One helpful tip for getting a good night’s sleep while bike touring is to mimic your home sleeping experience as closely as possible. Cotton pillowcases or fleece sleeping bag liners can ease your mind by tricking your body. But you should apply that logic to your entire pre-sleep ritual. Have some dessert, brush your teeth, and once you’re all tucked in, do some light reading. Travis Engel is here with a bike hack that may make that last part a little easier to do in the wild.
“Overnighter”
Search Term – Change
Reportage
Bikes and More from the Chris King Open House 2023
With this year’s Chris King Open House coming right after the 2023 MADE Bike Show, the event decided to shift gears and focus on the Portland area’s outdoor brands. Chris King opened its doors to the public, unveiling the process that goes into machining bike parts in the USA, while inviting the broader outdoor industry to display their products. It was a full day of bikes and more! Check out our Reportage, sent in by Chris King and let us know your favorite bike in the comments!
Radar
The Radavist is Once Again an Independent Website
You may have noticed some changes on The Radavist over the past few weeks. Well, it’s because we’ve parted ways with TPC. Read on for TPC’s official press release announcement on the split and what this means for the future of The Radavist with a letter from John Watson below…
Reportage
Titanium Touring Perfection: Singular Gryphon Drop Bar 29er MTB Review
Over the years, I’ve had the ability and privilege of throwing my leg over a number of fat tire, drop bar touring bikes. From the almighty Tumbleweed Stargazer to the readily available Kona Sutra ULTD, these robust bikes with an off-road and load-bearing geometry make for great interstitial, genre-bending machines for all sorts of riding.
Yet before brands like Salsa were even making high clearance, drop bar, 29er, disc brake, production touring bikes, a brand called Singular Cycles in the UK shifted the paradigm with its Swift in 2007 and, later in 2008, Gryphon models. These frames featured high stack numbers, fit big tires, and most importantly, had rack/fender/cargo bosses aplenty.
This year, Singular debuted its custom Gryphon Titanium, and once again, I’m questioning which bike to crown “best in class.” Check out my full-length review below…
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Readers’ Rides: Matt’s “A Lighter Elephant” (NFE)
There’s an old adage: “The traveler with the most experience carries the least.” This can be applied to everything from car camping, to bike touring, and backpacking. Matt learned this along the way, resulting in his current Elephant NFE setup. Let’s check it out below!
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Radar Roundup: Shimano 11-Speed Hollowtech II Recall, Twin Six Ti Rando Sale, Monolith Tool Spoke Wrenches, Horny Bumper Sticker, SAS Linen Roll Tab Shirt, Voler and Imaginary Collective, Lachlan Morton TDR Setup, Wrench Fest!, and Sound to Sound 2023
Our Radar Roundup compiles products and videos from the ‘net in an easy-to-digest format. Read on below for today’s findings…
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Radar Roundup: Mone El Continente in Stock, Rivendell A. Homer Hilsen in Stock, HMPL Basket Bag, PAUL Post to Flat Mount, Gravel Adventure Spanish Peaks, and Ridgeline IV
Our Radar Roundup compiles products and videos from the ‘net in an easy-to-digest format. Read on below for today’s findings…
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Readers’ Rides: Mike’s Meriwether Soft Tail 29er
Today we’re bringing you a great feature from Mike from Big Wheel Building who recently took delivery of a Meriwether Cycles 60mm rear travel soft tail 29er, dubbed the Miser. This is a very unique bike and we’ve got a wonderful piece from Mike, so let’s get to it!
Reportage
Circumnavigating the Sawatch Range: A Classic Colorado Bike Touring Route
With numerous high summits along the Continental Divide and over a dozen 14,000′ peaks, the Sawatch Mountains are the heart of central Colorado’s alpine riding. Below, Hailey Moore shares a 340-mile bike touring route that circumnavigates 14 of the 15 Sawatch peaks by linking together a few of the region’s classic high passes and resupply options in iconic mountain towns. Read on for Hailey’s inspiration behind crafting this classic Colorado cyclo-touring route, detailed information for each section, and an optional extension that loops around Mt. Holy Cross to make the route a complete circumnavigation.
