The Radavist

When Paul Component owner Paul Price started to “make it big” he told himself that he wanted to order a bike each year from a NorCal frame builder. Retrotec, Rock Lobster, Sycip, etc, etc. At the time there were a handful of builders and for a few years he kept to his yearly deposit.

Then he got busy, the framebuilding industry grew and technology changed. For a few years he focused on the company and put his frame builder promise on hold. He then came back around to his promise and at the Sacramento NAHBS, picked up this Black Cat monster cross from Todd. Soon it became his staple bike. Like many custom frames, Paul had an idea for this bike that surrounded a specific component or part.

Those Panaracer Fire Cross tires are awesome, but they won’t fit on most production bikes, or even most custom bikes. 45mm is a lot of rubber for a cyclocross bike, and Paul knew that so he asked Todd to build him a bike around those tires. The end result is really incredible.

The beausage on the cranks alone are worth a photo. Luckily, I shot the whole bike too…

For one of this year’s new paint designs, Sacha White of Vanilla / Speedvagen worked with Japanese customer and brand buddy, Masashi Ichifuru, or Ichico as he’s called by friends. Ichigo initially helped Sacha design their Speedvagen National Kit for Japan.

When asked to describe the end result, Sacha White relayed the following:
“What he designed was quintessentially Japanese insofar as it had aspects that were refined and represented high craft, but it also had all of this killer, super cute Japanese pop culture vibe.”

The resulting kit that Ichico designed was a pattern of text alternating between Katakana and English, spelling out Speedvagen in the two alphabets. Mix in Speedvagen’s signature colors and it was so good it had to make its way on a bike frame, resulting in a visual representation of where Speedvagen is right now.

This Surprise Me paint scheme will make an appearance during this year’s CX season and it won’t be alone. Speedvagen will be releasing the desesign in new colors, that will be accompanied by some very special, traditional Japanese goods.

On to the build itself, we’re looking at a Rugged Road model, which is essentially a road bike with larger clearances and disc brakes. This particular bike was built using ENVE, Chris King bits and Campagnolo EPS 11 speed. Some notes of interest are the battery charging port at the bottom bracket cluster, the newly-designed Speedvagen disc dropout and that elegant seatpost topper.

On a personal note, this was one of my all-time favorite bikes from Vanilla…

October will be here before you know it and with it, comes Grinduro, a different kind of bike race. After my pre-ride photoshoot, one thing became evident: the best rig for this race is a cross bike. Don’t even try to ride a road bike, because you’ll be walking and if you ride a MTB, you might clock in a better time on the descents, but there’s a 25 mile climb.

When Giro announced the Grinduro, Santa Cruz framebuilder John Caletti of Caletti Cycles began working on a cyclocross bike for the event. With bent seat stays, clearances for a 40mm tire, disc brakes and no-rattle housing, this bike is the ideal weapon for a day filled with Sierra Nevada gravel and crag.

My favorite detail on this frame in particular however is the Geoff McFetridge artwork. The evil mountain awaits and Grinduro is coming… Best get your rig ready.

Cyclocross bikes may be designed to race for 45 minutes to an hour in various conditions, but their beauty lies in their versatility. I’ve put in a lot of time on my cross bike over the years, and only a fraction of those hours were spent racing. Instead, my bike’s been on road, trail, dirt, gravel and frontage road rides. With the right gear range, which is now as simple as a cassette or a chainring swap, a cyclocross bike could very well be the only drop bar bike you’ll need.

Companies like Niner are banking on that and while they offer a few ‘cross bikes, the RLT9 Steel is their flagship steel rig. Made from oversized Reynolds 853, with a pressfit 30 bottom bracket and a sweet carbon fork, the RLT9 Steel is being marketed to the “adventure” crowd.

What better way to test a bike’s capabilities than to pull one right from the box, strap three day’s worth of camping gear on it and chase 20 people around the mountains, roads and singletrack in central California?

That’s exactly where my relationship with the RLT9 Steel began… In the San Jose airport.

The guys over at Franco had two new bicycles with them at the 2015 Sea Otter Classic. One was a flashy cyclocross racing frame with a carbon fork and carbon wheels. The other, however was a little more unique. It was the same frame, yet built with a steel fork, Di2, disc brakes, fenders and painted a forest green. While the fork they had with them was a painted All-City fork, Franco Bicycles will be making their own, in the same facilities that make their frames here in the USA.

