The Radavist

No 22 Bicycles grew from a longstanding framebuilding tradition in Upstate New York. By keeping production of their frames Stateside, they’re able to tweak geometries easily and even develop new models. Their latest addition to the No 22 family is the Broken Arrow disc cyclocross bike.

Developed with the help of Wilis Johnson of Deluxe Cycles, the Broken Arrow was designed to be a racing frame, but as we all know, a cross bike’s versatility is quickly realized as the season comes to a close.

Wilis raced ‘Cross Nats on this bike, as well as shredded trails while he was in town. The subtle branding and black componentry really give this bike a beautiful silhouette and I can’t think of a more appropriate bike for that Cadence x Ritchey stem. Photographing titanium outdoors can be difficult, especially on an overcast day, but these photos came out great. Those who raced Crash Nationals will recognize the bamboo tunnel…

Even with all of the letdown on Sunday morning at the 2015 Cyclocross National Championships, it was still a damn successful event up until that point. Wednesday through Saturday, races went off without a hitch and everyone was having a hell of a time riding the muddy and technical course. With adverse weather, comes adverse conditions and one group of individuals helped cope with the super sticky Texas mud moreso than your average pit crew.

The team at WD40 had a well-lubed process running just adjacent to the limestone runups. Outside of their heated tent, was a pressure-washing station, then inside their – yes, heated tent – a team of highly capable mechanics were on hand to give your bike a dry down, lube and even a quick tune up. All while you toasted your toes on their heater. Not bad huh?

Amanda Schaper is one of the women who hammered it during the Industry and Master’s races. An employee at Giro Cycling, she likes to support the local Santa Cruz framebuilding industry by racing for Caletti Cycles. Her titanium, Di2 machine is what many would consider a dream machine, yet she thrashes it, crashes it and in general, uses it to its full potential.

A potential that was a lot easier to photograph once WD40’s crews had cleaned off all the Dillo Dirt™…

“I’m heading to the pits now, do you want me to clean it off?”

The way I look at it, a perfectly-assembled, brand new bike always looks a bit weird being shot outside of a studio. While I prefer to document bicycles outside, using mostly natural light, there’s something eerie about a pristine example of a velocipede not at least a little dusty.

At ‘Cross Nats, it wasn’t hard to find dirty bikes, but once the races were postponed, the sea of custom steel bikes dwindled to a handful, the most recognizable being Dan Timmerman’s Team Richard Sachs cross bike.

As Dan exited the course during a pre-ride, I went over and asked if I could shoot some photos of it, caked with our particularly sticky, clay-ridden, Texas mud. Once I was done shooting photos, even the pit crew shouted “we haven’t had mud like this before” over the loud pressure washers…

The fact that Dan still cleans people’s clocks on a 20lb steel bike, while they’re on 16lb race bikes is a testament to the rider’s fitness, yet, you have to consider the mojo boost from a handmade bike, right? At any rate, this one’s not to be missed…

When you look out at the field of SSCX bikes at an event like ‘Cross Nats, you’ll see a lot of overseas production frames, but chances are, you’ll notice and remember the Rock Lobsters. All slightly different than the other.

My favorite part about these bikes is how Paul’s default color of choice is selected by so many, yet when you see one in brown, or in this case, purple, it pops. Ryan’s bike was my favorite bike in the singlespeed race and not just because of its color.

For instance, you don’t see a lot of Gates belt drives on custom singlespeed bikes, or at least, I don’t and to be honest, I didn’t even notice at first. There are a lot of details in this bike that are simple additions, but it adds to the overall delivery.

Saying a bike is your favorite from an event like ‘Cross Nats carries a certain weight, but you’ll see why in the Gallery.

Purging bikes isn’t fun, unless you can sell it to a friend, or in this case, a co-worker. One of the higher ups at Mellow Johnny’s recently decided to part with his Rock Lobster singlespeed cross. It was practically new and just so happened to fit Jonathan like a glove. Best of all, Jonathan finally found a place for all those turquoise Chris King bits he had been saving.

Singlespeed builds are ridiculously beautiful, especially when they have a color combination like walnut brown and turquoise. Relying on the ever-so-stoppy, Paul Mini Motos and Pacenti SL23 hoops with Tubeless WTB Cross Boss tires, this thing will be good to go next season…

But as we all know, cross bikes are much more diverse than that. We’ll be seeing more of this beauty in the coming months, I’m sure of it.

The stick that held up the bikes in this Gallery…

I shot a lot of bikes this year. In fact, I shot more Galleries this year, than any other two years combined. From April 1st’s launch of the Radavist, until last week, the entire team worked hard on bringing a full photo gallery just about every weekday, sometimes twice. Pulling in those metrics took some time, but rather than limiting this year’s selection to just ten, I found the following bikes to be all within the same realm.

Some of these bikes never dropped a chain in terms of year-long momentum, still churning in pageviews and social media chatter to this very day. Surprisingly to me, a few were completely stock bikes. These were all chosen for their Facebook likes, social media engagement, comments and overall traffic. I feel like there were a lot of bikes that were flops as far as traffic was concerned, but I wanted to be fair in selecting the list.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s back up a bit.

We began the year with a few big stories, all leading up to one of the busiest weekends of the year, NAHBS. After record-breaking traffic, the world of Beautiful Bicycles culminated in the 2014 NAHBS Drive Side Gallery. From there, it was onto traveling for stories and documenting Beautiful Bicycles along the way… We’ll start off in Prescott, Arizona for the Whiskey Off Road.