I was interested in trying out those ideas. And when that happened to me on that descent, I was like, I'm I'm just gonna start making my own bikes. I can do better than this myself. And and so you know that I don't see how that experience would have happened without racing. You know, that that just seeing how critical that was to being able to succeed on the bike, to have it behave like you expect it to behave. And so, You know, for a while that became my mission to try and figure out how to make bikes for really big people be super stable and be able to go as fast as you want on and take your hands off the bars and do whatever you whatever whatever short people can do on their bikes and not have problems. So yeah. Brandon Morphew: Do you think this is still an opportunity or or has this been solved? Lennard Zinn: Well the it's less of a problem than it used to be, but it's definitely still there. I mean, the fundamental issue, yes, geometry plays a big role, but the other part of it is that at that time A tall bike, all bikes had level top tubes. So a tall bike for a tall guy looked like one of these circus bikes with little wheels because the frame was just so tall. And and the tube size and and shape was limited by lugs because you you they frames weren't welded or fillet braised together. They were they were lugged and lugs except at a one inch top tube and a one and an eighth inch down tube and a one and an eighteenth inch seat tube and and a one and a quarter inch head tube. And so that was it. And the steering tube of the fork was one inch in diameter. And and so if you have this really big structure with all this space in the middle of it, you know, in both the front and rear triangles. And then and then it's just these skinny tubes, even if they're pretty heavy, but usually they weren't because you know if you're maybe a racing bike and it's you're trying to sell it on its weight, you know, and at the time all bikes were steel. There wasn't that much to compare the difference between them, you know, that it was paint jobs and finished look and name brand, but you know, everybody's using the same materials. So if you made one that was, you know, if you were a big company, you made one that was noticeably heavier than the other guys, you know, you might not be able to sell it as well. So you were using still the lighter weight tubing that was in the smaller bikes. And it was just a recipe for the thing just being super flimsy and twisting back and forth. And and you know this This phenomenon, you know, there was a famous thing in the forties of a of a bridge in Washington State that that started doing this thing like this, and then eventually just broke apart and threw flung all these all these cars down into the into the canyon and into the river and and and it was again a the same sort of structural issue. And if you're making a bridge and you and you make all of the all the bridge structural members thin and too far apart, then the thing's gonna start doing something like this, kind of like a bike. Now we have you know high end high end bikes are generally made out of carbon and they're generally molded, so and there's no restriction then in in geometry like no no restriction to a level top tube unfortunately you know the advent of the mountain bike brought in the sloping top tube and got people used to that look and they accepted it then when giant first did it with the with the compact geometry the the giant TCR and once people accepted that sloping top tube then you could you could make things much more compact much stiffer and and then The carbon monocoque structure allows you to have these really big forms that are much less resistant to this twisting effect, even though being lighter. And and then, you know, we were the we were the first ones to do a one and an eighth inch steer on a on a fork on a road bike. And now, of course, steers are all one and an eighth. But then they also flare out at the bottom to to one and a quarter or one and a half inch, all making that fork more rigid. So you don't have, you know, because on a tall bike you've got this really long steering tube. And if the steering tube is thin inside of the head tube, something you can't even see, it can easily be flexing back and forth and creating a lot of that same issue. And and so a lot of it has naturally improved with the evolution of the of the design of bikes, but nonetheless the fact remains that that Bikes, mass marketed bikes, bikes made for a lot of people are still they're gonna look at this bell curve of people's size. And when you're out here, you know, on the low end, there's always gonna be short people because there are people are always, you know, there's kids and whatever, and and originally that used to be the problem for women's racing. One of the reasons that My early part of my business was very much focused on making bikes for small women because there weren't any in the in the early eighties that if you wanted a small bike, you were buying you were buying a kid's bike. And and so racing bikes just were not decent then. And and so I had a good business where most of my businesses, most of my customers were were women. I sponsored this women's cycling team, the Zen Alfalfa Shimano