The Radavist

Leave it on the Road’s Desert Bear: a Ride from Joshua Tree to LA

Words by Crystal Haggard and Bianca Pettinicchi, photos by Jordan Clark Haggard

On Saturday, November 10th, seven women embarked on an epic desert journey to help fund cutting edge cancer cell and gene therapy research. They navigated the arid landscape from Joshua Tree to Los Angeles, following a route, and more importantly, their hearts. A ride to remember, with a noble goal – help raise $100,000 to fund cancer cell gene therapy.

While Black Friday follows a holiday meant to celebrate the togetherness of friends and family, we oftentimes get swept up in consumerism. Hey, it happens. Deals here, deals there. Lines, lines, lines! The whole ordeal can really taint an otherwise pleasant weekend. Don’t even get me started on Thanksgiving in itself. (You should read the history behind what this holiday was founded on, written by the Manataka American Indian Council.) Now, I’m not writing this piece to get into the complicated history of Indigenous Lands and religious zealots’ squandering of natural resources. I actually like what this time of year embodies but I approach the subject with great care. No matter how you look at it, we are all on Native Lands.

Second hand, custom, and larger sizes are hard to come by when it comes to a bike like this. You’ve really gotta be there at the right time, which is how John scored this sweet Moth Attack Rockin’ Road. Someone was selling it in Southern California, barely used and John jumped on it.

If there’s one route people ask me to show them when they’re visiting Los Angeles with a road bike, it’s how to get to the Hollywood Sign. It turns out, cyclists can fall victim to iconic destinations just as commonly as non-cyclists. That’s what you do when you come to LA right? The one thing that separates this spot from other tourist destinations like the Chinese Theater or the Walk of Stars is you’ve really got to work to get up close and personal to the Hollywood Sign.

There’s an old joke in Hollywood, stemming from a conversation between Johnny Carson and Bette Davis. Carson asked Davis for advice on “the best way an aspiring starlet could get into Hollywood,” Ms. Davis replied without hesitation, “Take Fountain!”

Fountain Ave is a bicycle-friendly connector between Silver Lake and West Hollywood. It runs east to west and is parallel to Sunset Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard, two very congested arteries and very dangerous to ride bicycles on, especially during rush hour. By contrast, Fountain takes you past cafes, farmer’s markets and while the beginning is a two-lane road, it widens up once you reach Hollywood. There are “sharrows” the whole way, reminding motorists to share the road with cyclists but don’t be surprised when a Maserati goes 80mph past you, tailpipes brapping.

Jimmy. Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. How do you have such sick bikes?!

Since he began working at Golden Saddle Cyclery, Jimmy has come up on some pretty sweet bikes, in a kinda serendipitous manner. Take his latest bike for example. Our buddy Carlos has been spending the past few months setting up his shop, since leaving the head fabrication position at Stinner Frameworks. Carlos wanted to make frames for his own brand and after some time, he was ready to get some out and under his friends. Jimmy smelled the opportunity and jumped on it, selling his hardtail to fund a deposit to Carlos.

The result is the first complete Dark Moon Fabrication 27.5+ hardtail. Carlos has made a few mountain bike frames, but mostly to test out details, not to ride. After working out the geometry with Jimmy, he got to work on a bike with a 65º head angle, 150mm fork, and a 75º seat tube angle. After I saw the geo and signed off on it, Carlos got to work. The frame utilizes a symmetrical yoke plate at the bottom bracket cluster, a wishbone seat stay, and clearance for a 3″ tire with a 34t ring. Jimmy’s bike is official and boy did he go with all the right components on this bike, all chosen to accentuate the sparkle paint job on the bike.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jimmy more stoked to ride a bike. In fact, he rode things he had previously deemed off-limits with such fervent energy and it shows in the riding photos. New bike day stoke is real!

If you’d like a Dark Moon Fab frameset, holler at Carlos on his Instagram. He builds road, track, all-road, touring, and mountain bike frames right here in Los Angeles. A bike like Jimmy’s sells for $1,650 for the frame and paint.

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If you want a custom build like this and live in Los Angeles, hit up Golden Saddle Cyclery.

Tyler wanted to get a limited slip differential installed in his Volvo 142. The problem is, Tyler lives in Santa Cruz where he works for Santa Cruz Bicycles in the design department, and the Volvo experts were down in Long Beach. No one wants to drive from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles on the weekend, and the shop was closed then anyway, so what’s a dude with a slick Volvo to do? The genius of this whole ordeal was that Tyler, and David – two design department dudes at Santa Cruz Bicycles – were able to convince their bosses to let them ride the newest bike models down in Los Angeles, allowing Tyler’s car to get worked on while we shredded some of the area’s best trails. I’m sure it didn’t hurt to have me offer to show them around, ride the new bikes and obviously tell a story about the whole shindig. Sure, this is about the bikes, as much as it is about showing Tyler and David Los Angeles’ best trails in a condensed, two-day experience.

Playing host in Los Angeles is as much fun as it is hard work. Hard in the sense that these are my local trails that I ride quite frequently, so seeing the “new” in the familiar can be photographically challenging. Add to that, technically I’m injured. I found out right before the guys rolled into town that my pinky was indeed broken from a collision with a Prius’ side view mirror one day while I was riding home. That incident happened almost a month prior. Bummer for me, my bike control, and the potential to have a full-on shred fest, but I was so excited to ride the new 5010, so I sucked it up, taped my finger, and clipped in…

We wanted to do something very different for this year’s Swift Campout. For the last three years, we’ve been dragging people up the steepest fire roads in the Angeles Forest on their fully-loaded touring bikes, carrying gallons of water. With each year getting hotter and hotter, we wanted to find water for people to cool down in. At first, we thought the beach, but after looking into it, we discovered that we’d have better odds of winning the lottery than getting a camping spot for 30 plus people at the beach.