The Radavist

“The kinda danger I’m into is riding tubes in the desert”

“Any bike can be a mountain bike if you ride it in the mountains”

These are just a few quotes pulled from the freshly shaven mouth of Ultra Romance, the cycling sensation, turned Rivendell sponsored rider and mobile dealer. Bené, as I like to call him, is wintering in Tucson where I was spending my New Years with friends. Turned out, there were a lot of out of towner cyclists around, so we organized a ride at the 50 Year trails. More on that later…

The general rule of thumb is if you build it, people will cram the biggest tire possible into it. I wish we lived in a world where tire clearances were maxed out with drivetrain efficiency in mind, but it’s not always the case. However, when it is the case, you end up with a very capable bike. So yeah, if you build it… with ‘it’ being the Specialized Sequoia. While people have certainly put mountain bike tires on this bike before, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone fit as big of a tire as Sarah Swallow did with the Ground Control 2.1″. This bike is her recon bike for her 125 mile race next month, the Ruta de Jefe, in Elgin, Arizona. While there is no singletrack per se on the course, the roads can get rowdy, where a wide bar and fat tire will soften the blow from the washboard and ruts.

It’s built with a Rogue Panda framebag, SRAM Force 1, PAUL Klampers, a Revelate Feed Bag, one of those WTF Bikexplorer bidons, and a set of those S-Works Overendz Bar Ends.

Some might call it a hybrid, or just a rigid MTB, so that nomenclature is welcome, but bottom line is, I doubt anyone foresaw a build like this arising from the Sequoia platform!

Also, as a personal note, happy birthday Sarah!
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Mattia from Legor Cicli Made this Beautiful Paganotti Classic Road
Photos and words by Kyle Kelley

I know you all of heard of Legor Cicli before, but I’m guessing you all haven’t heard of Paganotti. Well, Paganotti is the embodiment of all the Italian masters who taught Mattia Paganotti how to build. Gino Lissignoli, Pietro Serena, Tiziano Zullo, and Dario Pegoretti all played a very special role in the fabrication of this bike. Very few frame builders can say they’ve studied with a master, much less multiple masters. Even fewer can say they’re a direct link to their master’s style and craft, but this is something Mattia says with confidence. If you have ever rode one of Mattia’s bike you know he’s telling the truth.

We shoot a lot of bikes here on the Radavist. A lot. From my estimates, including tradeshows, and events like the Chris King Open House, or the Moots’ Employee Bikes, and even the Speedvagen Build Off, we shot 220 or so bikes in 2018. That’s a lot of bikes. A lot of details. A lot of component selection, build styles, and uses. From road, to mountain, and everything in between, noting the permutations that exist in this ever-so-special era in the cycling industry, I really feel like we’ve shown you just about everything you could see this year.

Out of those 220 bikes, I looked at the data in the form of traffic metrics, social chatter, and comments to pick the Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2018. While many bikes had a lot of comments, some had higher traffic or social media shares. Compiling all the numbers, a very compelling list was formed. Not included in this lot are bike reviews, of which Morgan’s review of the Midnight Special and Kyle’s review of his Chubby Cosmic Stallion took the highest metrics from all others on this list. I guess they’re in a league of their own!

At any rate, check out the complete Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2018, in no particular order, below!

Rodeo Labs Spork 2.0 Builder Series: Alchemy Custom All-Road
Photos by Me Fitzgerald words by Stephen Fitzgerald

When you work for a custom builder like Alchemy it must be quite a thing to stare at a blank sheet of paper and decide what sort of bike you want to create for yourself. I guess that’s why Drew went custom-custom with this bike. This Alchemy gravel bike most closely resembles the company’s ‘Chiron’ model, but there is nothing stock about it. Geometry, tubing, cable management, and even paint design were all worked over and personalized.