cycling team, which was the first women's team in Colorado. That's largely been filled by manufacturers understanding that women spend a lot on bikes and having these women-specific designs and all this sort of stuff. But on the other end, you know, when you have to spend a half a million dollars or so for the mold and the development costs and everything for each size of each model of bike, you're not gonna invest that for six foot seven people and taller. And so So and then there will be people who are, you know, maybe six foot two, but maybe weigh 400 pounds. You put that person on one of these bikes and you will get that shimmy because the because the the issue is this the resonant frequency of the entire package of the bike and rider. So, you know, if the if you have a very small bike, it can twist back and forth, but it's its period of oscillation is gonna be very very high, very short, you know, the frequency will be very high. It'll it'll twist back and forth really fast. If the bigger it is, the longer it takes to go through one of these twisting cycles. And then the heavier the weight you put on it, the longer that takes. And then that's becoming much more similar to the kind of frequencies that you'd encounter with little, you know, chip seal on the road, winds and all these sort of things, and that that can excite this resin frequency and have this This shimmy build and build and build and build, which is the scary part when it just gets worse and worse and worse, and you're trying to hang on to the bars and flopping all over the place. And and so so yes, people that are tall and very heavy or just plain very tall, it's still an issue. and and we, you know, it's still a focus of my company is to not only make For those people make them unbreakable, because they won't continue to be a bike rider very long. A four hundred pound person that keeps breaking everything, who's also maybe too embarrassed to be out on the roads during the daytime and rides at night because of it. If they have to call somebody to pick them up every time a wheel breaks or something, they're not gonna be a bike rider very long. So we've that's been really a focus of mine to serve that market. And and give them safe bikes. Brandon Morphew: Nice. Lennard Zinn: So Brandon Morphew: I love that. I and I think it's it's a definite need. I I agree. I sort of I'm excited about where technology is going, you know, thinking about like the progression of bikes over time. And I'm actually curious th I have two questions. One is about your career if you look back, how much of of your career was planned? I feel like there's a lot of serendipity in the in the stories you shared up front. How much of your or maybe there was a point where you did start to get more about more into you know intentional and planned? And maybe it's always been that way. And so that's my first question is sort of like you know, and then I also want to think a little bit along those lines as you're as you're thinking about people who are are coming into the bike industry or or early in their career, w where what do you see? You know, and the first thing that comes to me is sort of like, you know, some of the 3D printing. technology and sort of the opportunities that are happening very quickly. Like there's a lot in manufacturing that I think is gonna revolutionize this space quickly. It's gonna take time, but I do think there will be a new wave of of very interesting customization. But I'm curious if so first question about your career. Second question, if you were gonna give some advice to a young person who sort of has some affinity for maybe the person you were in that early part of your career. What might you direction might you point them in or what what what would get you excited if you were starting that journey right now? Lennard Zinn: Okay. yeah, on the subject of serendipity, yes, I would say there's been a lot of it in my career and that I have ended up with a career that I've been paid to do things I would pay to do. You know, I've put on bike camps in Italy for years with Connie Carpenter and Davis Finney, you know, the two more successful male and female bike race racers in the in in the US ever. I I who happen to be married on the same day as me and my wife, so we celebrate our anniversaries together, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. And I've Started, you know, serendipitously because a friend of mine bought a bought a running magazine here in Boulder and converted it into Rocky Mountain Sports and Fitness and wanted to sell bike ads and knew that since I went to Colorado College I had a liberal arts education, would have would have learned how to write and and asked me to write articles for it. And then when another friend of mine who was on the same racing team in Colorado Springs bought Velanews and moved it to Boulder and had seen my articles in Rocky Mount Sports and Venice, asked me to start writing for Velonews from from the first day it came to Boulder. And and then that developed into you know, these whole opportunities of traveling the world, meeting all the people, making all the cool stuff in bikes and and and and getting to know the racers and and and understanding the problems they were confronting