The Radavist

The Baxter was a blip in a long line of adventure bikes to grace Moots’ 40 years of building frames in the Rockies. Personally, I really liked the Baxter. It held its own in the Steamboat Ramble Ride and tackled our “Disconnected” project in the Inyo Mountains with SRAM but the Baxter had some quirks that needed to be addressed. With the Routt ESC, Moots did just that, abandoning the Baxter model altogether.

In an era where adventure, gravel, touring, and bikepacking bikes are seeing lots of permutation, there’s no time for nostalgia. Brands need to address their bike’s quirks and redesign as needed. That’s where the Routt ESC comes in. It’s like the Baxter and the Routt gravel line had a lovechild, which resulted in a completely new paradigm within the Moots catalog. Let’s check out this new Routt ESC bike in more detail below!

Junkyard cats are notoriously difficult to wrangle, which is why we don’t have any portraits of Casey Sussman or Stephen Bilenky from this year’s Philly Bike Expo. What we do have, however, is a photoset documenting the duo’s new Tracklocross bikes from their collective endeavor Junkyard Cats. Paying homage to Junkyard Cross races of yesteryear, bikes that Sussman (Mars Cycles) and Bilenky (Bilenky Cycle Works) build together will feature the Junkyard Cats name, including a five-size, five-color run of handmade, lightweight steel, raw, un-filed fillet brazed Tracklocross bikes. Jarrod Bunk pulled one of these Tracklocross builds aside to photograph at this year’s Philly Bike Expo, which we’re looking at in detail below.

Many of you are obviously familiar with the brand WTB, or Wilderness Trail Bikes. They make awesome tires, saddles, wheels, and other accessories but for a long time in the decade following the birth of mountain biking, they made all sorts of bicycle components including headsets, handlebars, bottom brackets, frames, and more. We reached out to Mark Slate, one of the founders of WTB for his thoughts on one of the most iconic bikes to leave the WTB and Steve Potts workshops: the Banana Slug, Steve Potts #45. I documented this wonderful dream bike – don’t you want one? – this was a joy to shoot for our Vintage Bicycles feature and I am honored to have Mark’s thoughts on it here at the Radavist. Read on for Mark’s words and Steve’s handiwork below!

I grew up working at a Specialized shop, and learned how to mountain bike by watching Ned Overend’s Performance Mountain Biking technique VHS. While I always appreciated the refreshing ideas of small makers, I thought it advantageous for larger brands to be able to invest more in their materials and construction. This was a time when top-end bikes were made of metal, and made domestically.

Metal Matrix (M2) composite is a prime example of this. The big S sourced a 6061 alloy infused with an aluminum oxide ceramic particulate by Alcan. Say that again, backwards now. Alcan called it Duralcan, and I am proud to display their logo on my top tube—that cool typeface!

“Gravel bikes are just XC bikes from the 80s/90s with drop bars.” You hear that over and over again, ad infinitum on the internet. While that might be true to some degree, I think this statement does XC bikes from the 80s/90s a disservice. Back when the big companies were slow to pivot towards innovation, smaller builders were the ones tinkering in their shops, fabricating step-up cassettes, designing bikes with boost spacing, 1x drivetrains, quick-release seatpost collars, and more. It took people like Charlie Cunningham and Jacquie Phelan to really push the paradigm until it broke.

Take, for example, this tribute of Jacquie’s 1983 “Otto” Cunningham, which was built in June of 1983 for a customer in Marin…

Texas isn’t the flat, dusty desert that many believe it is. Well, some areas are exactly that, but there’s massive diversity here. Deep in the Heart of Texas, sandwiched between the Spring Breaker beaches and the deserted desert montañas, sits the Texas Hill Country. Austin perches itself right at the verge of the boundary between the stinging hills to the west and rolling farmland to the east. You’re darn tootin’, it’s one helluva place to be a cyclist. This motley of landscapes calls for a capable bike – fast, light, sturdy, comfy, and most importantly, right at home on all terrains. Enter David Ross’ Gunnar Hyper-X…

Why do some bikes get up to speed with seemingly less effort than others? Why do some bikes leave me less fatigued after long rides? My idea of the ultimate road and adventure bike is one that has all the wonderful vertical compliance that we know can be built into a bicycle as a system, but that also responds to and rewards its rider by flexing just right in the lateral axis as well.

We all know custom steel bikes have the potential to be a rider’s one and only. And that leads us to Wake Robin Cycles and the subject of this review. The Wake Robin is a low trail, rim brake randonneuring bike, custom built for Chip over at What Bars. If there’s one kind of bike that’s revered to ride smooth over long distances, rim brake rando bikes are it. But, not all custom bikes are equal, particularly those built for someone who isn’t you – so this one’s got plenty for us to talk about.

Since we posted Two Wheel Drive yesterday, we thought it’d be nice to feature one of the shop employee’s personal bikes. Bryan is a mechanic and his Mash track bike is too slick, laced with Albuquerque’s own DOOM bars and some other nice details. Check out our friend Nick’s photos below with words by Bryan himself…