Thank you so much for joining us here. Welcome to the last issue briefing, this World Economic Forum on Africa. My name is Oliver Kahn. I work for the World Economic Forum. This one is, I think, the one I've been looking forward to most, I have to say. It's about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Let's be honest, the theme of this meeting, connecting Africa's resources through digital transformation, what are we doing? We're looking at the theme, the narrative that was begun in Davos five months ago, with the book by our Chairman Klaus Schwab on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The purpose of this is to spend 30 minutes of brisk interaction trying to figure out what this means for Africa. The format of this is that we try to keep things brisk. We try to keep it interchange as robust as possible. So if you ask questions, we encourage questions. Please keep them short. Please keep them snappy. I encourage my panelists here, who are introduced in a second, to butt in and speak their mind whenever they see fit. So going straight to the panel. Thanks, Neil Gershinfeldt, for joining us this morning. Neil is the Director of the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT in the USA, of course. Jonathan Ledger, a great friend of ours, a Swiss based across the lake, Director of the Afro-Tech and Future Africa of the Echol Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, EPFL, in layman's words, in Switzerland. Thierry Zomahun, President and Chief Executive Officer, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences here in Rwanda. Neil, I'm going to start with you. Now, we've been sending a lot of media to the Kigali Innovation Center this week. You've been launching a fab lab, possibly the future distributed manufacturing, possibly the future for manufacturing and economic development for Africa. But is it enough? Is it enough to displace the millions of jobs that are going to be either threatened or displaced by automation, roboticization? Good. So I'm delighted to be here. I want to challenge a series of assumptions. The fourth industrial revolution sounds harmless. It's much more profound than you realize. So I want to talk through four brief points. The first one is we've had digital revolutions in communication and computation. We're now living through a digital revolution in fabrication. That isn't 3D printing. 3D printing is a tiny corner of a big story, which is digital fabrication, which means literally turning bits to atoms and atoms to bits, and digital to physical and physical back to literal. In every way possible, it's a third digital revolution. That's not a vision. It's a bold prediction about the present. This is a story that's been doubling for a decade. We're about one decade into the equivalent of the growth of the Internet. Just as the killer app of digital computing was personal computing, and that destroyed the entire mini-computer industry, the killer app for digital fabrication is personal fabrication, which is going to kill traditional manufacturing in just the same way. Because just as Africa skipped landlines and went right to mobile, Africa can skip the last industrial revolution. It's much more than import substitution. If anybody can make anything, which is roughly true, and I can explain, it changes everything.  This turns it on the side. In a network of these local facilities, you can do all of those. And so rather than needing companies to create jobs, to create an economy to make money so people can get what they need, you can make what you need. And that turns absolutely everything on its side. To do that, you need to create these sort of new networks, not just of bits, but these networks of bits to atoms and atoms to bits. So I'm here to launch the first Kigali Fab Lab. It's part of a network of a thousand of these labs that's been doubling every year and a half. We expect it to be spreading all over. I thought the technology was hard. That's just humming along. What's been hard is building the organizational capacity to support the scaling because it doesn't fit the incumbents of aid education industry. It links all of them. So we're just at the moment equivalent to the end of the mini-computer industry and the birth of the internet, but now it's the digital world coming out here into the physical world. So we say we don't need to worry about the last industrial revolution, in our case. One of the big narratives here is that what are we talking about the fourth or when we haven't had the second and third? We don't need to, you'll say. In a sense, yes, you could call it the fourth industrial revolution, but it doesn't mean a different version of a big building with people slaving away. It means personal computing for fabrication. I'm encouraged, and it's always good to hear a genuine leap for opportunities, an abused term, but this sounds like at least a viable opportunity. And again, I want to stress this may sound ambitious, but I'm making a bold prediction about the last decade. The internet looked like a revolution, but on a logarithmic graph, you could just watch one, two, four, eight. You could see what's happening. And email, video games, word processing, all of that didn't happen after the iPhone. It happened a decade before, and that's the moment we're at. Everything is, it's happening now, you just need to look. Jonathan, as well as being a novelist and screenwriter, you also happen to be behind a scheme to introduce drone highways and networks of cargo shipping drones. Very, very exciting, but one could also fear a bit of a vanity project and the overall scheme of things. You would say that all the time. I mean, of course, in terms of the capacity to actually bring meaningful change to economic growth and development. I think there are some fundamental things to understand about the technology. The first thing to understand is that for emerging economies, not just Africa, but right across equatorial parts of the planet, they haven't made much use of the sky. And at the height between 200, 500 meters above your head, so until you get to the clouds, it's inevitable that you're going to have flying robots which are cheap or cheaper than motorbikes will be able to carry motorbike loads at a fractional cost to existing transportation systems. Now, I introduced this Silicon Valley startup called Zipline to Rwanda. I introduced him to the government and to the use case of blood. And they are kind of flying on the last mile. But the much bigger opportunity is basically to build drone ports. So in simple terms, what we can expect by 2025, 2027, is every secondary town in Africa who wants one will have a drone port, which is connected to other towns. So what year, Jonathan? 2025. That's my bet. And the final point I make there is this is a supplemental transportation system. It's not going to replace roads, but we know, those of us who are macroeconomists and look to the Africa, that there simply will not be the money in the system to build the bridges, tunnels and highways that Africa needs in order to move its goods around. So this is going to be a massive use case model. And all that my group is trying to do in building the first drone port in the world here in Rwanda is basically to set out the vision of the technology and to try and drive African entrepreneurs and engineers into this space. And of course with Neil, one of the things we will have in the drone port is a fab lab. So we really hope that in those secondary towns which have a drone port, one element of the drone port will be a fab lab. And if I could just comment on that to bridge with my remarks. When I met Jonathan, he approached me about this idea of a fab lab in the drone port for local activity, and maybe you could do a little bit of repair of the drones. And I yelled at him to say, no, no, no, they make the drones. And to be clear, the local facility in the drone port can create the drones. So drone ports in Africa isn't heroes from far away producing them to be bought in Africa. The drone ports that can sustainably create the drones. Jonathan, your expertise and knowledge extends beyond drones. I'm a big avid reader of your futuristic piece as well. The risks that African leaders, African society needs to be aware of. I know more than anyone that the discussion often gets narrowed down to robots versus jobs. But I think you could probably give us a bit more information as well. There is one key point to get across. We're not going to go over all of the narrative which you guys know perfectly of youth unemployment, climate change and all the rest and urbanization. The one key point to get over in this session is that although robots will mess up richer industrial economies, it is entirely possible and in fact very likely that robots will be able to buy you efficiency in these economies that you would not otherwise be able to afford. Now, I appreciate this sounds counterintuitive when you have very high rates of youth unemployment. But if you don't have an industrial base, you're never going to have an industrial base, then smart cheap robot function can really accelerate many fields. We can talk about drip