and and and then you know serendipitously a guy that went to the same high school with me in Los Alamos owned a bookstore here in Boulder and my wife was a teacher and she'd go in and every six months and buy buy books for classroom and and he happened to re be a guy that was into bikes and read my articles in Velanews and he'd said Leonard needs to write a book and he needs to call it Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. And she'd come home and tell me that and I'd laugh and then it would happen again six months later and on and on until one time he handed her a dummy cover he'd made for the book, Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance by Leonard Zinn. And I'm like, holy cow, I could do that. And then I talked to Felix, my buddy who owned Vellanus and he's like, well let's create a publishing company to publish it. know so I didn't have to go shop it around or anything, you know, and and and you know it's been super successful, the best selling bike maintenance book in the world for decades, you know, and it allowed me to put my daughters through the same through Colorado College as well. And and but you know I think the the the common theme running through all of it was never that I wanted to own a business. It was always that I wanted to do these things I was interested in. And then the business just became a requirement in order to be able to do that. You know, I really wanted to build bikes. I really wanted to try out my design ideas. I really wanted to I really wanted to ride a lot in Italy and with friends, you know. I really wanted to we even moved to Italy for a year with my family, you know, and and and I learned Italian and and it just It was all pursuing interests that I had. And that's my my best advice to some young person getting into it. You know, yes, we're we're certainly benefiting from these new technologies that that, you know, when I developed this heart arrhythmia and then Connie and Davis said, Leonard, you gotta ride an e-bike, because and I'm like, shit, if if the if the you know America's first couple in cycling, if it's good enough for them to ride e-bikes, then I can too. I never even considered it before that. But you know, because of my height and because of who I am and the fact that I just always have to make stuff, there was no way I was gonna buy one, you know. I had to make it and then discovering that to make the motor mount in titanium is just completely unreachably expensive. If you were to CNC machine it, where you throw out 95% of this expensive material in doing it, or or you forge it or cast it where you've got these tremendous tooling costs, or that that left 3D printing, you know, that without 3D printing of titanium, we would not be in the e-bike business. And then the fact that I was in the e-bike business for three years already before the lockdown hit meant that. you know, we really uniquely benefited from it and the fact that, you know, we're making titanium bikes and titanium was way more available and cheap during the pandemic because the only commercial sales of it really in significant quantities is for is for hydraulic tubing inside of commercial aircraft to run the lifters and the the flaps and the the the the landing gear and all that. And And and they were just mothballing airplanes and so we you know, there was no hiccup in our production. We were just you know, we were able to just make as many frames as we as we could still and and and you know, we had trouble getting the parts, but but we could still we're able to fill this d tremendous demand, which especially seemed to be great among You know, people who are six foot eight and three hundred pounds, I think, felt more cooped up in small city apartments when they were locked down than anybody. And and and you know, also seemingly all serendipitous. It wasn't like I planned that. I planned for pandemic, planned, we should make titanium bikes. We should have all one man shops making our stuff so that we have to be socially isolated, then then it's not gonna affect our production. All those things just were the way I'd sort of built it just naturally by helping friends set up their business making making frames when I no longer wanted to be the one welding them and and and and you know if you think of a of of new people that have come into the business of Making bikes since I started, it's always because they're interested in something new. You know, I was interested in something new in the sense that there had to be a better way to make a tall bike. That I wanted to improve things. I didn't want to just make bikes. And and similarly, like when Doug Bradbury started making making mountain bikes in this must have been like Maybe 1995 or something, he started Manitou Mountain Bikes. You know, what he was interested in, he was a he was one of those motorcycle trials riders, you know, doing these creeping over boulders and stuff. And he understood all this stuff about suspension, especially at slow speeds, you know, more like a bike rather than, you know, somebody racing a motorcycle or something. And and he had these suspension ideas that he wanted to do. And then the Manitou Fork came out of that and Manitou Bicycles and the whole whole career