The Radavist

A few weeks ago, I shot this photo of my speedometer after riding some of the hills in Austin with my buddy Chris Gomez. Then, the other day, Tracko posts this hella blurry photo of his “Fisher Price my first speedometer” computer reading 48 mph. I just hope my next photo comes out and dude, get a new computer. Those suck!

See ya at the NAHBS. We’ve got a bull for you to ride.

Speaking of classics, as promised in today’s Merckx Mondays post, here’s Chris’ Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra pista in all its glory. Chris has been an avid reader on the blog for a while now and we’ve shot emails back and forth throughout the past year. For some people, it might be a little strange to meet up with a reader from their blog but I love doing it. Nothing gives you perspective on your readership than putting a face with an email address!

Last Saturday I met up with Chris and shot his lovely Merckx Pista, a truly Beautiful Bicycle. Check out more photos below!

The first time I got to see the work of Chris Kvale in person was during the Mid-West Mayhem last year. Mark Sirek let us stay with him in Milwaukee and lurking in his basement was a wonderland (scroll to 3/4s the way down the post) filled with Beautiful Bicycles. In the mix was his custom Chris Kvale road bike. I was amazed at the lugwork, particularly the seat tube cluster. It was so incredibly thin! So thin that they had to use the thinnest paint possible when coating it or the lugs would disappear.

Since posting the McLean earlier this week, I’ve had many correspondence with a group of gentlemen who own quite a few McLean road bikes. One of which is Neil “Gunnar” Berg who runs a blog called 1410 OakWood. Aside from calling this blog the “dark side“, Neil wrote a nice little piece about his thoughts on the McLean’s paint job. Originally being a skeptic of the paint’s color, Neil and I exchanged some emails with the last correspondence ending in a photo of this Chris Kvale seat tube cluster.

Have you ever seen a lug that thin? Amazing! Oh, I mean Minneapolis NICE! Thanks Neil!

I know what you’re thinking “enough already!”. Chris’ list of All My Bikes keeps growing and growing. His latest (and my favorite) entry is his custom-painted MKE Bruiser. Ben’s Cycle and Open Bicycle hooked him up with it last year. Remember? This bike came out so proper. Nicely done Chris. I hope you miss that thing!

Previously:
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 21
Chris Piascik’s Bruiser

I think we’re getting close to Chris’ ( @ChrisPiascik ) All My Bikes series. If memory serves me correctly, there’s maybe 3 more ahead of this one but I could be wrong. A few years ago, the guys at Milwaukee Bicycle Co. approached me to help design the first proper fixed freestyle frameset. There weren’t other framesets available where the frame and fork were designed together, not as an aftermarket afterthought. We came up with the Bruiser. I remember building mine up and being thrilled. It was exactly what we wanted! Soon after, I had some prototypes and since this thing wasn’t breaking, I hooked Chris up with one. This became his first Bruiser and he felt the same way about it as I did. Check out Chris’ recollection here!

Previously:
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 19

Last time I posted an illustration from Chris Piascik’s All My Bikes series, I mentioned that I would be cherry-picking the ones that I posted. I think Chris had a very similar experience as most of us. First you got your conversion. For me it was a Peugeot. Then you get a mail-order bike; Chris’ was a Kilo TT. Mine was an IRO angus. You realize the parts were shit (well, I ordered my Iro as a frameset and let a LBS build it) and you quickly start to replace the stock components. All this work and before you know it, you’ve dropped over $800 on a bike that could have easily been bought locally.

If I had a penny for every person that told me a story like this, I could buy a Jalapeno-cheddar bagel.

Previously:
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 15

After picking up numerous other bikes, Chris picked up a Lotus Cobra MX-1 at a tag sale. The Cobra comes in as his All My Bikes 07. Dude, you must have a ton of bikes if you’re cranking one out every day!

Previously:
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 06
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 05
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 04
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 03
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 02
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 01

Damn Chris, you must have mowed a lot of yards. You’ve had more BMXs than I’ve had track bikes! Well, maybe I’m exaggerating. Every day that Chris posts an “All My Bikes” illustration, I keep thinking it’s going to be a track bike. Here, once again is one of his BMXs, a Schwinn Predator!

