The Radavist

This bike has a long, jaded history, beginning with the early days of the Rapha Continental. I’ll let the story be told by others, because I’ll surely miss some important detail. The short of it is, this frame sat in two separate basements for over 10 years before finally being powder-coated and built up to be ridden on the last Brovet here in Austin (literally, he built it up the day before).

650B, tubeless-ready, Shimano 105, single speed convertible, off-road geometry and a bright orange paint make this Rossman a very unique and strange machine. Is it a “gravel grinder”, a tourer, or a cross bike? Who knows.

Hahn Rossman‘s builds have past the rigorous testings of Bicycle Quarterly and I have to say, this is my favorite bike of Hahn’s to date! Catch it at the Seattle cross races as Hahn thrashes it in the single speed division!

See more in the Gallery!

Being the brand manager for a company like All-City certainly has its perks. One of which being you get to cook up ideas for new bikes, ride said bikes and have your buddies Instagram and photograph these bikes. My job, although the later is already understood, was to make said bike plenty dirty for the photo shoot.

Since Jeff from All-City got into town for the Keep Cross Weird race, we’ve been riding everyday and aside from one MTB session, it’s all been on the local roads, trails and tracks here in Austin. Rocks, mud, river crossings, sand, limestone and more, the whole time Jeff was so stoked to be riding this bike. Why? Because it’s unlike anything All-City has cooked up before.

Hydraulic disc brakes, courtesy of SRAM, a disc Whisky parts fork, Reynolds 853 tubing and a mix of other spare parts Jeff had lying around, certainly put this bike in the well used category. When I asked if Jeff wanted to wait for his new cranks, seatpost and saddle to come in prior to shooting the bike, he replied “this is how I ride my bikes!”. Honesty that matters.

The All City 853 Macho King is a prototype and whether it goes to production or not, depends on the people’s demands. If you like this bike and want to see it go to production, holler at Jeff in the comments!

Check out more #lightbro shots in the Gallery!

What an event! For the past year, I’ve been putting in intense laps on this little piece of singletrack over on the east side of Austin. It’s not much, but for me, it got me in mode for cross season. When I casually mentioned the idea about doing a race here in Austin to Jeff from All-City, he was so down. The only question was: is it gonna be weird?

I never thought making an event weird was the key ingredient. I was just reminded of the cheesy tie-dye “Keep Austin Weird” shirts but when Kyle and Jeff got into town, they wanted to know how the race was going to be weird.

Honestly, I did very little, other than make a tough, technical and different race go down. 50 people registered, twice as many spectated and about 30 finished. There were glow-sticks marking off the treachery, log hops, muddy run ups, a 200-foot sand sprint, fast, twisty singletrack, a long wooden staircase run-up and a creek crossing.

One guy raced it on a BMC track bike, another on a fixed gear, there were three mountain bikes, a bunch of cross bikes and a basket bike. Oh and Tucker showed up on his neon pedicab.

The fastest lap was 9 minutes and the winner did an extra because he didn’t believe me that the race was done.

So in the end, this race was pretty fucking weird and no one was hurt! We ended the night at Yellow Jacket Social Club where I threw all the race money back at the participants with a keg of beer and cash prized for the top 3 and 1st lady.

There were a bunch of photographers on hand, but I chose to post Nick Cantrell‘s and Gideon Tsang‘s photos from the Yellow Jacket.

Check out Erik Binggeser’s photos here, Dirt Drops’ here and J.A. Hicks’ very pro photos here!

Austin, you surprise me every time.