for him and and and launched other people. And you know, I think Paul Turner with RockShocks was a similar similar kind of a thing. And and and each time it's somebody new coming in with what the new thing that's available then and so now maybe 3D printing and maybe something like that, but some that's That would be my advice to somebody new in this is, you know, look at what it is that you're really interested in and and what you want to improve with the bikes that you see out there now. And and that answer your question. Brandon Morphew: It does. It's fantastic. And actually it made me think, i there's sort of a through line here and and I don't know if you would agree or not, but I I feel like change is sort of like consistently been like there's the the whether it's the the the the goalpost move or just, you know, you're you're following your part and but there's there's a lot of things going on in in your life and even more recently as you're talking through the the pandemic and and some of the the changes you made clearly made to your business and and how you operated before it during and and probably after. But I'm I'm wondering, you know, there's often talk about resiliency and being able to like accept failure and move on, you know, like recognize when s is there anything that you've either practiced or anything that you if you know, maybe it's a personality, just how you operate, but are you aware of like this part of you? and sort of how you've d dealt with this. Anything maybe y you've seen insight-wise that you might be able to share, your thoughts around that. Lennard Zinn: Yeah. so the there there's two things that I hear in that. One is one is about seeing opportunities in setbacks and the other is recognizing your own limitations where where your weaknesses are and and and so so definitely in terms of of setbacks. I I mean that the torn meniscus that I got in s you know, ski team in nineteen seventy-six was a gift that brought me along this path. And so was the torn gastricnemius muscle that I got in the tour of Ireland, you know, five years later. And so was and so was this heart arrhythmia that that yeah, I could guess I could have wallowed in those things and complained about them. But, you know, the the like with my arrhythmia, you know, the life I have since then is very, very rich. It's totally different from when, you know, before that, I was constantly racing, you know, I was super into cyclocross, which meant that I then did some road racing in the summer in order to kind of build toward it. And then as soon as cyclocross season was over, I was fully into cross-country ski racing until, you know, out into April, the end of March at least. And and and And yeah, I learned a ton from it about how the bike needs to perform. Learned a ton from it because I was always anal about making sure everything on my, you know, like in Cyclocross, that I had that I understood the tire pressure and which tire to choose for which condition and and and and that I had everything prepared really well and and and had developed really, really good ways of gluing tubular tires on so that they wouldn't come off even when we had very low pressure in them on a big fat tire. And and and but When you add up the amount of time that I spent training for racing, working on my bikes and preparing my skis for for for these races, and then traveling to the races, and then doing the races, and then recovering after the races, it was an enormous amount of time, you know, and I probably have an extra 40 hours a week by not doing those things. And it's not like I've filled them by lying around, you know. That that I've found really interesting things to do with that time that I now see as a gift that I had had, you know, everybody knows they gotta quit racing sometime if they're really into it, but I never thought about it. Like when would I stop doing this? You know, I'm fifty five and I'm beating thirty year olds and I think I'm, you know, invulnerable and I set KOMs Strava KOMs all the time and I can do all these things and and everybody, you know, gives me a big thumbs up at parties, you know, wow, you're so fit and everything. And it's like Brandon Morphew: where do you have that point of view that that these are gifts? Where does that come from? Lennard Zinn: Well I suppose Some of it comes from my mom. You know, my mom grew up in Germany during the war and and in what area that's now Poland. And as war Started going really badly for them. You know, she was getting bombed and barely, you know, made it out on a cattle train from when the Russians were coming to and then and then passed through Dresden the day before the carpet bombing happened that completely wiped the thing out place out. And then and then, you know, ended up finding a way to come to this country and and ended up in this. Weird town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, at a time when the only people there, you know, on this 7,500-foot mesa, isolated from everybody everywhere else intentionally, because it was, you know, making the atomic bomb project, that she always found a way to move forward. And And you know, even even then when Los Alamos had the highest suicide rate among female suicide rate in the country, because