The Radavist

Cross Was Here: A Day in the life of Chelsea Weidinger
Photos and words by Jen Abercrombie

“I’d already set the goal in my head that I was going to be the first girl on MASH. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but it’s going to happen.” – Chelsea Weidinger

It’s January and everyone is thinking of resolutions and goals for the coming year. As cross season ended, I spent a day in San Francisco riding and talking with Chelsea Weidinger, of the MASH Cyclocross team, about how she got here and where she’s going. Chelsea hails from Columbus, Ohio. After stints working in a bank and a juice bar, she decided that coffee and bike racing were more her speed, and moved to San Francisco in 2012.

It’s not every day that you see a Geekhouse in Los Angeles. Especially one as unique as Abbas’ Mudville. You see, this bike started out as a cantilever cross bike and then he sent it back to Marty so disc brakes could be added, and got a new fork made. All in all, it took a little time, but now Abbas has a disc brake Mudville with a slick segmented crown fork and plenty of stopping power. He recently moved to LA from Texas where those brakes will come in handy on all the dirt frontage roads… If you see this bike rolling around town, be sure to say hello and Abbas, we’ll hit the dirt soon enough.

The 2016 Cyclocross National Championships

Words by Amanda Schaper, photos by Jordan Clark Haggard

For cyclocross racers, the National Championships is our biggest and best party of the year. You travel to a new place and spend a week filled with amazing racing, lots of great people, and—of course—even a little debauchery. This is cyclocross after all.

This year’s event was hosted in Asheville, North Carolina, at the Biltmore Estate. This is a stunningly beautiful 8,000-acre property that has been family owned since 1895, and it features the largest privately owned house in the U.S. Seriously—it’s a 178,926 square foot mansion with absolutely incredible architecture. Riding through the Estate grounds reveals sprawling gardens, forested areas, creeks, waterfalls, a winery, intricate stone walls, and farm animals grazing through open fields. Everything about the Biltmore screams luxury, and it made for an amazing location to host the Cyclocross National Championships.

2015 was an amazing year for the Radavist. Not only in terms of traffic, or stats, but in terms of content. We take pride in the site, the rides we record, products we feature and yes, the bicycles we document. This year was huge in terms of the places we traveled to and the people we met along the way. With people and places come Beautiful Bicycles and a lot of work!

Without rambling on too much, here’s a list of the Top 10 of 2015 ranked by traffic and social media chatter, from highest down…

Colin, like many of us, uses his ‘cross bike for racing only a fraction of the total time he spends riding it. When he grew tired of riding and racing production bikes that never quite fit him or his preferred style of shredding, he decided to go custom and began looking into Stinner Frameworks.

Since moving to Montana from Austin, TX, he’s been spending a lot of time exploring the many mountain roads neighboring Bozeman. He wanted a ‘cross bike with a slightly altered geometry that would still be able to hold its own at races, yet be fun and zippy on fireroads or singletrack. While a standard ‘cross bike might fit the bill, Colin’s been riding for so long that he’d developed a few particularities. First, he wanted to race the bike as a singlespeed but didn’t want to go with a slider dropout. He also wanted thru-axles. The simple fix for this is an eccentric bottom bracket which would give him the right chain tension, easily. Then once the race season was over, he could put a 1x group on the bike and take off into the woods. He raced it for a season as a singlespeed and then upgraded to a new group.

The problem is, while switching a group over from an older bike, his rear brake line was too short and no one in town, nor the neighboring towns, nor the damn mail order companies had the damn part in stock. Keep in mind, this switch-out was happening the day before he was leaving Montana for a bikepacking trip down the Pacific Coast. Way to wait ’til the last minute dude! So now, he has a brake line that even as a photographer, was painful to photograph, much less ride behind or next to. I kept thinking the damn thing was going to rip off the caliper and spray me with hydro fluid, yet it’s still in place.

While it’s not an ideal photo, or an ideal brake line setup, the bike made it down the coast to Los Angeles just fine, where we’ve been riding local dirt. Yesterday, I shot some photos of it in the early morning light. Don’t worry, the part is en route to Colin shortly, after a lengthy delay from the Holidays…

Looking past the brake lining, we see Industry Nine hubs laced to an eBay Chinese carbon rim, with a Hope cassette expander, TRP’s thru-axle disc ‘cross fork, SRAM X9 derailleur, ENVE parts throughout, WTB Nano 40mm tires and that sweet, sweet Stinner steel. My favorite detail? The paint! I absolutely love what Stinner is doing in-house and it almost distracts even me from the brake line.

Almost…

A Weekend at SoCal Cross
Photos and words by Julio Boostamante

Julio Boostamante, You know… the local Socal photo dude from Compton that shows up at the Wolfpack Hustle races, local Fixie Crits and snaps a bazzilion pics of all the action. Yeah, well now you can also find me Fredding it up at the Socal Cross Races. Why? Well, because I decided it was a good idea to suffer for 40 mins on a bike.

I’m way more comfortable and less sweaty behind the lens but you know what? Something about racing cross and finishing is well, rewarding. The beauty of it is that anyone can do it. Yes, even me as an out of shape photographer. You should try it sometime! Lots of suffering will be had at these events on any giving weekend but also, lots of good times with awesome people can be had. For me it doesn’t get any better than that! Did I mention you get to drink beer in the park? Yeah, just don’t let the Park Ranger find out.

If you’re crazy enough, you can also do the course fixed in the annual Tracklocross race like some of the local fixed gear homies did. Sounds insane I know but I promise you, it’s more fun than scary. Well for us to watch anyway.

Check out the photos to see what all the weekend fuss was about and keep the heckling loud and the beers cold at the next Cross event!

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Follow Julio on Instagram.