irrigation, we can talk about transport. And obviously when you hook into cloud computing and attendant artificial intelligence, that's going to be really radical. So the big play for Africa is to realize that it's coming online when exactly the technologies that Neil is talking about are coming online. So instead of being behind the loop and just buying technology five years after the fact from Shenzhen, they can actually build it and design it right now. We'll let you come in soon, but I want to go to Thierry first. We don't have a huge amount of time. Thierry, of course, your role is to increase the capacity, develop the skills and the mathematical science excellence in this region. So the young and every other African has a better chance of prospering in this new economic age. How are you going to do that? Absolutely. When you listen to Neil and Jonathan for Africa to take advantage of what they're doing in their fields of expertise, we need robust training in math and science. It's imperative for Africa. But before I get into sharing here what this thought industrial revolution or whatever we might call it means for Africa, let's look at how Africa did in the first three. It's crucially important because I set the stage for our discussion here. The first industrial revolution, if we might call it that, so uses water and steam to mechanize production. And these periods were the same that coincided with the slave trade. 300 years of slave trade crippled what President Kagame said yesterday, referred to as people technology. So we need to fix people technology here. The second industrial revolution, then use electric power to create mass production. And the third use technology, information technology to automate production. So if Africa is to benefit, not only benefit from the fourth industrial revolution and to lead, because Africa has the capacity, I agree with Neil and Jonathan, to lead this fourth industrial revolution. There are three main things that we've got to be doing right now. Number one, it's to establish learning structures that challenge conventional educational system. A greater investment in science and technology. Some experts suggested last year that Africa needs 2.5 million engineers to tackle the MDGs. We don't have them. So second, this is something that we are planning to do with the government of Rwanda. It's to build across Africa ecosystem research and innovations. It's crucially important. We are planning to set up in here in Rwanda the very first research center in quantum science and technology. Why? Simply because Africa missed the analog era. We missed the digital era. I don't want to argue that we're going to catch up because we don't need to catch up. We can skip the digital era and play a leadership or a leading role in the quantum era. And then three, how do you bridge the gap between learning institutions, ecosystems, research and innovation and industries and decision makers to make this happen and to allow Africa to position itself as a global player to benefit from this digital economy leading into the quantum era? I watched the video, Oliver, if I may, the video which explains the fourth industrial revolution and I was astonished. It was a great video that no single African research scientist was interviewed. I can understand this is a location shooting problem. So this is something we have to resolve. We have a small budget. There's a lot of Swiss people in that film. Thank you, Thierry. It's great. A lot of bad knowledge can be had just in this panel. But at this stage, let's have a quick show of hands to see who wants to ask any questions. We have some world-leading authorities here. Okay, the first one to take the gentleman here and the gentleman at the back. Let's take the questions both together. My name is Samuel Kante from CCTV. And I'd like to understand something about the place for digital fabrication, especially in a continent with a lot of joblessness. How do we merge these two? Because I understand this to be very little human resource intensive. Thank you. That's the impact of the fabrication on the critical issue. We're all aware of unemployment, sir. My name is Sanis Krasega. I'm a journalist for Swiss media. And my question goes to Jonathan Ledger. So Jonathan, the plan is to set up a network of drones to connect mid-sized cities for towns. To kick-start value chains. Could you give more detail on that? Okay, so more detail on Jonathan's network of drone highways. First of all, let's go to fab labs. Do they equal jobs? Do they equal enough jobs? So first of all, many computers destroyed, a PC is destroyed. Personal computing destroyed the traditional computing industry. They didn't make mainframes obsolete, but they completely changed them. So there's a hierarchy of a smartphone to a tablet to a PC to a work group all the way up. And the same, there's still be mass manufacturing, but that's the boring stuff. And they're all these tiers of personal fabrication. So given that, I want to answer your question with a very brief story. Jobs are a problem here. Jobs are a terrible problem in Barcelona. There's 50% youth unemployment. The whole economy is broken. A colleague who started the fab lab there became the city architect. What they're doing is they're filling fab labs in the city only secondarily for businesses. The primary reason is for infrastructure. And the same way the city provides electricity and clean water, it provides the means to create as urban infrastructure. So I want to push this assumption that sort of wired into this conversation that jobs equals work, equals money, equals business, equals economy. If consumers can become creators, it changes the notion of what is work and what is money. Just like apps for software apps for music, you could make it for yourself, you could make it for a friend, somebody down the street could make it. You could make it in a work group, you could make it in a village. There's all these tiers of manufacturing, but going from bits to atoms and atoms to bits breaks the equivalence of needing jobs to get money to get things. So replay the script of what happened to software and to music as it became digitally free. That's what's going to happen to the physical world. And along with creating, the new jobs aren't going to come back to the old factories. They're going to be in networks like this. So you're going to give people have the means to make things they need. Right, but again, it's not just DIY or mass manufacturing. Again, just replay the script. Software was Microsoft or whatever. Now there's all these tiers of software development. Music was the labels, or you play the piano. Now there's all these tiers of music development. In one case, data becomes sound. In one case, data becomes an algorithm. Now data becomes a thing. So just replay that script, but now for the physical world. And so you don't need to go right to you need a job to get money to get a thing if you can create the thing. It's not free, but it comes down to the incremental costs. And again, I want to stress the technology asked me later is humming along. What's really hard is the organizational capacity, because that's just not how businesses are organized. It's not how schools are organized. It's not how aid is organized. This is just to say on this subject, this is not the first in Kigali in Africa, the first of Habalab. What kind of results are we seeing from those you've opened already? Oh, so I should be clear. I'm not telling anybody they should do this. I set up one because the NSF wanted me to do some outreach so I could go back to work in the lab, and then they've been doubling for a decade. So we started a network in South Africa. We started a group in Kenya, a group in Ghana. Now we're spreading here. And every time we open one, it leads to more in the same way the Internet keeps doubling. And then it just brings tears to your eyes, or my eyes, because everybody wants a knowledge economy and innovation. But what that misses is innovators in a knowledge economy are strange, and they don't follow rules, and they don't fit in traditional companies and schools. And so the social engineering with the technical engineering is these places create places where bright innovative people fit and can connect, again, not in isolation but in a network with peers. Thank you. Jonathan. Drones. Sorry. I think what Neil is saying is so important that we want to create knowledge-based economy and we should be aware of the fact that we are not going to follow conventional rules to get there. Genuine innovation is not packaging. It's not marketing. Genuine innovation comes from scientific and technical breakthrough. This is exactly what led to the digital revolution, with the invention of the transistor by John Bardin and his friends. Now the atom has reached a level small, and it can't get any smaller in a couple of decades or so. That's what experts are saying. So we need young Africans to get involved in that high-end scientific innovation and not just repackaging. And this may sound a bit weird to some of us on this continent who are thinking, you know what Africa needs is STEM assemblage. We need people who understand how to assemble spare parts.  