The Radavist

This year’s Chris King Open House chose 18 builders from all over the world to display their new colors for 2020: Bourbon and Violet. Thanks to ENVE, Santa Cruz Reserve, SRAM, Brooks, and Spurcycle. these bikes were built out appropriately for such a showcase. Below is a gallery of half the bunch, in alphabetical order for your enjoyment, with each builder’s description of the bikes. Make sure you comment on your favorite because there is some gold in these galleries!

ENVE has been supporting frame builders, both in the US and internationally for years now and has developed a symbiotic relationship with these artisans, who choose to put their forks, bars, and wheels on customer’s build kit lists. With this catalog of talent at their fingertips, they decided to have an Open House to celebrate not only their factory and offices in Ogden, Utah but the frame builders who choose ENVE to build out their complete bikes.

Over the next two mornings, we’ll look at a list of 20 frame builders’ bikes, in galleries filled with so many Beautiful Bicycles it’ll leave your mouth watering. Up first is Prova, Holland, Alchemy, Salt Air, Mosaic, Pursuit, English, Speedvagen, Bingham, and Allied.

Carbon manufacturing is changing the way we envision bikes, and the creations are wild. Case in point: Allied Cycle Works’ new Able. When you first look at this bike, it’s impossible not to focus on the chainstay – but looking around the frameset, you see the possibilities that can come out of a carbon mold these days.

Richard Pool’s Allied Alfa Disc Allroad with Hypercolor!
Photos by Bob Huff, words by John Watson

How do you make a special bike extra special? For Richard Pool, aka Bicycle Crumbs, he was sold on the Allied Alfa Allroad but wanted to jazz it up a bit. Richard works at the Vanilla Workshop – in case you were wondering who is doing all those snazzy new graphics! – so he consulted Lucas Strain, one of the painters at Coat, Vanilla’s in-house paint shop, on what to do with this frame to make it extra, extra special.

The result is the by-product of including Thermocramatic paint, over a raw Alfa. What this paint does is react with temperature and the easiest way to see this is by either putting the frame in a freezer, or rubbing an ice cube over it, but when Richard pinged Bob Huff, Vanilla’s photographer, he suggested cold water, sprayed from a hose on a hot day. Luckily they found normal garden hose water on a hot, hot summer day in Portland did the trick.

Is is gimmicky? You bet but does it look awesome, you bet! Coupled with this awesome bike, I think it turned out great. If you’d like a more in-depth look at the Alfa, check out our review!

Richard built it up with Turquoise King bits, ENVE Ar 4.5 rims, a Zip post and cockpit, SRAM eTAP WiFli and a Fabric ALM saddle.

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Follow Richard on Instagram, Lucas on Instagram, Allied on Instagram, and follow Bob Huff on Instagram.

The Allied story is one that has been touched on briefly here on the Radavist. A brand that was formed through the foresight of one man; Tony Karklins and his ability to acquire a Canadian brand Guru’s assets at auction. This included the machinery, technology, everything; down to the paint booth. Upon winning the bid, Tony then moved this equipment to Arkansas, hired a few key players and began cranking on this new brand, dubbed Allied Cycle Works, which operates under the umbrella of HIA Velo. I could go more into this story, but people like Patrick at Red Kite Prayer have done an exceptional job covering the beginnings of Allied, so if the story of the brand is what you’re here for, head to RKP for an exceptional write up.

Now, when Patrick wrote his piece about Allied, they had but one model; the Alfa road bike. Later, the brand developed this beauty, the Alfa All-Road. While the Alfa road has all the lines and functionality of a proper carbon, rim brake road bike, the Alfa All-Road opens up the door a little wider to the sorts of rides we really enjoy over here at the Radavist; dirty and dusty fun!

Apologies for the delay in delivering this week’s Readers’ Rides, but as you can see, it’s a special one. Tandems are often called “relationship accelerators,” particularly when it comes to tandem mountain bikes! Laura and Tree had Curtis from Retrotec Cycles build them something special… so let’s get to it.

Over the last couple of years, our European correspondent Petor Georgallou has gotten to know Sour Bicycles, a small East German bike company who are trailblazing in their mix of domestic framebuilding in Dresden and continued importation of Taiwan-made bikes. Read on to hear about the unique conditions that have made the former states of East Germany a hotbed of innovation and manufacturing in Europe, as well as how a mega fail by Petor leads to the second of many shop visits in Germany.