The Radavist

A bike can be a liberating tool for a youngster. I got the first bike that I could travel distances on when I was 14. Granted it was a beach cruiser but hey, we lived at the beach. I’d carry my skateboard and even a surfboard to spots after school and on the weekends. It was a vessel of adolescent liberation.

For Jonah, a local of Santa Fe, and an employee at Mellow Velo, the bicycle has helped develop his independence as well as a vehicle to meander around his homeland. His family is one of the deeply embedded heritage households and have been in the area for hundreds of years. Just north of Santa Fe is the town of Chimayo where his family has been weaving for generations under the brand Ortega.

The Pandemic has left people with a lot of free time to pursue new hobbies. How many of your friends became sourdough bakers, xeriscapers, or home improvement gurus with all their newfound time at home? Eric Puckett is a long-time friend who always had sewing skills but once he was forced to work at home and couldn’t spend as much of his time outdoors, he began making bags for cycling, rock climbing, and more. Recently, he made this hobby into a side hustle called Farewell Bags. I caught up with Eric last week to shoot his new bags on his own Salsa Timberjack, so check out more below…

To fill in the gaps between normal, group-ride-oriented bicycle stories, we’re featuring a few rides from the staff over here at the Radavist, beginning with Spencer’s Orbea Loki.

When it was finally time for me to accept that my fatbike just wasn’t that good of a trail bike, I looked to the next best thing, a plus bike.  I finagled my way into Interbike a few years back and made it my mission to ride all the plus bikes at the dirt demo.  Turns out they were damn fun, the Advocate (now Esker) Hayduke was the winner of the day in my eyes, right in front of the newly updated Karate Monkey.  At the time I worked for a guide company that had a fleet or Orbea’s bikes, and they sent our company a closeout list with some discounted bikes at cost. I saw a swoopy aluminum 27.5+ hardtail that looked like it might just be the ticket.  I figured I could fit an XL and hopefully, that would give me the most framebag space since I planned to use this as that ever-fleeting idea of a quiver killer. 

What is titanium anyway? And where does it come from? Maybe from outer space? Who knows? We’re not really sure, but the folks over at Sanitas Cycles in Durango, Colorado, probably know. The Sanitas Tap Root is a trail-ready titanium hardtail with so much to offer. Today, in his review, Sean T. Randolph explains why this silver surfer is a great value and so much fun to ride!

Many bike tinkerers often have an overlapping interest in cars. For those of you in this sliver of the Venn Diagram, Paul Kalifatidi presents the Radical Rigs series. Like the bikes you’ve seen on The Radavist, these cars might be perfect. They also might be so far from perfection that they go full circle and become that which they meant to eschew. They might be dented and dinged, they might be muddy and mad, they might even just be rad. In part one of Radical Rigs, Paul juxtaposes Dillen Maurer‘s Baphomet Bikes “Fall Risk” custom full suspension and his “Lil Jim” 1992 Suzuki…

The Swoop is Starling Cycles‘ versatile single-pivot steel full-suspension bike designed for 27.5 wheels. With its adjustable shock mounts, the Swoop can be set in “Trail” mode with 130 mm of rear travel or “Enduro” with 160 mm. Partners Alex and Nikki each have Swoops in respective enduro and trail modes that they’ve been riding for some time now. Below, they share a review of both iterations of this adaptable built-in-UK platform from one of our favorite bike makers…

The revived 2024 Transition TransAM is shiny enough to attract local corvids in your area, progressive enough to melt the mind of your uncle still pearl-clutching his Salsa El Mariachi, and balanced enough to set a new standard. Read on below as Spencer Harding runs the numbers and throws the book at Transition’s new hardtail MTB!

It’s a fun thought experiment to try to pinpoint when the decision to buy a hardtail might factor into someone’s cycling journey. Or, it is if you spend most of your time thinking about, designing, and building bikes like Nick Neuhaus and Daniel Yang of Neuhaus Metalworks. For me, the decision came about 18 months ago when I realized that the terrain that held the most appeal—for day rides and multi-day tours—was continually falling in the underbiking category when ridden on my drop bar gravel bikes. And even though I’m still very much cutting my teeth on more technical terrain, Nick and Daniel reached out to see if I’d be interested in reviewing their second steel hardtail design, the Hummingbird. Of course, I gladly accepted the chance to see if I could keep up with this handmade steel singletrack seeker. In addition to testing the bike on a variety of Colorado terrain, during the past three months I had multiple conversations with the Neuhaus guys about the current hardtail moment; how identity and marketing affect one’s perceptions of this somewhat black sheep trail category, and where the Hummingbird fits into this evolving conversation.