We need people who can assemble spare parts. We need those who can make the puzzle, the assembled spare parts work, and we need those who can engineer and create the spare parts in the first place. So it's extremely important that we're not in the mindset of saying Africa is not there yet. Africa can lead the way in that direction in terms of genuine scientific innovation. I'm not talking about innovation, about repackaging, changing the package, changing the feel and the look of the product. And we already have good examples of African innovation. So let's hope that we'll have an awful lot more.  Well, basically the technology is inevitable. What is not inevitable is that it will evolve in a way that can be of most benefit to poorer communities around the world. And if you have a Silicon Valley ecosystem which is closed, which is flying very small airframes, and this is Google, Amazon, other players, that's not really particularly useful for Africa. So what we're proposing is a kind of middle-mile solution. If we have people here from Kenya, for example, we can say that the town of Nakuru does not talk economically with the town of Kisumu. There's almost no traffic between those towns. So what you really want to get at is a network system where you have cargo drones which have five, six-metre wingspan. They're fixed wing, albatross like, very quiet, very beautiful, nothing at all like the small drones that we have now. And the really big play, Hannah, is we don't have much smart warehousing in Africa outside of Morocco and South Africa. So where this technology is headed is basically optimizing logistics from the smart warehouse. So if you have many, many young African people who have smartphones and very limited income, what really wants to happen is choice. They want choice of product and that means that companies like AIG, Africa Internet Group, which is the first unicorn in Africa, that e-commerce is going to take off in a huge way in Africa in the next 10 years. The traditional retailing market will not develop here and that means that a certain portion of our e-commerce and a certain portion of smart warehousing is just going to go straight by cargo drone to drone ports. So that's just a couple of things. Can I support something Thierry said? Please do. So there's a crazy number. The businesses from MIT, the economic output falls between India and Russia. It's the world's ninth economy, which is just crazy because it's a few thousand people a year. When we've set up these labs in Africa, they attract exactly precisely the same bright inventive people and they're not there to repeat the industrial revolution and do remedial things. They're there to do exactly what the MIT students do, but there's orders of magnitude more of them. What's limiting them isn't interest. It's not knowledge. It's not ability. It's the means to invent. They're here and they're kind of invisible to the business and school system, but everywhere we go they're here. They're bright inventive, precisely like the MIT people. The MIT people aren't any smarter. Just it's a little bit easier to do the work there. And the few thousand people here at MIT are the world's ninth economy.  Thanks. I encourage you to agree. I also encourage you to disagree if you want. So please feel free. No, then. Any more questions? All right. Well, I have one of my own. Fab Labs. We've talked about drones. We've talked about Thierry Science Computing. But what are the other exciting things? What are the other exciting technologies that are really going to change the landscape of Africa's transformation in this age? Thierry, you're nodding, so I'm going to ask you to go first here. Yeah, these initiatives are really going to change the landscape. When you look at this country where we are in Rwanda, look at the innovation ecosystem that they're building. They're putting in place where Carnegie Mellon fits, where initiatives, government initiatives, private industry, and aims fit. The purpose of this is to create a conducive environment where young African can do research. Young scientists can do research, can work with industry, and bridge the gap between learning system, research, and innovation, and commercialization. So, second, what is important, we, in Africa, the reality is that we have the capacity. We have the brain power. They're hungry for science, for technology. They want to do great things. But what is missing is that type of environment where they can really fulfill their full potential, technical potential. And this is why we're seeing initiatives like Fab Lab, like Ames Network, building capacity in math and science, which is crucial if you need great schools of engineers, if you need great technicians, even at vocational level. We see that this is so important at this stage that the feasibility of it, it's sometimes what people relate to and say, hey, Africa is spending a lot of money on this type of Silicon Valley type of initiative, while Africa should be spending money in agriculture, in energy, in health. But one would ask, what is energy, what is agriculture without math as the backbone of how Africa can have full access to energy if you don't have great well-trained engineers, good mathematicians, and good technologists. So, even in health epidemiology, you see today many African researchers working in an environment like Ames, trying to solve problems that have been around for decades. There's one next Einstein fellow who just solved an immunological puzzle, which is how our body responds to reoccurring similar viruses. It's a puzzle that has lasted 70 years. He just solved that problem because he found himself within the Ames, the African Institute for Mathematical Science Network, where he had the equipment, the environment to do research, which is South Africa and Ghana. So we need more of those initiatives across the continent if Africa wants to be in a position to take advantage of this fourth industrial revolution. Thanks, Thierry. Now, I want to keep these responses brief, I may, because we're coming out this time. We have a hard finish at 11 o'clock. Jonathan, what excites you most, apart from drones? I prefer not to think of drones as drones, but as robots. This is the first in the wave of a huge number of robots. I think one other area which is going to be really interesting is all things genetic. As most of you know, Africa has both in human terms and in terms of plant and insect life, more genetic diversity than the rest of the planet put together. And I feel that that, with advanced computing and artificial intelligence, it's probably going to be a huge asset to Africa, which I'm not quite clear how that will manifest, but that's really what I spend a lot of time looking at and thinking about as well. I'm quite excited to hear what you find out when you've completed your thinking. Neil. So the term innovation terrifies me because it's generally associated with programs that prevent innovation. You're in the direction of the family. Innovation terrifies you. I don't use that term. The next Silicon Valley isn't a place, it's a network. The next MIT isn't a place, it's a network. At the same time I made a thousand fab labs, I helped build one building at MIT for $100 million for a few hundred people. You know, guess which scales. To understand how these relate, all of our comments, if we can share information digitally, we talk at a distance. If we can compute digitally, we can share knowledge. If you can go bits to atoms, you can bring the campus to the student or the researcher, not online. But combining digital computation with communication with fabrication means the next MIT or the next Silicon Valley is a network, not a place. And for me, sort of the killer natural resource in Africa is the amazing brains we see everywhere we go. Thanks. We are apparently running close to time here. Can we just see what the audience makes of this? Who in the audience thinks that Africa will do well out of the fourth industrial revolution? Who's optimistic about the fourth industrial revolution for Africa? And who's afraid of it? No one's afraid. Well, that's very good. You've convinced them. Very good. Very, very briefly, very, very quick in as few words as possible. What do you hope to achieve in the next 12 months? For me, it's two things. One is fab labs making fab labs out in the field. So if you want a fab lab, you go to a fab lab and make a fab lab to keep scaling. And back in the lab, the research we're doing is assemblers that assemble assemblers. So essentially creating life in inorganic technology. Jonathan. Obviously, build the first drone port in the world in Africa with Norman Foster. Terry. Continue to build a critical mass of mathematical scientists across Africa and second, plan for the establishment of the first center in research and quantum science and technology in 2017 here in Rwanda. Fantastic. And Rwanda seems to be at the center of quite a lot of these things. Very timely. You've been a great panel. I'd love to have you back next year. Thank you all for joining us and thank you for watching online. This session is now closed.


