The Radavist

Daytime high temperatures in the Phoenix valley where I’m currently sitting are hovering around 108°. Like every summer around this time, I’m reminiscing about trips I’ve taken to escape the dreaded summer Sonoran Desert heat and planning opportunities in cooler climes again. One standout experience, which continually creeps into my planning and scheming, was a ride during a road trip last October with my buddy Cameron Lloyd and a couple of his fellow Sun Valley Mountain Guides – Keeley and Andrew – in Ketchum, ID. We had an epic time riding some of the area’s most ripping and scenic singletrack, so continue reading below for a recap with this great crew!

Part of the fun in restoring vintage bikes is the process and sometimes that process feels more like a puzzle than a transaction. From finding the correct components, to frame finish repair, and even saving a frame from a metal scrap yard! Nick Martin, shares with us the wild story about how he came to own a truly rare frame, a Breezer Series III, by rescuing it from a scrapyard in Canada! Read on below for this wild tale!

“We’re cultivating this weekend, a few weeks earlier than we normally do. It’s getting drier every year, and harder to grow grapes in a dry farm system”. This passing statement tickled somewhere on my brain stem as Steve’s words seeped in and we all gazed up at the Sierra Madres. I wondered if the mountains too might be getting drier every year just like down below at Condors Hope, the 20-acre ranch situated at the opening of Bates Canyon, the gateway into our four-day bikepacking mission.

Two years ago, nearly to the day, my friends Erin, Campbell, Ian, and I all came down to Condors Hope to embark on a similar long weekend trip to explore and experience the landscapes, otherwise referred to as the high steep broken mountains, that had, at the time, just been reopened to oil and gas leasing by the Trump administration. We returned from that trip two weeks before the world shut down from COVID, and well, you pretty much know the rest of that story.

Vintage mountain bikes have a special place in our hearts over here at The Radavist. From vintage klunkers to fillet-brazed beauts, it just seems like bikes from the early years of mountain biking were ahead of their time in a lot of ways. When the pandemic hit, I found myself browsing forums, eBay, and emailing collectors to build up some vintage rides. I was inundated with all the tech that was coming out, yet wasn’t available to consumers, and just felt like revisiting my passion for old bikes would reinvigorate my love of 26″ wheels and friction shifting. This Ritchey is the most recent of three bikes that I built up over the past few years in the pandemic and was by far the biggest undertaking for me. The process included painting some Tom Ritchey fillet Bullmoose bars to match and fixing some shoddy paint on the frame itself.

This bike needed a complete build kit, as I bought it as a frameset, so I spent a lot of time speccing the build while utilizing some of the NOS components I’ve been sitting on for a few years. The end product is something I’m truly proud of and Cari and I had a lot of fun with the photos here, so enjoy!

There’s more to biking in Baja than the Divide

Twenty minutes after sunset and the sky has a glowing ember look. Night is taking over. In the distance — in the hills — you can see the front and rear lights of a bike. At first, it seems like it must be a motorcycle, but there’s no noise. It’s a mountain bike. The rider zooms up and down small climbs and descents, and then flies past us in a cloud of dust we can’t quite see, but can smell. The person on the bike, whoever they are, is having a great time.

I’m driving the entirety of Baja — with my husband and our dog — from Mexicali to Todos Santos. We started in Colorado. All in, the trip south is over 2,000 miles. We camp a lot — in a little van we built out last year. It’s great, but not quite van life. More, a step up from tent life. We’ve got our mountain bikes — an Ibis Mojo and a Revel Ranger — and a lot of peanut butter.

The Romanceür has gotten a lot of love over here at The Radavist since its inception in both the disc and rim brake versions. While we just posted Ronnie’s build a few months back, this weekend at the LA Invitational, John caught up with Patrick, the other “Rubber Baron” in Ultradynamico, who had just picked up a new frame from Crust Bikes. After a shakedown ride for the Invitational, he spent some time in a San Marino alleyway shooting photos of it, so let’s check it out below!

What will soon be seven summers ago, Crust Bikes CEO Matt pedaled his prototype Evasion to the end of Long Island to catch a ferry across the Sound to where the fishing boat I was working on docked each evening. I readied the lines as the boat backed into the harbor.  Looking up, I could see a backlit figure of a cyclist above the docks in the parking lot— late summer setting sun illuminating orange and golds through course, untamed hair.  Chest hair.  We had been expecting each other…

Back in 2020, Cjell Monē and I wrote about our friend Karl Artis‘ eclectic bike collection and his collaborative “Bikes for Buddies” fundraiser with Matt Whitman, which raised enough money to purchase fifty bikes for youngsters in need. Since then, Karl has added even more bikes to his personal cache, including an enviable custom mountain cruiser, and finally found a home for the youth bikes after months of pandemic-induced hiccups. I recently met up with Karl and a crew of other friends – who were fresh off a weekend of building and donating bikes – to check out Karl’s new cruiser and enjoy some metamorphic chunder on the trails of North Phoenix.

The Henry Mountains of southern Utah have fascinated me ever since one of my geology professors in graduate school eloquently described their unique setting and their unlikely stature in the field of geomorphology. As a student, I found myself eagerly diving into a century-old geologic report to learn more, and then as a professor, I found myself taking my own students to the area to experience its grandeur in person. But a deeper understanding of the landscape could only come from moving through it for days on end. I finally had the opportunity to make that happen in late November with the company of my friend Chase Edwards – nine chilly days, 350 miles of pedaling, climbing six range’s most prominent peaks, and endless awe.

The Philly Bike Expo often has a good mix of seasoned builders and others that are beginning to hone their craft. Sam Scipio just started building frames earlier this year under the moniker Jubilee Manufacturing and already had a beautiful cyclocross bike (her second build) ready to show off at the Expo. Today, accompanying Jarrod Bunk‘s detailed photos, Sam talks about her bike and why she’s inspired to be building frames.

Unlike the bike expos and builder showcases we are fortunate to document on this site, such as the recent Philly Bike Expo and Bespoked UK, the Sedona Mountain Bike Festival is not typically the event to attend if you’re interested in encountering custom frames or ogling otherwise unique bike builds on display. Instead, group rides, production bike demos, and other community-building shenanigans are the focus.

This year, however, there was much ogling to be done. Thomson featured two bikes from builders they often partner with – Oddity Cycles and MONē Bikes – in addition to a couple of their own Hooches available to demo; Why Cycles had a booth connected their sister brand, Revel Bikes, offering demos in addition to showcasing two head-turning builds; Celilo Cycles had a collection of their handmade wooden bikes on display; and Atherton Cycles sent a custom 3D printed enduro bike with a friend from the UK to show off at the event.

Continue reading below for an in-depth look at these marvelous machines and be sure to scroll all the way through to the last one — it’s a trip!