all these women, large lot of them from Europe, would be brought there by their husbands who were absolutely married to their work, and there was nobody there, nothing up there on this mesa that they could relate to, no people they knew and they didn't even know the language that my mom, you know, would like set up these meeting groups, you know, and And which is how I learned German so well too was because, you know, they'd all be speaking German as well as French and Russian, which my all mom also spoke. And and she just, you know, that was a big part of it. You know, you know, another was, you know, ages ago, nineteen eighty three, taking this course called the S training, which is lots a lot of that was what it was about. It sort since then. become this thing called landmark education, but but a lot of it was about, you know This is this is what it is. What what are you gonna do with it rather than being a victim of what of your circumstances, being being you know, taking your circumstances and and making something great out of it. And I g that would be my my answer, I guess. So Brandon Morphew: Fantastic. I I I thank you for that gift actually. I I really appreciate it. It's and that makes a lot of sense. I I I'm a Victor Fa Frankel fan and and I'm Lennard Zinn: yeah. Brandon Morphew: I hear notes of the his work in there and I so I'm grateful grateful for for you sharing. So the books, I and it's interesting because I I do have one on my shelf. I was sort of clicked Lennard Zinn: Mm-hmm. Brandon Morphew: there that I have I have your book. So thank you for that work. you know it's it's we got a little bit of the origin story, but you know, what is the goal? What what are you trying to give to writers in in that in in that series, in in those books? What what what is your goal for the reader? Lennard Zinn: That's very good, you know. I mean, it was a gift that that that friend of mine said, you know, you should write Zen and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance, because I don't know if you've read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but when I was in high school that was a you know popular book and it looked at life very differently from how certainly at that time we were trained to look at life. a theme running through that book was, you know, what's important when you're working on a motorcycle is to bring love to it. That if you if if you are stuck in your own personal problems, you will build the personal problems into the bike. And and so so just approaching that the initial writing of that book from that perspective, that this is something that's joyous to work on a bike, and and that and that you know you will you will not only find it fun, you will you will love benefiting from the fruits of your own labor of riding riding this bike that you made the things work this way and and also you know not being not being you're not dependent on anybody else to make your bike work right or their schedule. You know, if bike shops are too busy to work on your bike when you need it for something, you know, that you can do Brandon Morphew: So do you think Lennard Zinn: it. Brandon Morphew: i do you think that it's harder now for for the person, for the for the individual to play that role and and to have that relationship with the bike? Do you think it's gotten easier? Or somewhere in the middle, depends. Lennard Zinn: yeah, I think it's more challenging. That that you know, bikes were very simple in nineteen ninety-five when I wrote that first bike. We had a suspension fork, you know, we had a rock shocks and a manitou, I think that was it. And and those were quite simple at the time. And and there was no rear suspension and and generally Hubs and bottom brackets and headsets were loose bearings that you could understand and take apart and clean completely and and and derailers like campanolo derailers, you could buy every single little part and you could rebuild a completely mangled derailleur. You know, none of that exists now, you know. You're you're basically sold this unit, this whole derailer, and if you Break one thing on it, new derailer. Have gotten way easier, like adjusting. Adjusting an electronic derailer and keeping it an adjustment is easier than a cable system. I mean that's super easy and super cool. so many of these things are black boxes now, you know. When when I wrote that book, if you wanted really nice wheels, you had them built or you built them yourself. You didn't go buy a pre-built wheel. Now, you know, yeah, you just Buy a pre-built wheel and and you're, you know, you live on the coast and and the alloy spoke nipples get corroded to where the wheel starts falling apart. Well, you don't tend to replace the spokes. I mean, yeah, some people would, but mostly you're just coughing up for a whole new set of wheels. you know, to the point that drives my family crazy, keeping things working that break. having to make it so serviceable and everything, but but if you That was a lot easier in the 70s, you know, because everything work together with everything else. You know, you'd ruin a freewheel, you'd screw on a new freewheel, you you know, chains were all interchangeable and, you know, you just get a new cable when you broke