To improve biomass pretreatment sustainability, we explore processing in biphasic mixtures of water and CO2. Why CO2? Well, because it acts as a green, easily separable and catalytic co-solvent for water. It allows us to pretreat biomass at high solid contents, up to 40 weight percent, with no additional chemicals. Building on our previous work, we're now using a high pressure stirred one liter reactor that allows us to pretreat large biomass particles up to one centimeter in size and to explore the effect of mixing. While doing this, we noticed that when pretreating at a single temperature stage, we observed a systematic trade-off. When cellulose to glucose conversion yields increased, we saw a systematic decrease in hemicellulose conversion yields and at the same time an increase in unwanted degradation product, fur-for-all. And that's exactly a trend you don't want to see. To improve on this, we explored using the temperature-dependent hemicellulose depolymerization reaction sequence. During pretreatment, hemicellulose depolymerizes to soluble ligamers. Those soluble ligamers then depolymerize to single monomers, which only then will degrade to unwanted byproducts. This sequence implies that there's always going to be a lag between initial hemicellulose depolymerization and degradation product formation, because initially what's not there can't degrade. We take advantage of this lag by pretreating biomass at a high temperature for a short time and we then finish the job at a low temperature for a longer time. By using this method, we reverse the earlier discussed negative trend. We are able to simultaneously boost hemicellulose and cellulose yields while the formation of degradation products remains about the same.


All right with that. We're gonna jump to some forex basil. Let's go over to our man Teddy cakes that from Forex trading unlocked calm folks. You can check out Teddy every trading day over there We interview and talk to Teddy every Wednesday 10 40 in the morning Teddy. Good morning Teddy I'd like to introduce you our man Basil Chapman Basil. Mr. Teddy cakes that how we doing Teddy? So Teddy where are we looking on Forex man? We have quite a week going on. We got rates trading a bit higher What do you have on your radar? What are you checking out in terms of Forex this week? Well, this week now that we're heading into a holiday week, I would say be very, very careful if you're not in a position already that you're managing. I would say be very careful about getting one on right now because volatility could be crazy over the next couple of days. Most likely it will not be because Friday the markets are going to be closed or closing, you know, from Europe on in and it's, you know, it's pretty much going to be a three day weekend, you know, as far as Europe will be closed on Friday. Definitely yes. So so in that regards, I would say be careful when it comes to trading any of the currencies. Right now they're kind of in a holding pattern for the British pound, Canada, the Yens floating around the 112 area. So I would say like right now, don't expect any major breakout unless there's some really big news that comes out, which you did mention there at the beginning was the interest rates. That is one thing I think is supporting the dollar right now. A couple of weeks ago, we were talking how the Kerry trade is off the table. I think right now, because you have the two year through the 30 year pressing the lows in rates are going a little bit higher on the market side. I think that's supporting the dollar right now. You know, there's no real fundamental news outside of that that would be supporting it right now, you know, especially with oil on its highs. So I think that right now, be very careful. Most markets aren't a holding pattern, but we do have the Swiss that is now pushing that, you know, they've been holding above parity and now they're at the buckle one almost, you know, so that'll be interesting because you have almost a head and shoulders that looks like forming. So unless they can take out those highs and maybe get up to 102. I think that we might see that's when we'll see a turn in the dollar, but it's probably going to take about another week or so before that settles in. And Teddy, I just have the site up here for x dash trading dash unlock dot com folks and you'll see a menu at the top. You can click on Forex here. Teddy's got a lot of great charts of all these currencies. So if you can explain to people what's going on in these charts, Teddy, as I'm jumping around, like for instance, we always talk about the Swiss Frank. I get the Swiss Frank up there. We got a lot of good action. And then we have details going on on the right. If you can explain about what kind of goes on with these charts and what they're looking at here. Okay, with those charts, they're all fully functional. You don't have to log in.  So you can manipulate those and do analysis from anywhere in the world. If you got a desktop or a laptop to work from. Yeah. And there's the news feeds that come in. So you have things that come in from stock, twix, FX dot com, the whole bunch of other different news sources, anything that pertains like on those individual pages for those markets.  No, it's nice and easy, man. I like how you set it up grabbing all these currencies as we jump around. Basil, I know you're always looking at Forex when you're talking about dollars and so forth. Did you have anything to ask? I'm not sure what the answer would be, but my question here is that in relation to gold and the dollar, where they often move in counterpoint and every once in a while, I always say about six weeks or so a couple of times a year, they actually move in sequence together in the same direction, not the same percentage. The dollar is being held holding very well. We only have about 50 seconds, Basil. So 9771 high. Why? Why do you think so? More currency related right now that the dollar hasn't actually spiked into the 9740, 9760 area, but it hasn't broken down either. I think it's more the interest rate variable. I think that's what's supporting the dollar right now. Okay. So in the cycle of things right now, like you have the interest rates that are pushing the higher level or lower pricing, higher levels that typically goes first, then gold will follow later. And that's why I think you've seen that little sell off and gold is now kind of following the interest rates. But on a weekly basis, it's about two or three weeks behind the interest rates. Got it. Teddy, we always appreciate the interview, man. We appreciate the education. Have yourself a great week. How's that Chicago weather, man? You know what? It was nice and sunny yesterday. Got a little. Perfect. We're coming into May soon, man. Take care, Teddy. We'll talk to you next week.


