The Radavist

Los Angeles’ cycling culture is full of people who value California-made bicycles. During a week hanging out at The Cub House, I ogled a few bikes that were just too good not too show off as in-depth feature galleries here. My favorite of the bunch was very likely this custom Sycip disc road, built with Campagnolo Ekar, the Italian brand’s official “gravel” groupset. Sycips are super clean bikes, and this one has a beautifully scalloped, segmented seat stay, so let’s check it out in detail below…

I was an architect in my previous life. Before I began documenting cycling culture. One of my favorite architectural theorists is a fella named Rem Koolhaas. In his book, Delirious New York, he claims that “A city is a plane of tarmac with some red hot spots of urban intensity”. While the book is an examination of New York City, many have applied this observation to the sprawling city of Los Angeles.

LA Tourist Race 1: Hope Y’all Come Back Now?
Photos and words by Kyle Kelley

The LA Tourist Race Series is a triptych of grassroots, self-supported mixed terrain rides/races in Los Angels using some of LA’s most iconic bike routes. Each race is pieced together using multiple rides throughout Los Angeles and the surrounding mountains that many Angelenos would never imagine doing on the same day. While there is a route provided for participants, in these races someone replicates the world’s wackiest ultramarathon, the Barkley Marathon! In the Barkley Marathon, if you complete 60 miles of the entire 100-mile course it’s called the “Fun Run”, this is what most people are able to do before the full retreat. There are checkpoints where books have been left, as racers arrive they rip their race number out of the book and are on their way to the next checkpoint. And if you were wondering, only even or odd numbers are given out for each particular race. The books are just random ones found at thrift stores, so it would be very difficult to cheat. There is no right or wrong way to complete this race, if you know of a six-mile hike-a-bike that cuts off 15 miles, take it! The Barkley Marathons are extremely challenging, they usually require bushwacking and many other obstacles not usually associated with a running race. So the LA Tourist Race series has translated many of these ideas to modern day gravel or adventure racing.

The Verdugos are a staple of my weekly riding routine. With access points from every cardinal direction, your route up is often times determined by how much spunk you’ve got in your legs. There’s something for everyone including mountain bikers, dirt jumpers, roadies, dirt road riders, and a ragtag group of ex and current skaters, as evident in today’s story.

Every Friday morning, the guys at Golden Saddle organize a TGSCIF ride, leaving from Intelligentsia on Sunset Avenue and pedaling from Silver Lake to any number of road, dirt, and singletrack rides. Oftentimes, these 2-3 hour group rides venture into the surrounding hills, never really leaving the neighborhood, yet sometimes I rally to do a ride in the Verdugo Mountains. It just so happens that this week, we got to bring a lot of people up to this magical place for the first time.

Over the past week, nature flipped a switch. Suddenly, like migrating birds, the 100º weather had flown to the southern hemisphere, leaving behind clouds, cooler temperatures and even traces of precipitation. Basically, the perfect ingredients for successful dirt bike rides. All summer, I’d stuck to shorter, partially shaded rides, or banked on getting in my mileage before the heat of the day and now I felt comfortable taking off up my favorite dirt climbs.

Los Angeles is no stranger when it comes to wildfires, even in the short time I’ve lived here and while most of the fires over the years have been in the San Gabriel mountains, I never expected to have a fire ravage my favorite place to ride, the Verdugo Mountains. You’ve probably heard of these mountains before, we post a lot of photos here on the site from their peaks, fireroads and singletrack. To give you some perspective, the dirt roads are 7 miles from my front door, with the first saddle being exactly 10 miles. The peak, at least on the road, tops out at 3,100′ and it’s a long, steep way up, with climbs averaging between 10 and 18%.

If you can’t tell, life has been complicated over here. All last week, I was packing up my belongings, selling or giving away the excess and planning for the final move from Austin to Los Angeles. Both the emotional and physical baggage I left Austin with is now in LA, still boxed up awaiting to be opened and placed in their home.

It’s been a busy, stressful, overwhelming few days and as a cyclist, that means I can only relax by pedaling my bike, preferably with friends and on some dirt. Luckily, there’s a lot of both in my new city.

We’ve seen photos from these trails before. Cherry Canyon is like a mini-Verdugos. It’s what can be best described as a cross-country park with fireroads going up the hills and singletrack offshoots bombing down. You pedal up for about 10 minutes and rip down for 5. When you realize that a trail system is a little boring on a mountain bike, you take out your cyclocross bike and try to go as fast as possible down… If you’re still losing interest, do so at night.

Night riding is part of life as a cyclist. Especially in Fall. My buddy Jack drove over with me in the moving truck to hang in LA, so we hit up Sean from Team Dream Team to take us on a spin.

I’ve been using the Bontrager Ion700t lights for trail riding, paired with the Bluetooth switch. One on the bars and one on the helmet. 700 lumens has proven to be more than enough to illuminate the trails in a city like LA, with its excessive light pollution. Expect a more thorough review soon.

Last night, Cherry Canyon provided a great sunset and a perfect way to reduce the overpowering and crippling stress of a move. Things will pick up full speed next week… thanks for your patience.

Going Just Because: Three Months of the Sierra Nevada
Photos and words by Ryan Wilson

Every year fall rolls around and the itch hits me. I know the days of many of the high mountain passes throughout California’s Sierra Nevada mountains are numbered. If we’re lucky they’d be buried in feet of snow for almost half of the year. It turned out this year was yet another unlucky one, but still I feel that push to go and explore the roads in my favorite mountain range while I know I can…

This year was a whirlwind. I think I traveled somewhere around 220 days, jumping the pond a few times and yes, spending lots of time in California. But what was the pinnacle of the year was the rebrand from PiNP to the Radavist. The pinnacle because it meant more contributors, more photos and ultimately, more, good content.

Without the contributors to this site, it wouldn’t have been such a successful year. Those guys really killed it.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s start from Day 01…

On my last day in Los Angeles, Sean from Team Dream and I sat in his living room, listening to the rain dump outside. Normally, a little rain doesn’t bother me, but this was torrential. You’ve heard the expression “raining cats and dogs”, right? Well this was all cats. Their claws hitting the tin awning outside Sean’s guestroom as visibility dropped to inches and the trees swayed in the wind. Dogs wouldn’t cause this much damage. It fell and fell and fell.

Los Angeles needs it.