The Radavist

With Covid-19 throwing a wrench in the spokes of the traditional tradeshow schedule, even open houses have had to switch to an online, or virtual, format. We saw this earlier in the year with ENVE and now, the 2020 Chris King Open House. While it wasn’t safe to travel to Portland to document the bikes, Chris King’s in-house photographer Jacob Olsen did a stellar job at documenting all ten bikes, while videography team Modify Content knocked out some great, in-depth video profiles of these handmade marvels. We’ve got part one today, featuring Bingham, Breadwinner, Caletti, DeSalvo, and Mosaic, so let’s jump right in…

Northern New Mexico’s section of the Continental Divide Trail is quite the experience and with its popularity, more and more cyclists are coming to New Mexico to ride 70 miles of singletrack over a 90-mile route. One of my friends, Kyle from Outer Shell, recently came through town with his Falconer hardtail to take on the CDT, so I shuttled him to Cumbres Pass and bid adieu. After his trip, I linked back up with him and shot his wild Falconer hardtail, “loaded” for his time on the trail…

We’ve featured Cari’s Elephant National Forest Explorer before, back in 2016, and yet every time it pops up in our social media here at the Radavist, people request an updated feature…

Steel is real. We all have personal paths when it comes to cycling and it’s serendipitous when our favorite bikes can adapt to align with these twists and turns within this cycling journey. My Retrotec has long been one of my favorite bikes. In the time I’ve owned it, I’ve swapped out the drivetrain, brakes, fork, wheel size, yet this latest permutation is easily the most drastic…

Tomorrow, we’ll be sharing our Reportage from our tour of the CDT in Northern New Mexico but today I wanted to give Bailey a showcase on his Moné and how he packs for a three-day trip…

The poet Basil Bunting, while poring over an antiquated German-Italian dictionary, found the German verb dichten (to write poetry) translated as condensare (to condense/shorten). This became one of the guiding principles of Modernist poetry;  which would state; “Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost degree.” In my early 20s, I fancied myself a student of Modernist writing and, unsurprisingly, many of its ideologies found a place in my daily life. This concept in particular is one that has remained important to me and thus, my approach to touring/bike packing. If one can distill their gear down to items that have the utmost meaning or necessity, while doing away with any superfluities, the result is a light and nimble bike, allowing the rider maximum enjoyment of the terrain to be traversed without compromising their safety and comfort along the way.

We previously featured Chris’ Caletti but he shot some updated photos of it in very eerie light cast due to the fires in California. We’re running this updated gallery with words by Chris himself below…

Dearest Reader,

What follows is a recalled conversation between a bicycle racer and his bicycle’s maker. Even at the time, the exchange was fuzzy at best, and over the years, it has grown even furrier, as memories made under these circumstances are apt to do.

However, both parties involved reviewed it and then concluded that the following retelling is about as accurate as it’s gonna get about the origins of Rock Lobster’s current World Cup CX Species, whose latest evolution began a little something like this…

Bikes are an extension of the rider in every sense of the word. Not only do the wheels and bars act as our contact points to the terra firma, but everything becomes more than the sum of its parts. Those parts bin grips or meticulously color-matched fasteners all create a piece of rolling poetry. Found art, master-planned, functional, beautiful.

 Most of you know I’m attracted to weirdos and eccentric people, so of course I love stopping by the BTCHN Bikes shop here in Chico to see what Tyler is welding on. He’s spent most of his life racing all types of motorcycles at insane speeds, and has been adapting the hyper-analytical engineering he’s learned in the motorized world into pedal-powered machines he pushes to equally scary speeds. He’s also one of the most enthusiastic people I’ve ever met, so imagine that he’s yelling and gesturing wildly with his hands as you read this interview about his latest prototype.

As with year’s past, we love featuring this Chico collaboration between Sierra Nevada, Paul Component, and a California-based frame builder. This year’s bike is stunning and with it comes a huge photo gallery documenting this beautiful build. Check the official press release below with all the juicy photos and read on to find out how you can win this bike!

Back in February of this year at Singlespeed Arizona in Bisbee, I had wanted to document the wild variety of funky, freaky, and beautiful bikes that had descended on the small town for the event. Unfortunately, the pace of that particular weekend didn’t lend itself to photographing individual bikes (something I certainly plan to do in 2021). Bike portraits, or not, it’s impossible to ignore the eclectic array of Mone, Oddity, Moonmen, and other eye-catching derailleur-less boutique fabrications and other unusual setups while in that environment. There were a handful of frames though – clean and somewhat understated with swoopy seat stays and moustache-shaped logo badges – that I didn’t recognize. While chatting with Nate from Absolute Bikes, I pointed to a member of Thee Deores (Northern Arizona’s premiere Mountain Biking band) cruising around on one of these swoopy-tubed moustachioed hardtails and asked if he knew anything about the bike. He responded by pointing to Richard May and informing me that Richard, based in Flagstaff, builds bike frames and other custom parts under the moniker Moustache Cycles.

In what I hope will be the first of many monthly(ish) articles, of varying lengths, Nikolai and I visited (in)famous bicycle designer Mike Burrows, who has been a constant in terms of support, inspiration and taking me down a peg or two when I need it (always). Nikolai filmed our trip on my Sony A7iii as part of an ongoing project, so I decided it would be especially fitting for Mike to document our trip on celluloid with my Mamiya C330, and a little Olympus rangefinder on Kodak Portra 800 film.