That's a good one. Oh, that's a big one. Nice. Look at that right there. Welcome back to another video. Today, we're going to be skipping some jigs under trees for some big largemouth bass. These are some pre-spawners. They're fat, thick, chunky. I'm going to tell you. We caught a lot today so far. So stay tuned if you guys are new to the channel. Hit that subscribe button. Hit the notification bell. Also hit the like button. We're going to have some fun today, guys. Everybody's been asking about jig fishing. More importantly, skipping under cover. We're going to be talking about it today. I'm catching some donkeys. Let's get her back in the water. I'd say she is and high, too.  There she goes. So we just made it out to a new lake. We haven't been here in a long time. Super clear water. It's an awesome little lake to fish. I think the last time I filmed a video out here was probably eight months ago. We just left the first place that we hit. Only had one bite. But it was a good one. It was a solid one. It was a good fish. Do you have a picture? I do. I want to show the picture real quick. By the way, follow me on IG at Kicking Their Bass TV. We're going to get out on this lake today. Have a lot of fun. It looks like at least a 12-pounder next to Noah because he's only 4'2". I'm actually 4'1". We actually have a guest that's behind the camera today. I kind of want to show you, Cody. I don't know if you want to be on camera. Sure. We got Cody with us today. He's helping out with the film and everything. We actually had lunch the other day. We were just talking about live, talking about fishing, talking about filming. He's going to be in a lot of the videos coming up hopefully soon. But we're just going to get out here today. It's a pretty day on the water. He's going to hop on my boat. I'm going to be on the front. Fletcher's going to be on his boat. We're going to try to stay near each other just so we can talk a little trash. Talk a little bit of trash. Throw a couple of jigs at each other's face. It should be a lot of fun. Let's go ahead and hop on the boat. We're going to have a good time. All right. Let's go ahead and get it. You good, Cody? Yep. I promise I'm not going to throw you in. I'm good to go. I kind of bottomed out a little bit. We got her off. We're good to go. You good? Yep. How clear this water is too. It is crystal clear. And did you bring the GoPro, Cody? Yes. You brought the GoPro. So Cody actually brought a little GoPro too. And we're going to try to get some underwater shots. The water's really clear out here. So I think that's going to be cool. It's going to be refreshing because back in the YouTube days like probably six years ago, maybe seven years ago, I used to a lot of underwater shots. And it's kind of, nobody does them anymore. Like in the YouTube scene. So we're going to hop back on that. And I think it's going to be cool in the clear water. Three of you that lays down, some fish usually hang off on the edge. We'll just start off here kind of fan cast. See if we can snag a good three, four pounder. Start off. I think they're going to eat that jig though. I just want to catch some big ones on a jig. I'm just in the mood. One thing I want to talk about is just retine, you know, it's so important. And you know, learn from my mistakes. I broke off a ton of big fish just by not retine. I think it's one of the most important things when you're on the water is just be aware of that, especially when you're fishing big old brush piles or big old pipes, culverts on the bottom, big rocks, you know, it's going to fray your line. And it's just something to keep in mind. You need to be retine often. Because if you don't, you're going to lose a lot of big fish like me. And it happens a lot, but learn from my mistakes. And just retine. If you guys are wondering what knot, it's a uni knot, you guys already know. There we go, we're good. Electric's over here trying to steal my fish. You guys, we got to go over there together. He's already casting on it. See what he does? I think you're going to smoke one on that drop shot, honestly though. That's actually a good little combo, you know, I'm throwing the jig, you're throwing the drop shot. Something a little bit different. I kind of love when you get a perfect skiff and it hangs on the branch, messes your whole cast up. Hey, it was first skip of the day though. Got this on a, this little mott crush, cast up under these trees. The thing is we got the clouds out today. And what happens when it's super cloudy, these bass tend to roam.  Kind of getting into this pre-spawn too, so it's this transition. So these fish should be pushing up as we should be able to see this fish eat the flu. I feel like it's about to get good.  It's about a four or five pounder, bro. Really? I was just talking about retiring too. Notice I didn't retire this rod. Gosh, it is a big one. It happens, but it's just unfortunate that we actually talked about it right before this and I made the mistake of not retiring this one. But hey, it happens, and we learned from it. Even though I probably learned from this 75 times in the last month. I went down to Florida and broke off 78 pounders. This. Big one? Nice. Dude, that's a thick one. You can tell, yeah. These are the Z2s by Strike King at Last Tech. I'm a big fan of them. I just can't believe I broke off that fish. But hey, we're going to get right back in there and catch another one. I was just telling Fletcher, if I would have landed that fish with that one that he just caught, we would have just had like eight pounds and two fish. That would have been a crazy start, but can't let it hurt our feelings because we're going to throw right back in there and catch another one. Let's see what we got. Oh, there she is. Clocked it. Yeah, that's a good one too. Not bad. Not like that one that I lost, but she's a good one. She's fighting hard too. Look how thick she is. That's what it's about right there. That's what it's about. Dude, that is a football. You talk about a football, that is a football. Look at the markings. It's just pretty in the clear water.  Right there in the top. You couldn't get it better. Hey, I can't complain. Just got a lot of catching fish like that. Let's go ahead and get this baby back in the water. We're going to get back in there. There's fish. There's some. They're pushing up shallow. You know, they're roaming. We'll get a sexier release here in a bit. All right, there we go. What you think, Cody? Oh, yeah. That was a nice fish. That was fun. Give me something right here. Oh, yeah. That's freaking thick. Look at that. Hey, I got a giant fledge. That's a good one. That's a good one. Let's see. I don't know. He's dang big. That might be five. Probably high fours. Yeah, I watched him. When I saw him jump the first time, I thought he looks like a six. Dude, no, he's big. Don't let it fool you. Look at that one. That's an over four pounder right there. Easy. Want to scale? Dude, she came. Yeah, yeah, we can weigh her. That's a four pounder, dude. That's, yeah. Yes, Cody. That's what we need. Don't you're right here. That's a good fish.  I'm trying not to hook set too hard. I'm kind of terrified now after I broke that one off. Oh, that's a good fish. Just make sure you clear that scale. We don't have a dang bag today, Roy. We're getting after it. What you think? I think four and a quarter of the max. Yeah, she's four, I think. Four and nine. Four pounds and nine ounces. We got some sneaky weight. Yeah, four and a half pounder right there. Let us get it.  You can't beat that right there.  That's one of the things about, guys, getting out on the water enjoying life. You know, it's a beautiful day, dude. I'd rather it be like this all day than sunny. Like, this is just pretty. And we're all in hoodies just chilling and a good fish like that. We're going to get an underwater shot on this one. We got to do it. Just be one right there, man. It's just, I would have loved to see it skip and a fish just... Oh, there he is. That was a small one. I didn't see him eat it. Like, I could tell you ate it. So I'm opening up a new pack.  This one is actually watermelon red. And this jig is the same way. You know, it's got a little bit of green, a little bit of red flake in it. And the one thing I like about these jigs, which I've seen a couple of bait companies do this recently, and this is like a game changer, is it actually has... Cody, what are we doing? Yep, that was my fault, man. I didn't mean to run into those trees. No, so they had this, like, little screw lock on right here at the bottom, and it actually keeps the bait on. And these raged crawls are last on there for a very long time. I actually only had one raged crawl on that jig, and I think I caught around... Actually, I put two on, but I probably caught around 20 fish on that one crawl. And these aren't even the elastic. These are actually very soft plastic. It's a good hybrid. It's not too soft. It's not too rough. And when you screw them on this bait like this, it's a game changer. It really is. Look at that. And this bait is on... I'm telling you, like, it's crazy. Let's go ahead and get to work. Solid pushing through. Right there on that bend. Makes sense. Dude, what in the world do these fish are so fat? Look at that. Can you tell on the camera? I know the camera's a little weird sometimes. You can see it on this one. Look at the thick old boy in this lake. This is the thick old boy. And look at that striking jig, skipping jig hanging out of his mouth. I've been loving this jig, man. I didn't know about it at first. Like, the first video we dropped, I was like, I'm going to try it out, but let me tell you, it's been smoking the fish in this clear water. It's got that green pumpkin, little bit of blue glimmer on the jig. Fat girl's like it.  