These frames are multi-use, semi-customizable, and are made in the USA for under $1,500. Available in Summer of 2015, you can reach out to them and get put on the waiting list. Head over to the Franco Grimes site for more information.

To commemorate their new ultralight Addict cyclocross bike, Scott Sports had Marcel Wildhaber’s special edition bike on display at their Sea Otter Classic booth. While the production Addict touts the same frame details, the paint job on this one was too good to pass up on… more. camo.

The Addict CX is being marketed as one of the lightest framesets on the market. Weighing in at a cool 1300g (frame and fork), it’s a claim that’s easily backed up. With internal routing for everything, including a dropper post, thru-axles and a removable front derailleur clamp, the Addict CX’s minimal profile is both appealing to those obsessive mechanics, as it is to racers.

While the production Addict comes with clinchers, Marcel’s bike had some juicy FMB tubies glued up, providing that last little bit of flair to an already sick race machine. There’s more information to come on the Addict CX at Scott Sports and more photos in the Gallery!

Since the beginning, Rick at D&D Cycles has painted the Ritchey frames that found their way to him, including the popular Commando mountain bikes. This irregular pattern was something that the Ritchey factory overseas couldn’t emulate, so the team brought this new Swiss Cross straight to D&D Cycles for the appropriate treatment.

For 2015, Ritchey will now offer up any steel frameset with this paint option. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got an older Swiss Cross or a new Break-away, any of their steel frames can be painted like the old Commandos. Simply contact them for more information.

See more photos of this beaut in the Gallery.

Over the next few weeks, Speedvagen will be rolling out a few new bike models, the first of which being the Rugged Road. Like a cross bike, but with some geometry tweaks, the Rugged Road is closer to a road bike than a cross bike, as the name implies. It’s meant for gravel descents with rutted corners and ​long days in the saddle, rather than an hour of being raced in a cyclocross course.

This frame in particular utilizes the Speedvagen new HollaText scheme with a cream base color; a color we’re the brand will be working with for 2016​. It’s built with Di2 and hydraulic discs with room for 40mm tires. As for the geometry tweaks, the most notable is the lower bottom bracket, making it super agile while cornering and keeping the rider’s center of gravity low, despite the larger tires.

To lighted the bike up a bit, customers can opt for a carbon seat tube, which sleeves into the bottom bracket and seat tube cluster. When painted, you can hardly tell, yet it shed substantial weight off the frame. The paint work on the DT Swiss hubs is an accent that Speedvagen has been doing since 2008.

There’s more information on the Rugged Road to come, so stay tuned at Speedvagen.

When you ride a 44cm cyclocross bike, there aren’t many options out there. In fact, a lot of riders will opt for a 26″ mountain frame, which limits tire selections for ‘cross. For Lori, she wanted a cyclocross frame that would fit a fat tire and most importantly, fit her, while keeping true to the 700c wheel.

Builder Nao Tomii of Tomii Cycles wanted to take advantage of the extreme sloping top tube by making this cross bike look like a drop bar 29r mountain bike. Since a lot of people prefer their cross frames a bit smaller than their road frames, this one comes in a tad under 44cm. With 150mm Rotor cranks and Shimano Ultegra hydro disc brakes, Lori has absolute control over her bike. In fact, she’s already started riding trails on it here in Austin.

Personally, this is where custom frames triumph and when they look this good, who can argue with that? Check out this testimonial on Lori’s Instagram account.

Props to the mechanics at Mellow Johnny’s for building such a stellar rig for Lori and a huge high five goes to Nao at Tomii Cycles for building such a rad frame.

Ian Stowe is a shredmeister. A true Radavist. He races cross for Rock Lobster, works for Santa Cruz Bicycles and spends some time as a model for Giro (that’s him at the top of the site). This past weekend, while on a super super secret outing, I got to spend a lot of time in the saddle with the dude (Like, 25 miles of high Sierra uphill saddle time) and a lot of time looking at this stunning Rock Lobster disc cross bike.

I don’t know what’s better, the bike by itself, or the complete package, paired with those House Industries bidons… At any rate, check out more photos in the Gallery and stay tuned for more information on our outing last weekend.