a cable to have the part they need. So Brandon Morphew: interesting. I it sort of had me thinking about sort of recycling and the recyclability, the sort of like that part that side of bikes and and then just in general, like compatibility for me is these are two really interesting spaces that I think represent big opportunities. Like there's some that you know, Lennard Zinn: Yeah, yeah. Brandon Morphew: anytime you have one of these, you know, friction points it it's it's often an opportunity in disguise. I do want to recognize your time and I'm very grateful. what's next for you, Leonard? What are you working on? where are you spending your time when you're not on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon? Lennard Zinn: Well, a lot of it I'm recently I've been spending on understanding more about athletes' hearts and particularly those of of of procyclists of why why there seems to be so many more incidents of arrhythmia among procyclists than there were when I first was diagnosed in twenty thirteen where there were only two guys that I knew of and now there's just you know ump team and and you know working on you know how to how to revise, how to you know, update that information for people. and and yeah, that's been that's been absorbing an enormous amount of my time lately. And the other things, you know, that I do now with in cycles, you know, I'm fortunate in that in that I I sold the business four years ago to my very good friend who'd been my general manager for like 16 years before that. Now he's been we've been working forget for 20 years. He and his wife bought it from me and and and you know I always I'm a detail oriented person, so I was able to deal with the money and the stuff running the business. But I was not somebody that was enthusiastic about the whole idea of managing a business that had a lot of moving parts. You know, I I was, you know, we'd make a make a frame and we'd order the parts and put them on it and we'd send it off and we, you know, that was sort of my level of of wanting to do the business. And and Nick has, you know, turned it into a full service bike shop that services so many bikes we don't have room for them. There's just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bikes in service, which yes, I get it, that makes smooths out those those incredible variations in cash flow that we used to have where you'd have some bikes going and you'd be going broke, you know, by the time you got the bikes done and you would have invested all the money in the frame and the components and everything. And then finally you'd have this big influx when you sold them and and and and you know Yeah, it's just like he's he's really into this whole systems and and into building a business, I was not into it to be building a business. I was into it 'cause I loved bikes and doing stuff with bikes and riding bikes and and and and so now I have this amazing job. Where, you know, halftime I still work there and I and I what I do is fit people on their bikes, which I love interacting with people and and and improving how they feel on a bike and and designing bikes. And and yeah, we have so many models now and so many, you know. wanting to future proof to the business as well, you know, when I'm no longer there designing them. How how to make the whole not only that there are so many designs there in the hopper, but how to understand which one is going to be right that's already designed for this particular person with these particular things. And and that kind of a problem I love. And so yeah, it's it's good and that's gonna you know, keep me excited and going for a while. Brandon Morphew: Just thinking back to the joy of bikes, what what does a really good day on the bike mean to you now? Lennard Zinn: Hmm. Being up in the mountains with friends. Yeah. Brandon Morphew: It sounds wonderful. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna be doing that some some of that myself this weekend. Well, Leonardson, thank you so much for your time. it's been great to get a chance to hear about you and about your your your your history and sort of how how you're here a little bit, a little slice. And and frankly, I I really am genuinely grateful for your sharing of the gift. I think, you know, it's it's funny. I didn't know that we would go there, but it's it's a great way of looking at the world and and really recognizing what's in a moment and and having a a really, really warm and open perspective to what adversity and and change means. So I I'm genuinely grateful. Thank you for being here. people can find you on your Substack, learn more about Zinn cycles at the website of of of course the book Zinn and the the art of bicycle maintenance is on my shelf and I'm sure many, many people that listen on their shelves as as well. And Haywire Heart w where they get their where they get their books, whether that be their local bookstore or some mass merchant out there. So we'll and we'll include links to all those. So thank you so much, Leonard. Lennard Zinn: Thank you, Brandon. It's been a pleasure. Brandon Morphew: Yeah, and thank you everyone who's been listening. thank you for listening to Spokes and Strategy, where the business of bikes meets the joy of riding.