We're going to try to get it to double up. Because these offshore spots can be just dumb. Just dummy. We're going to see. Make a good old cast up there with this jig. Give her a little. Then lean into him. That's how we do it. They probably will, man. I'm going to try the jig at first. Just to get us an old double up if they're really stacked. I'm going to switch to that flukey, dude. That fluke's killing it. I want to just hit that tiny gravel on the side. You know what I'm talking about? Double up on fives, maybe. We did it before. Or it was like fours. I know your dad was out here. That was crazy. That was the last day we came out. These clouds today, man. You know. No, I got a fish. Oh, you're dang big. Yeah. Happens. I'm just acting like a fool today, man. I don't know. That's kind of my bad. I thought you were more in. That was about what? Four pounder close to it? Dude, next cast there's no way. Throw in there, Fletcher. Oh, gosh. Two biggings on this offshore spot. All right, Fletcher. I'm waiting to get you an old. She's not the biggest. She's a good one, dude. I don't know what I'm saying. Ah, look at that. Look at that. Enjoying life. Nice little fish. Look at his lipstick, too. It's turned into a fashion model today. Fat, thick, old bass. What do you think? That was a good one, dude. That's a nice little fish.  That's what we were talking about. Those fish, you know, what you got to understand about bass is they hang together. And that's just a little note right there to take. I mean, there was back to back. Same spot. So, you know, we're kind of off the bank a little bit. There's these huge pipes that they actually dumped in here.  But those fish are stacked on it. Let's get this baby back in the water. The lake's just a little low, but it's perfect to skip under everything. I know. It makes it nice. It actually makes it perfect, yeah. I mean, I think that bin would be solid, too, bro. Right next to me. That's a dang decent one. Dude, these are all big, Fletcher. They're all big. We picked the right spot to come to this man. Stabbing the heck out of my hand. Nice. Yeah, he ate right next to me. Dude, his lips are so red. I had him good, too. He went coming off. That's a pretty fish. It's just heavy, too, like high, too. Maybe pushing through. I bet you looked and you drifted on top of what he was on. There's rock right there. Probably. Or no, I actually caught him right there. I think he drifted. I think you drifted.  That's a pretty fish, guys. Let's get her right back in. Nothing big. That's probably the smallest one I've caught today, isn't it? Which is crazy because that's a good fish. It's just happening today. Sometimes you get those days just... The fish are biting. It's nice outside. There she goes. It has been a little weight. I'm just trying to get back on. We got us a solid three-pounder right there. Let's get her. Oh, she barely hooked. We just want to risk it. All right, baby. Right there. That's a high two number.  Let me tell you. Skipping this jig under these trees, you got to love that bite. And that is a stud. Every fish has just been fat, healthy, beautiful markings on them. And that's what you want to see when you come to a lake, especially one that you haven't been to in a very long time. And these fish are just filled out. Fat stomachs. That's a good, I'd say two and three quarters. Two and a half, two and three quarters.  You just ate it at the boat. Oh my gosh. Dude, that is insane. And Cody's just over here chatting. Yeah, dude, a good one, bro. Right after that last one, just crazy. These fish are awesome in this water, too. He's not going to do it. I want to give him a little, I want him to give me a little dance real quick. Look at that. Dude, these are, like, probably the smaller ones of today, but it's crazy to say that. Like, these are good fish. Solid two and a half, two and three quarters. Thick and healthy. That fish ate me under the boat. We were fishing along that bank. It was really shallow. This one finally dropped off a little bit, but I think I need to be having the boat a little further out because this fish just ate it right at the boat. But that is a pretty two and a half pushing two and three quarters. Fish right there. They're just very dense. Very dense and fat. Healthy bass. And I think that is going to be the last fish on today's episode, guys. If you're new to the channel, hit that subscribe button. Hit the notification bell. Hit the like button. We've got some awesome content coming soon.  Hit the like button. I love you guys so much. Peace.


Whoo, those speakers sound really good. Probably honestly the best I've heard. And yes guys, this is the ROG Phone 6 Pro and this is an awesome device right here. Honestly, I have to say, I've been truly impressed using this device because of a multitude of factors. Now, we know this is the very first Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 device, which means there's better performance across the board. But let's take a look at the device first with the hardware. This sports a 6.78 inch Super AMOLED display. It's a lovely looking display. But we're here for gaming, so what does this display actually bring to the table? It brings in 165 Hertz, which is cool. We've seen other devices like that. 720 Hertz starts sampling with a response time of less than 23 milliseconds. This thing is truly impressive and it's very, very responsive, dare I say, right? Which is great. Now, when we flip over to the back, we have just more features built in. Now, we've got a 50 megapixel camera with a main sensor as well as a 13 megapixel ultrawide, which we'll see some photos for. And then we've got all the stuff in the back here. We've got this light up area here that says dare to play, which you can customize in the game. Genie and you've got this LCD display here, which has a bunch of customizations. On the left-hand side of your device, you have a USB port because that allows you to charge while you're gaming. And of course, you have another port at the very bottom and a headphone jack. As again, those speakers sounded great, especially when you get into that, this nitty gritty of gaming. Now, let's talk about that nitty gritty. Now, this device, as I mentioned, comes with the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, which provides up to 10% more performance boost. And looking at the gig-bench scores, it looks like, yeah, it does give an increased amount of scores, but we care about what that does for our gaming experience and how does that bring everything to the table? We also have 18 gigabytes of RAM, right? TDR5 RAM, which is insane, which means we can do more with this device. 512 gigabytes of storage on this device and it has a 6,000 milliamp battery. Yes, which charges with a 65 watt charger. And Asus says it should take about 42 minutes to fully charge the devices. Now, the batteries are split into two, the two 3,000 milliamp batteries, but the design here is very intentional. Now, think about the two batteries split up, but what's impressive here is that the SOC is right in the middle. Why? That is very important because they do have a graphite plate on top of that, but you can also use a bunch of the accessories to cool this device even more. But before we get to that, let's get into the meat of the matter. Let's look at the games. Now, there are a ton of games you can actually play on this device that will work really well, all the way from, of course, our very first day game, Call of Duty Mobile. This runs really well on the device. It's very smooth. We get a solid 60 frames per second on both multiplayer and, of course, Battle Royale, which I actually played for about 20 minutes when my game was pretty cool, but a solid smooth 60 frames per second. I know you guys probably want higher frames, it can. We just need to get an update for that to happen. Then we move over to, of course, PUBG Mobile, where we ran it on both settings, Smooth Extreme, Ultra HG, Ultra. Now, at Smooth Extreme, 60 frames per second was just locked on, smooth, and our temperatures was also really nice as well. Now, you notice there's an in-build meter there that gives you, of course, all your game stats if you want to, as well as also us using our, of course, game bench here, and, of