The Radavist

Steel may be real but, for Petor Georgallou, that cliché begs the question: is wood good? Ever the curious reviewer, Petor has long wanted to test the ride quality of a wooden frame and the opportunity to ride a Twmpa Cycles GR1 gravel bike finally presented itself a few months back. But before Petor dips into his ride impressions, he shares an exchange with another wooden builder, Mark Kelly, about the characteristics that make wood an especially compelling frame-building material. After checking out Petor’s review of the GR1, drop into the comments and let us know…would you? Wood you!?

Although I’ve struggled with a lifelong tendency to overcommit, I’m not a total megalomaniac. A few months ahead of this year’s Bespoked, I asked Josh to make the trip over from Arizona to London to cover the event while I (along with my business partner, another Josh, and an amazing team of volunteers) administered it. Running the show was already a massive feat, and I’d have done a disservice to both the show and the builders by trying to document it at the same time. Josh flew over and covered a huge number of bikes and builders with the diligence and dedication that they deserve (for a refresher, you can view those pieces here and here). It was cool to finally meet the guy on the other side of the emails, as we’d been working together for the better part of a year. During the show we were both focused on very separate tasks, but we made some time for a little road trip to visit the factory where Brooks England manufactures leather saddles, which is just outside of Birmingham in the little industrial town of Smethwick.

As the person behind the marketing of a small brand, I typically have a strategy that I like to think of as, “appear bigger than the bear.”  As a tiny brand hustling to compete with some very large brands, we aim to appear larger than we are. My theory is that if we want to be competitive, we need to look like a worthy competitor. You know, if you need to scare off a bear, you should try to look bigger than the bear. The current situation has led me to take pause and give up the ruse. Sometimes there’s more to the story than super sexy photos of bikes. I don’t know about anyone else out there, but I am getting lonely here in my home office. I miss my co-workers. I miss shooting hoops in the warehouse in the afternoon and walking to get a slice of pizza, making awkward small talk in the pizza shop.

To begin, it is important to say that I am not a doctor, a data analyst, or an economist. Am I an expert regarding the growing pandemic that is becoming one of the defining events of our lives? No, I am not. I am a bike mechanic who likes to take photos. There are smarter people out there who could (or should) be writing about this, but as it is, you have me. And I find it extremely difficult—even inappropriate—to talk about this year’s Mid South without acknowledging the massive elephant in the room. For some of you, these images or just the thought of a large group gathering may be upsetting. You would be right to feel that way, and I get it. If this were any other year, it would have been a widely celebrated event, filled with love and excitement from the greater cycling community. In a lot of ways, it still was. But given that upside-down is the new normal, here we are.

Scratching from the Silk Road Mountain Race
Words and photos by Max Burgess

So what happens when you make the decision to quit the first edition of one of the most anticipated endurance races on the planet? I’m laying outside a yurt at 3,000m above sea level, next to Son Kul Lake in Kyrgyzstan. I’m exhausted. The last few days of the Silk Road Mountain Race have tested me to the limit both physically and mentally.

It is the first time for my race partner Justin and myself to take part in an endurance race and if the truth be told, we never really came to race. It was evident from the first day out of Bishkek, as we meandered up Kegeti Pass along with our friend Jon. A few weeks earlier, I had divided the entire race route into manageable chunks that would put us at the finish in 13 days. But, as I’m lying by Son Kul lake at the first checkpoint, the reality dawned on what we are actually taking part in. We are already 24-hours behind our schedule within five days and can’t afford to loose any more time. Missed flights home are not an option for either Justin or myself, especially that I have a ten-year wedding anniversary only a few days after my return!

Being a part of this project, if by only being the person who shot the photos of each bike, was a lot of fun. The Vanilla Workshop was brainstorming about what the next bike should be in their Ready-Made program when someone had the bright idea of including the public vote in the decision. That’s when the #WorksShopBuildOff was born. The idea is simple; ping some people/personalities/bike shops/artists to design their bike of choice, with or without concept, be it merely style, or art canvas. Then, Vanilla would build the bikes up and YOU, the public would get to vote on each, determining which will be part of the Ready-Made program.

You can do this a few ways; take to social media, use the #WorksShopBuildOff hashtag and post one of these photos of the bike of your choice, vote at our Instagram, or you can simply vote in the comments here, by saying 01, 02, 03… for your vote, and last but not least, you can head to web and vote at Speedvagen. Let’s get it started!

Traversing the Salkantay Trail to Machu Picchu
Photos and words by Ryan Wilson

By far the number one thing people bring up when they find out you’re going to Peru is Machu Picchu. In fact, that’s probably the response at least 95% of the time. To be fair, prior to stumbling upon photos of the Cordillera Blanca on Google Earth one day, Machu Picchu was always the first thing that came to my mind as well, so it’s a hard thing to fault.