Reportage
Juanito and His “Burra”: A Fabio Duarte Touring Bicycle
When Karla and I arrived at Básica Studio’s workshop in México City, one of the first things I noticed was a yellow bicycle parked on its kickstand standing a little apart from the other ones on the rack. A complete set of fenders and heavy-duty racks made it clear this bike was intended for fully loaded touring, and the letters on the down tube, F. Duarte, spelled a brand I hadn’t seen before. We soon found out this bike belonged to Juanito, one of the mechanics at the shop, and I knew I had to see this bike and this guy in action.
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Radar Roundup: Starling Cycles Roost, New Evasion Color, 5DEV LTD Olive Drab, State Desert Cargo Cage, CDC Outlands Shoes, Movement, Rondini, and Paw 100
Our Radar Roundup compiles products and videos from the ‘net in an easy-to-digest format. Read on below for today’s findings…
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Bridging Community: Santa Fe Fat Tire Society Bridge Building Day
Like many towns along the Rocky Mountain corridor, Santa Fe has easy access to endless singletrack that spans many mountainous ecotones. You can pedal from town at 7000′ all the way above tree line to where our bike-legal trails top out at 12,500′, on almost exclusively singletrack.
This dense network of trails is stewarded by our local organization, the Santa Fe Fat Tire Society, and over the years, they’ve been putting in work adding new, legal trails, keeping the current trails running smoothly, cutting deadfall, fixing blown corners, and adding signage in a hope to bridge the various trail users in this community…
Reportage
The Tour Divide on Fabric Spokes: Brian and His Rare Earth Cycle Craft Touring Bike
For framebuilders, there’s no better test for their product than a long bike tour. When I last saw Brian, he had just completed the Baja Divide on a bike he built. At the time, he had just left the outdoor industry and hoped to transition into building frames full-time under the Rare Earth Cycle Craft banner.
His hardtail was one of my favorite bikes I documented this year until I saw his Tour Divide bike…
Reportage
Origins and Activations: How Ronnie Romance Found Inspiration at Blue Lug Bike Shops
This is a long story. It is a story of Blue Lug‘s influence on me, an interview with the co-founder, and hopefully it will lend some inspiration to American bike shops.
The photos you are seeing are of Blue Lug employee bikes that I shot one after another as we visited each location. We thought it would be cool to document the personal bikes of the build artists whose handiwork you see each day on the Blue Lug Instagram softcore porn for bike nerds.
We will begin with the story of my 650b leather and canvas activation as a lead in…
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Radar Roundup: Wilde Rambler Steel Fork, Otso Cycles Waheela C Colors, Restrap Coffee Dripper, Solstice Century, New Knog Blinder Front Lights, Bell Sanction 2 Helmets, and Ride Every Day
Our Radar Roundup compiles products and videos from the ‘net in an easy-to-digest format. Read on below for today’s findings…
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The Dust-Up: Bikepacking is Not Bike Touring No Matter the Bags Used or Terrain Traversed
Welcome to the second installment of The Dust-Up. This will be a semi-regular platform for Radavist editors and contributors to make bold, sometimes controversial claims about cycling. A way to challenge long-held assumptions that deserve a second look. Sometimes they will be global issues with important far-reaching consequences; other times, they will shed light on little nerdy corners of our world that don’t get enough attention. This week, John looks at a divisive topic through a historical lens to lay it all out in a column called: “Bike Touring is Not Bikepacking No Matter the Bags Used or Terrain Traversed.”
Read our latest edition of The Dust Up below…
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Radar Roundup: Standert Kettensäge, Blue Lug Belts, Ocean & San All Day Shirts, Restrap Frame Strap, Frontiers and Beyond, and Bikepacking Crystal Cove State Park
Our Radar Roundup compiles products and videos from the ‘net in an easy-to-digest format. Read on below for today’s findings…
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Radar Roundup: Merman Bicycles Launch, Mowmow Bars, Crumbworks Prototype Frame, Ibex Indie Hoodies, Minoura Camp Stove Cage, Mitch Ropelato in NYC, and Adaptive Shredding
Our Radar Roundup compiles products and videos from the ‘net in an easy-to-digest format. Read on below for today’s findings…