course, Ultra HG Ultra, we got 40 frames per second. Now, let's move this to Apex Legends Mobile. Now, this is one where we played under a couple of settings. The very best settings for FPS, we got a locked 60 frames per second, which, of course, the graphics were down a bit, but when we went with the highest graphical settings, we got 40 frames per second. That is just standard with Apex right now, but it played really well and very smooth. I was able to use a lot of the touch controls as well as also the trigger buttons, which are on top, which are super sensitive, and I'll get to some of that customization for you. Now, finally, of course, we have Genshin Impact, super well unoptimized game, which ran at 57 frames per second, and no, I'm playing this before any updates, so optimization, but it was good to see that this was able to run almost close to 60. I did play for about an hour, and it was absolutely fine with this system. Now, let's talk about those accessories and temperatures, because this is where you guys are gonna be asking me. Now, without the active cooler, playing a game like Genshin Impact that got up to 47 degrees Celsius or about 116 degrees Fahrenheit, so that's where the temperatures were for that. Now, when I actually use the cooler itself, this is the Aero III cooler, and this bad boy is truly unique because it's got four customized buttons, which are totally remappable through the game genie software itself. I was able to get temperatures down to about between 36 to 38 degrees Celsius, and this connects via that USB port on the side, so it allows you to basically connect and play, and boy, that really did a great job there, and I like the fact that because the CPU is centered it allows for just better cooling overall. Now, I did mention there's a ton of accessories for this device. Now, there's also a ton of functionality built in, and that's with the game genie software and something you can quickly access here, and what you see here, you've got a couple of modes. You can go into X-Mode, which is what I used to do all the gaming and gameplay, and you can change the different modes for better battery performance all the way through, but you also have your ROG Vision, which is this bar at the back here. You can customize it for a couple of things. When you're about to play a game, it says, get ready to the game, but when you're charging your device, it actually has a progress meter and will show you the percentage of where your battery is. You also have your system lighting, where it says dare to play. As you can see there, it is totally lit up, and that is something that you can actually customize as well. Then the Aero cooler itself, this is where you can go in and do a lot of stuff with that. You can see your temperatures, but the Game Genie itself, while you're actually playing a game, simply swipe from either of the air trigger corners left or right down and boom, that gives you your Game Genie. This is where you can do so much more. You can basically, it turns off all your notifications. You can go in and customize those air triggers, and that's very key. I have different customized air triggers for different games called duty. I have air triggers just customized for the air triggers right here. I do have air triggers customized for the cooler, and I also have it for the ROG Kunai 3 gamepad here, which we'll get to when we talk about our game streaming services. It is so customizable. You can customize it for ultrasonic buttons here. You can customize it for your cooler buttons, and you also have the ability to look at, of course, your game stats while you are playing. Again, so much functionality built into this. That is very, very impressive. Now, the Kunai controller I really do like. I did have some issues connecting via Bluetooth, but I did like it because it comes in a couple of facets. You do have the controller here. You do have the case shell for the device, and then you kind of have a controller dock that allows you to have it grippable, or I call it like the grip dock. And what I like about it is that playing games, like on Xbox Game Pass or Stadia, I was able to just connect directly and use, giving me a full ecosystem. Now, these accessories are extra. They're not part of it because you have to buy the cooler and of course the controller, but the fact that they're giving you a full ecosystem, especially for the game in mind, really says a lot. And playing game streaming services was just a joy, and it was pretty smooth to actually see that work pretty well. As I mentioned, there's a 50 megapixel camera in the rear, as well as the 13 ultra-wide, and then we have a front-facing shooter 12 megapixels. I'm gonna just give you some camera samples, and I think they've actually done a better job improving the camera. It's still not up to flagship levels, but seeing this, I think you guys would be at least a bit more impressed with what they had to offer. Okay, so the camera's pretty good. I had to do some gaming in between there, but looking at what Asus has brought to the table here, year and year, I think they've done a really good job at being the number one gaming smartphone that anyone wants to look at. Because they have a full ecosystem, they allow you to add more to the device, and they bring in features with their software to take it to the next level. These accessories in this device really does a good job, and I really like what it brings. The camera is actually pretty good. It's not, of course, up to, say, flagship Samsung or Apple Quality, but I think you're getting a really good camera this time around. Now, in total, this device just brings a whole lot to the table. I'm actually playing while I'm talking to you guys here because I've really enjoyed the way this actually adds so much more with the cooler, the ultrasonic triggers, which are so responsive, as well as also the fact that I can get my full gaming experience here without actually connecting to a console, whether it's a console experience, or, of course, a mobile experience altogether. And I think this is what a lot of people are looking at. So if you guys have any questions or any comments about the ROG Phone 6 Pro, let me know. In terms of pricing, they're right there on screen. You've seen them. And this is a flagship tier device in terms of mobile gaming. So this is Thunder E-Sane. Thank you and always enjoy your entertainment.


At mile 120 Pete Stetna again surged hard trying to further thin out the group, which was followed by some hard turns from Colin Strickland, but the move that finally stuck came from Lawrence Tendam, and when he finally attacked none of us would be able to follow his wheel. Last weekend was the gravel loco's 150 mile gravel race in Hyko, Texas, and despite this being its inaugural year, Fabian the race director managed to get some of the biggest names in U.S. gravel racing out to his event, including three past dirty Kansas winners, former World Tour pros, and a host of other seriously fast riders. All of this to promote a race that had no entry fee. That's right, signing up for this race was free for anybody, but if you wanted to, you could make a donation, which would go to the fire department in Hyko. And it really seemed like all of Hyko was out supporting the race. People in this town could not have been more friendly to a bunch of strangers wearing overly tight clothing, riding their bikes for hours on their local roads, which was awesome to see. Oh, come on, dude. Have you seen my quads lately? I've been drinking Hypergain Beast Mode Mask Gainer Raw Edition like it's water.  The course itself was 155 miles or 250 kilometers of rolling hills with 8,200 feet of climbing or 2,500 meters. 