Previously:
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 05
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 04
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 03
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 02
Chris Piascik: All My Bikes 01

One of my favorite artists made it into IDN‘s new book entitled “The New Twenties“. Like a good cyclist, Chris Piascik selected his Major Taylor posters and a few other cycling-specific pieces for the book that’s main focus is:

The New Twenties: A scintillating survey of the work of today’s 20-somethings, who were all brought up in the technological boom years of the late 20th Century – and whose concepts of self-promotion and networking are radically different from those of their predecessors. In this third IdN Special Edition, we have collaborated with Society6, one of the largest online platforms for up-and-coming designers, to showcase the talent of 58 brilliant young artists with a contemporary outlook on creativity and communicating.

Congrats man!

Photo by Christopher Lee

When I just caught this on Flickr, I thought it looked familiar. Chris Lee shot some photos of AJ and Puckett a while back and this one was supposed to be a Volume ad. They ended up going with the stair gap photo by Danny instead so Chris just upped a few. Looks fucking ill Eric and I like this one better than the other shot. Look at AJ looking up at Eric. Keep going at it guys!

Previously:
Volume Thrasher Ad with Eric Puckett
AJ and Puckett: Sunday in Austin

Photo by Chis Milliman

Freeman Transport and Chis Milliman teamed up to do a photo-essay of the personal and business matters of Benjamin Ferencz, the founder of Freeman. The photos turned out great Ben!

More information is below.

Photos by Keith Teket and Rick Anderson

I have to say, this is pretty fucking rad. Christina from Bmore Fixed and Gabby from Milwaukee hitting some stairs. Gabby’s recent blog entry on her Charge Diary has a brief story about her doing a 4-stair gap and Cristina’s entry to the Pikey Bags x Headset Clothing x Prolly is not Probably Give-Away has her hitting this 4-stair in downtown Baltimore. I watched Christina fall hard four or five times in Richmond trying to do a wallride. She ate shit so many times and still got back up to go for it again. Tough girl!

These ladies are putting in their work. Keep at it!

Previously:
Bmore Fixed: Christina Panteliodis
Charge Bikes Welcomes Gabrielle Gulczynski

Chris Akrigg THE MAURICE.0 from chris akrigg on Vimeo.

Um. What the fuck. Wow. Balls to the walls riding. Chris Akrigg does it again on the Mongoose Maurice. After shaking the roots of the fixed freestyle crowd with One Gear No Idea, Chris is back at it with another Banger-filled edit he filmed while in Barcelona. Nutty! This is hands down the best shit of 2010 so far. The last few clips had my jaw dropped! All without foot retention. DAMN.

Thanks to Nick for the heads up!

Previously:
Mongoose – Maurice Fixed Gear Bicycle
Chris Akrigg: Brakeless
Chris Akrigg: One Gear No Idea

Illustration by Chris Piascik

Part of Trick Track‘s recent face-lift was a new logo drawn by Boston-based artist Chris Piascik. The above illustration is one of two backgrounds Chris worked on for the forums, before being told that they couldn’t be bike related. Whoops is right! There’s a ton of detail in this drawing. Here’s the full-resolution image. I spent a good amount of time looking at all the little product plugs and characters. Nice work Chris!

click for full-resolution

Chris just got his Bruiser back from the painters. It looks amazing. I gotta say it man, that’s some Phoenician royalty right there. Here’s a side story on that. The Phoenician’s were the first to create the purple, or violet dye. All of their kings were adorned in it and it became a sign of royalty. In fact, the word Phoenician, derived from phoinikèia, literally means “purple”. Now I’m not implying that Chris is royalty, but I love his art and this bike is molten lava.

Chris Akrigg Brakeless Part 1 from Jordan Robison on Vimeo.

I saw this back when I posted the original edit of Chris Akrigg riding fixed. At the time, It wasn’t anything that blew me away. It is really impressive, but like most people will say “it’s done better on a BMX” and it’s true. Hell, that’s true for just about any bike you’d do tricks on but it doesn’t mean you can’t wheelie your road bike, ride your MTB in a park or even do tricks on a fixed gear and if you wanted to race the TDF on your BMX, go for it! Bikes are bikes. Who really cares? The post is continued below.

Now have Bootleg Sessions profiles up. Chris and Jeremiah both have improved so much in the past few months and are now on the roster for Bootleg Sessions 3.

Jeremiah briefly touches on the HOLD FAST project he’s been working on. It’s been awesome being a part of the process and I can’t wait for it to launch!

I love it when Tracko finds supplemental information on one of my posts. If you’re a fan of Chris King, don’t miss this issue of Peloton!