Rodeo Labs Spork 2.0 Builder Series: Traildonkey Singlespeed
Words by Stephen Fitzgerald and photos by Sheldon Thompson

The next build in this series is my bike. What I like about this bike’s story is that this early prototype Traildonkey frame was decommissioned for the better part of three years before being brought back to life this year with a fresh coat of art store spray paint fade and a 1x drivetrain. This bike’s only purpose was “let’s build something fun to commute and play on”. Almost everything on this bike was in the parts bin before our lead mechanic Sheldon built it all up into what it is now.

I’ve never had a single speed bike before. I’ve always been too scared to ditch my gears. Now that I’ve finally tried it I have to say that single speed is giving me a fresh look at the sport that I haven’t had in a long long time. Everything about the bike feels so simple. Push the cranks, go forwards. If the gradient kicks upward just push harder. I need that kind of simplicity right now. I need to be able to look at old commuter routes or old trails and find novelty in them. If you’ve got an old unused frame hanging around in the garage I highly recommend grabbing a few rattle cans, flat bar singlespeeding it, and letting it rip.

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Rodeo Labs Spork 2.0 Builder Series: Pachyderm Singlespeed
Words by Stephen Fitzgerald and photos by Daniel Schaumann

The original Rodeo Labs Spork 1.0 was a fork that we started developing for our bikes in 2014. At the time nobody was making a fork that mixed carbon, clearance, flat mounts, rack mounts, and through axles in the way that we wanted. Not knowing any better we just decided to create it for ourselves.

The Road to Delcie’s Cup Cake
Words and Photos by Spencer Harding

This past summer I was lucky enough to meet to some truly amazing people in Minneapolis.  I noticed a common thread connecting these wonderful humans. It all culminated in getting to ride with Delcie on her über custom Cup Cake…

Peacock Groove

Erik Noren is a bit of mythical beast in the world of framebuilding. His bikes are outlandish, sparkly, and painstakingly detailed. With his newer venture, Cake Bikes, he seeks to build proportionally-sized, high-performance bikes for shorter riders. Cake partnered with Minneapolis Wheel masters HED cycling to offer fat-bikes built around a 24 x 4” platform and has since moved into building cross and gravel/adventure bikes built around a 650b platform, and some yet smaller wheeled bikes which we will get to at the end.  While the bikes’ geometries are focused on smaller humans regardless of gender, the cake race and adventure team is compromised entirely of women/trans/femme/non-binary riders.

Plante Cycles is a small framebuilding operation in Rancho Cucamonga. Stephen Plante builds each frame in his home garage, at the base of the San Gabriel mountains, where he tests out the designs for each model. At the Cub House’s Bike Show and Swap this year, Stephen brought two bikes, one of which I’ve been meaning to shoot photos of.

I thought these three bikes, the Carnevale, the Cinelli, and now this Makino all brought something interesting to the table at the Cub House’s Bike Show and Swap. While the previous two bikes are examples of the 60’s and 80’s, this Makino reminds me of the mid-2000’s so much. The time when track bikes were the biggest thing in cycling since mountain bikes. ATMO, anyway. I never owned an NJS bike. Mostly because it was always hard to find one in my size. Not too many Keirin racers ride 58cm or 60cm frames. Yet I always loved the work that left Makino’s shop. With their sparkly, iridescent paint, beautiful lug work and tucked and mean stances, the Makino track frames always looked like they were in the process of pouncing. While purists will scoff at the flat bars and sparkle grips, riding drops for the sake of drops never made much sense to me. Especially when riding brakeless.

Richie, the owner of the bike has pieced together quite the build. It’s classy without being hung up on that coveted NJS stamp and for me, it was a joy to photograph.

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Continuing our coverage from the third annual Cub House Bike Show and Swap…

Chuck is a lifelong cyclist. He runs and owns Velo-Retro but spent his life as a graphic designer who worked on many classic cycling logos, including the Eddy Merckx logo and others. That’s a whole different story altogether, hopefully, to be told another time. Right now let’s focus on this beautiful example of a pristine 1960’s Cinelli Super Corsa.