72% of the course was gravel and the remainder was road, which is a solid amount of gravel for a race of this length. The gravel was finally crushed and packed, meaning that it was extremely fast. Maintaining a high speed felt easy on this course. Well, at least until it started dumping rain, but I'll get into that later. Now, although the gravel itself was pretty smooth, there were still plenty of potholes and embedded rock in the gravel, meaning that a full on gravel bike with wide gravel tires was the right move. I talked to the vegan cyclist before the race and he was saying that he wish he had his road bike with him. That definitely would have been the wrong call. I was still running the Pirelli Centurados in the 45 millimeter width because that's what I plan to run at Unbound and I didn't want to change it. There were a lot of people running narrower tires and while I generally think that people run too narrow a tire for gravel racing, you could probably get away with it on this course. However, I don't think I was losing much if anything with the 45. Now let's get into the race. We started out with a fairly calm pace. The pros decided to keep it friendly for the first eight miles leading into the first river crossing and then pick up the pace after that. And this was probably a good thing because with all the rain hyco had gotten over the past couple of days, the river crossing was not rideable at all. And we essentially had to cross single file holding on to some ropes that the fire department had laid out for us. At its deepest point, the water level was easily over our knees. I would have ridden it. After this, we had a slow build up before we got to what I would consider race pace at about the one hour mark. This first hour of the race was relatively easy with a normalized power of just 198 average power of 156 and an average heart rate of 121. That's essentially easy endurance ride numbers, but it was about to get a lot harder. Around mile 20 is when the pace started to pick up. And with that came a thinning of the front group. Some of the big guns like Lawrence 10 dam and Pete Stetna took some hard pulls on the front and we quickly saw that front group start to shrink. These initial surges required a normalized power of 303 watts for about 30 minutes before settling back down again. At this point, the group had been reduced from a peloton to a lead pack. Some riders would yo-yo off the back for a while, but the main lead group that formed included eight riders. Ted King, Lawrence 10 dam, Colin Strickland, Pete Stetna, Adam Roburge, Sam Boardman, Matt Stevens and me. What really solidified this front group were the three hardest climbs in the race, which came immediately one after another 53 miles into the race. These climbs were not very long, taking only 30 to 45 seconds to climb, but they were extremely steep with grades of 17 to 18% and had some really loose gravel, meaning that you couldn't just stand up and mash up them. You had to stay seated to maintain traction. Colin Strickland was eager to lead the descent going into the first climb, almost washing out in the corner going into it, but unsurprisingly it was Pete Stetna who took charge of each of the three climbs as he usually does. He was probably the lightest rider in the lead group and obviously as an ex-world tour pro, he's incredibly strong and it showed. He had us gritting our teeth any time the road went up. These three climbs took about six and a half minutes to complete and required a normalized power of 411 watts and pushing well over 500 watts for the individual climbs themselves. After this point, we held a relatively steady pace with everybody taking pulls on the front and keeping the speed high. For the next hour and 15 minutes, we would average 22.4 miles per hour, but because of minimal surging, this only required a normalized power of 250 watts. 84 miles into the race though, there was a rise in pace again as Pete Stetna surged up a climb and then we laid on the gas to see if we could get rid of any tired riders, which required a normalized power of 311 watts for about 15 minutes. And we did manage to get rid of Matt Stevens at this point and now the front group was down to seven. For the next 45 minutes, we took it super easy with a normalized power of just 238 watts in anticipation of the attacks that we knew were coming in the last third of the race. Sure enough, at mile 107, the game started. Adam got in and out of an aid station faster than the rest of us and decided to go for a solo breakaway. But with six strong riders chasing him, it was unlikely that he was going to make it. And within a couple of miles, we had caught him again. Up until this point in the race, it had been a dry overcast day with temperatures in the mid seventies. Perfect conditions for racing. It would not stay that way, though. With 40 miles to go, it looked like we were racing into a black storm cloud. And before long, the skies opened up and it was dumping rain on us. The sand in the gravel got into our rotors and drive trains and made our bikes sound like rusty old 10 speeds that you might find in a junkyard. And the spray coming off of our rear wheels made it extremely hard to draft without getting pelted in the face with wet sand. Is it going to be muddy? Is my bike going to be destroyed afterwards? The good news is now the chance for mud is very little. It's fast. It's hard packed. It's dry. The chance for mud is almost non-existent. Before long, I noticed that two other riders had dropped off. Ted King and Sam Boardman. And now the front group was five riders strong. At mile 120, Pete Stetna again surged hard, trying to further thin out the group, which was followed by some hard turns from Colin Strickland. But the move that finally stuck came from Lawrence Tendam. And when he finally attacked, none of us would be able to follow his wheel. Considering Lawrence's caliber, it only took one attack for him to get away. And I'm sure he was thinking, eh, it was cute riding with you guys for 130 miles. But I think I'll just go on my own now. Dude, I'm looking at his list of Strava Koms right now. And I mean, it's OK, but I'm pretty sure I got more. Wait, what's that? This dude got a top 10 in the Tour de France. I dug deep to try to hold his wheel, but simply could not match his power. And before long, I found myself dropped from the chasing group containing Pete, Colin and Adam as well. This move ended the hardest hour of the race for me from when Adam made his first solo move all the way until Lawrence's final attack to get off the front solo and it required a normalized power just shy of 300 watts. And in the final surge to get on Lawrence's wheel, I hit 746 watts, an average 482 watts for just under a minute. And all of this came after six hours and 130 miles of racing. Before this race, I had thought that my max heart rate was 190 beats per minute. Well, it turns out it's a little bit higher than that, because when I tried to follow Lawrence during his final attack, I hit a max heart rate of 192 and averaged 190 for a whole minute. For me, those are bonkers, high heart rate numbers and are really telling of how deep a grave I was digging myself. Needless to say, doing this this late into a race left me absolutely fried and I had a hard time maintaining power after this. After about 15 minutes of chasing, I saw Pete Stetna on the side of the road, attending to a mechanical. And once I passed him, I found myself alone in fourth place with 20 miles to go to the finish. During these last 20 miles, I pushed as hard as I possibly could. But you wouldn't know that by looking at the numbers with a normalized power of just 252 watts and an average power of 242. 250 watts felt like 350. And I had to stop looking at my power data because it wasn't helping seeing my numbers so low. I kept looking over my shoulder expecting to see Pete. I never saw him, though, because unfortunately, he suffered a bad puncture, which required him to put a tube in. During the last hour of the race, my vision was going blurry. And whether that was from the effort or all the sand and rain in my eyes, I don't know. During the last hour, I also downed three gels to make sure that I wouldn't bonk. The low power numbers had me worried that bonking was on the horizon. But luckily, it never got to that point. Finally, after seven hours, 10 minutes and 29 seconds, I crossed the finish line to take fourth place, a little over six minutes behind the winner, Lawrence Tendam. Now that the race was over, the wave of fatigue from my efforts that day hit me as I walked around a bit delirious before flopping on the wet pavement at the finish and rolling around in pain. So you're telling me that both of the protein deficient vegan YouTubers that attended this event were being overly dramatic and rolling around on the ground after the race? Shocking. It's always a good feeling to know that you left absolutely everything you had out on the course. And the result was a top five finish against competition that rivals some of the biggest gravel races in the country. That's a result I can be proud of. All right, let's get into some stats for the race. One hundred and fifty five miles covered with an average speed of twenty one point six miles per hour or thirty four point seven kilometers per hour. A normalized power of two hundred and sixty nine watts with an average power of two hundred and twenty six average heart rate of one fifty four max heart rate of one ninety two and a training stress score of four hundred and twenty four. That normalized power is in line with what I'm usually able to do in seven hour races. And given how bad I was suffering for the last hour of this race, I was actually surprised that it was that high. My bike setup for the race was almost identical to what I ran at the last southeast gravel race, which I made a video about. The only change that I've made is that I bump front chain rings up from fifty thirty four to fifty two thirty six. This is the setup that I'll run at unbound next week. And it's feeling absolutely dialed right now. I just have some parts to replace after riding in some wet Texas sand. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like. Subscribe for weekly cycling videos just like this one and share this video with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.