The Radavist

The history of Chumba is one with a somewhat rocky past but it appears the brand has finally hit smooth trails with its recent rebranding and relaunch. When a couple of guys from Austin, Texas took over, they had one thing on their minds: steel. That and making mountain bikes in Texas, designed to thrash our local trails and still perform in the mountains of Colorado.

Earlier this year, we looked at their 29+ Ursa model and yesterday, I met the Chumba team out at Pace Bend Park, a 45 minute drive from Austin, to shred their new made in Texas Stella 29’r hard tail.

Just before Covid hit the US and races were canceled indefinitely, I had a conversation on a ride with good friend Brendan Lehman (who is sometimes, more often than not, known as the official unofficial mis-manager of the Rock Lobster race team) about joining the risk of Lobsters and racing on a custom frame built by Paul Sadoff himself. I’d been riding with the Rock Lobster crew here in Santa Cruz for several years and we all seemed to share a common bond in doing remarkably stupid endurance rides, putting mental and physical limits to the test for fun and adventure. Since I first laid eyes on one, there has always been something alluring to me about a classic, team issue, seafoam green Rock Lobster. Not only will I get to ride and race on this custom bike built for my body dimensions, but I also get the pleasure to ride it with the builder himself. As a photographer, I figured it would be great to capture the build of my custom frame from start to finish and get to know Paul a little better in the process.

Santa Fe is where The Radavist calls home, so what better location to look at in our first Cycling Guide? Read on for a look at The City Different…

For a two-man operation, Nick Neuhaus and Daniel Yang have their systems dialed. Or, maybe the manpower limitations of being a small team have been the motivating force behind the duo’s streamlined Marin-based, framebuilding operation, Neuhaus Metalworks. Hailey Moore and John Watson spent some time talking shop with Nick and Daniel on their innovative 3D printed components and how these parts lead to higher efficiency in their US-made frames. Read on for a closer look at Neuhaus’ exciting approach to making steel and titanium mountain bikes.

Happenstance saw Hailey Moore traveling through Knoxville, Tennessee over the weekend of the second annual Southeastern Appalachian Bike Swap (SABS), hosted by the local shop, non-profit and community hub, Two Bikes. Scroll on for her photo-heavy recap of the gear swap, Goldsprint roller-bike race bracket, and bike show good times that went down last weekend at YeeHaw Brewing Co.—good things comin’ out of the Southeast right now!

The first time I laid eyes on a fat bike was in 2011. I was picking up my race bib for the American Birkebeiner 50K, the famed cross-country ski race in Hayward, Wisconsin. Surly had an expo booth outside with their demo fleet of fat bikes prominently positioned so they’d be the first thing you saw. You couldn’t miss the line-up of jumbo-rubbered Pugsleys kitted out with 26 x 3.8″ tires, ready for a test ride. I made my way to the booth and asked about these foreign looking monster bikes. I was promptly told that I should ride one and find out for myself. As I looked down the row, I saw one with much larger tires than all the rest. It was a Moonlander, there to show off Surly’s recently announced expedition fat bike.

I hope your winter break was refreshing and that you got some miles in over the Holidaze. We’re back in 2022 with the first of our 2021 year-end recaps, beginning with everyone’s favorite: the Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2021. Like years prior, I compiled this list by traffic, comments, and social media/backlink chatter, also omitting bikes from Open House/Expo style showcases. There are some real gems in here, so let’s get to it!

The beauty of bikes is in the people who ride them—and how they all have a story. I have little doubt that everyone—serious riders, aeroed and grimaced, and carefree cruisers alike—have experienced that epiphanous fresh-air feeling of freedom that accompanies spinning your legs astride two wheels. Sometimes we just enjoy it at the moment—letting the short-lived wave of release and clarity wash over us during a weeknight burrito run, or a trip to the coffee shop. Other times we chase that feeling down with the hope that, somehow, it might change our life.

What first intrigued me about Josh Uhl was, however, not his history with bikes but his podcast Here For Now, which he started in February of 2021. Josh uses this platform to have intentional and intimate conversations with his guests about motivation, struggle, and the big whys of life. Listening to an early episode with Peter Hogan, where the recovering addict asserts that “Bikes aren’t God,” and to a later episode where the writer Zoe Röm reflects on the delusion of “authenticity” on social media, I found myself frequently nodding along. Yes, exactly.