Today was the Cub House’s third annual bike show and swap. While we’ll look at the show itself tomorrow, I couldn’t wait to share the winning bike from the show, this Medici-built Carnevale Road bike. Now, with all bikes like this, there is a backstory. Ralph Carnevale was a major dealer of Medici Bicycles in Southern California in the 70’s and 80’s. His shop sold so many Medici bikes that the Masi-spinoff builder made a whole line of Carnevale Bicycles for Ralph.

Chat with Buck enough and you’ll pick up on it. By “it” I mean his desire to get a deal on unique things. Or at least that was my impression. He rolled this Chesini into Golden Saddle this week and it immediately piqued my interest. Turns out, he bought it from a shop in Seattle that was liquidating its inventory. It came mostly as you see it here, minus the Swift saddle pack and top tube pad. It also had a longer pandographed stem, which Buck swapped out for a Nitto. The seller noted that their shop commissioned Chesini to build them a lightweight touring bike, with a randonneuring influence. To my knowledge, this wasn’t Chesini’s specialty and was their first attempt at creating such a bike. It’s a prototype of sorts if you will and prototypes are often a bit buggy. Idiosyncracies aside, this bike has style and is not ashamed of its detailing. If you’ve seen Chesini frames before, you’re familiar with how extravagant they can be. That being said, there are a few head-scratchers. For starters, there are no provisions for a front rack, hence the pipe clamps. Those dropouts are a bit uncharacteristic of Chesini’s craftsmanship, and the angles do look a bit steep for a tourer.

Still, when Buck rolled this bike through the shop, I had to get some photos of it. Documenting well-used bikes like this is always fun and I know y’all would enjoy it. Now, I know someone out there has more information about it, so let’s hear it!

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When All-City first developed the Mr. Pink, they wanted to deliver a classic steel road bike, made from Columbus ZONA tubing, with a Shimano kit for under $2,000. In fact, that number came in at $1,799. Last month, All-City lowered the MSRP on Mr. Pink completes to $1,499, with the framesets being reduced from $999 to $850, sparking me to finally shoot Mike’s “Kiwi Green” Mr. Pink with Campagnolo Chorus. This is not an advertisement, I just wanted to share the news and get you into your local shop to check one out.

When it comes to production steel road bikes, the Mr. Pink is one of the finer specimens. The model’s latest color grabbed Mike from Golden Saddle‘s attention, as it matched some components had had laying around including some green Chris King bits, as well as some PAUL skewers and a Turquoise King headset. The boys at the shop like to ride bikes that they sell, so when potential customers ask them questions, they can reply with honest answers.

Don’t Fake that Funk with Moné Bikes

Words and photos by Spencer Harding

I first saw one of Cjell’s (pronounced like “shell”) bikes on a tour of Adventure Cycling’s headquarters in Missoula, Montana.  His lugged 29+ drop bar Great Divide rig hangs on the walls, in all of its patina’d glory.  Over the past few years, we have had a lot of near hangout misses, from a trip to Ecuador to being in Salida, Colorado the same day this past summer. But alas the stars finally aligned and after spending Thanksgiving in White Sands National Monument, my partner and I decided to make a stopover in Silver City for a spin in the hills and a dip in some hot springs. 

Luciano’s Velo Playa Larga GIOS Torino
Photos and words by Sean Talkington

I’m often drawn to things that are just the right amount of “thrashed”. That includes old cars, buildings, and even people look a lot more interesting with some character brought on from age. Of all the old things that pique my interest, bicycles might be on the top of the list.

There is something really honest about an old, weathered bike, and steel bikes are probably the best suited for “patina.” They’re probably the ONLY bikes that can look just as appealing after a lot of use versus a spotless new version. I seriously doubt it will be cool to see banged up old carbon S-Works in 30 years, but I guess you never know. I mean, as a kid everyone told me to save my baseball cards, so I did, and now they are worth nearly nothing. I’ve been lugging these things around for my entire adult life for literally no reason. I haven’t cared about baseball cards since I was probably twelve years old, yet I continue to drag 10,000 of them around like a 300-pound ship anchor. On the other hand, the Walkman I thrashed as a kid and secondhand Oakley Frogskins my friend Travis gifted me for my birthday are collectible. WTF!?