Last month I got a chance to sit down with Drew Rohde from The Loam Wolf to talk about how I came up with Slacker, bike setup, my band days, and more in Bend, Oregon. If you ride mountain bikes, you already know Bend is a fitting place to talk suspension. Endless trails, a deep riding culture, and people who actually care about getting their setup right. We covered a lot of ground over the course of the conversation, and I wanted to share it with you here.
The road to Slacker
We started where most of these stories start: with a problem nobody had solved well. Setting sag has always been one of the most important parts of dialing in suspension, and for years it was done with zip ties, guesswork, and a second set of hands. I knew there had to be a better way. That frustration is what eventually became the Slacker digital sag scale. A tool that lets you measure sag accurately, repeatably, and on your own. We talked through what it took to go from a rough idea to a patented product on the market, and the reality of building a company around a single great tool.
Why Slacker works for mountain bikes
A big part of the conversation focused on MTB specifically. Slacker started in the moto and motocross world, but the same principles that make it valuable there translate directly to mountain biking. Sag is sag. It's the foundation everything else is built on. With Slacker, you mount the device, take a reading, and get an exact measurement of your sag in real time, whether you're setting up a fork or a rear shock.
What makes it better for MTB is the precision and the repeatability. Eyeballing a zip tie gets you in the neighborhood. Slacker measures the actual wheel travel, so you can make precise, repeatable adjustments and understand how your bike responds to them live. For riders chasing the perfect setup and for the shops and suspension tuners who do this all day, that accuracy changes the whole process and dramatically improves the rider's experience.
The band days
We also took a detour into something a little different: my years playing and touring in punk and hardcore bands. It might seem like a strange path to inventing a suspension tool, but there's more overlap than you'd think. Touring teaches you to build things, fix things, and make it work with whatever you've got. That DIY, figure-it-out mentality is the same one that drove me to build Slacker. It was a fun part of the conversation, and I appreciated Drew letting me get into that side of my background.
Watch the full episode
Thanks to the whole team for having me out to Bend it was a great time, and a great reminder of how passionate the mountain bike community is about getting the details right.
If the conversation has you thinking about your own setup, head over to getslacker.com to see how the Slacker digital sag scale can take the guesswork out of dialing in your suspension. Save 40% using code WOLFPACK and help support Drew and the Loam Wolf crew!
