Search Term – Change
January is the hardest month of the year. The annual hangover from the holidays is in full swing, most New Year’s resolutions already have been broken, and winter has yet to abate. It is because of this that it’s important to embrace moments of opportunity and spontaneity and burn off some pent up energy. So when your riding buddy drops you a text asking if you want to do an overnighter, despite an impending winter storm, you obviously say ‘Yes’.
Each year I like to look at our content in its entirety and reflect back on bikes that took you, the readers of this website, by storm. Back in the mid to late 2000’s it was all fixed gears, then came the gravel bikes, the tourers, the MTBs, and the kooky, eccentric builds you’ve come to enjoy checking out in full-res detail. We’ve got some incredibly talented individuals contributing to this site and their hard work is something I cannot express my gratitude for enough. Going back through the 2020 content here at the Radavist, I am amazed at what we were able to accomplish all things considered.
For this year’s Top Beautiful Bicycles of 2020, we have compiled a great list of ten bikes, ranging from rim brakes to fixed gears, basket bikes, and more. This list is based on web traffic, commentary, and social media chatter, and each of these builds really brought something unique to our content. We omitted bike reviews here but included production bikes. Oh and I hope you like baskets!
Let’s jump right in!
Let’s just say I didn’t expect any less than greatness from Moots when it came to the Womble, the latest creation from their shop in Steamboat Springs. From previous experiences, I knew how well Moots’ titanium bikes rode and was looking forward to trying out their take on a modern 29er.
A few years back, I put the Baxter 29er through the wringer on the Steamboat to Fort Collins Ramble Ride, and during my project with SRAM in the Inyo Mountains, I pedaled it high up in the Mojave Desert and through Death Valley, across miles of washboard roads.
If I learned anything from those experiences it’s that titanium is the greatest frame material, especially when it’s wielded by the Masters of Metal. I’ve had the Womble 29er for a few months now, throughout the dusty ‘n’ dry end of summer, well into the snow-filled fall, and am finally ready to make my thoughts official, so read on below.
As someone who tends to spend seven months out of the year on the road, away from home, 2020 has been a welcomed change, albeit with some major adjustments. Stay at home orders in New Mexico are some of the strictest in the United States and this forced me to look to my new home state for rides and trips. Suddenly, I found myself living at the threshold of beautiful high-country riding with endless possibilities for bicycle touring and mountain biking. To put it mildly, my relocation to Santa Fe has opened up a whole world of opportunity.
It took me a while to adjust to living at 7,000′ and a big part of that adjustment has been facilitated by riding with my fast and fit friend, Bailey Newbrey. Bailey’s accolades need no introduction here and it should be no surprise to any of you that he is an incredible rider. He’s so fast that I jokingly refer to him as the “mountain trout on two wheels.”
We often joke that Eagle GX killed the singlespeed MTB and by “we” I mean myself and Bailey Newbrey, someone who knows a lot about SSMTB riding and racing. Using Bailey in this opening sentence is relevant for a number of reasons and yes, it also legitimizes that statement in many ways. While this won’t be a history lesson in SSMTB riding, it does mull over the antithesis of that, SRAM’s Eagle GX drivetrain.
I’ve been riding the new Eagle GX with its massive 52t cassette for a few months now and have finally flogged it enough to be able to write an honest review of this system, so read on below.
Long and slack gravel bikes are popping up everywhere. John’s Sklar is a good example, as is the Evil Chamois Hagar, even as polarizing as that bike is, it brought the long and slack ideology to the mainstream. Nordest just announced their Super Albarda Ti gravel bike and it looks like a beast. With a 68º head angle and a longer reach, designed for 50mm to 70mm stems, it’s onto something. Plus, it’s titanium, THE best material for all-terrain riding. Hands down. These frames retail for 1.156,20 € – 1.280,17 € and have a 10-week lead time. See more at Nordest.
Specs:
-Frame TITANIUM Ti3AL2.5V double butted tubing
-Long reach for use 50mm to 70mm stem
-Nordest 50mm stem,include with frame
-Wheels up to 650b 2.10 or 700x50c
-Interchangable dropouts, include with frame
-For 12x142mm thru axle rear hub
-Thru axle 12×1.75mm, include with frame
-For 27.2mm seatpost
-Seatclamp 31.8mm, include with frame
-46T max chainring in 1x or 50T/34/ in 2x
-TR44 head tube
-Weight for M/L size: 1.845 g
-Design for 400mm taper fork with 52mm Rake
The pandemic has caused a huge ripple in our day to day lives and in the bike industry, it’s left event organizers scrambling to adapt to these trying times. Last year’s ENVE Builder Round-Up was a lot of fun and I was sad to have to miss out on shooting all those bikes this year. Luckily, for all of us, ENVE is holding a virtual show. See the details below…
Please note: this trail is closed as of 2021 due to fire damage and flooding. We will update this post once it opens again. Please do not venture into the backcountry on this route!
It’s no secret that the bicycle can be a vessel for linking together with other interests and hobbies. Be it pack rafting or in this case, fishing. The bicycle can get you deep into the backcountry in a relatively short amount of time, compared to hiking, and access areas autos or motos can’t go. With this mobility comes a few problems that require solving first, however. Mainly, how do you carry a fishing pole with you on a bike? Much less a fly rod? Sure, there are a lot of fly rods that pack down to a manageable size, but none are as compact as the mini, yet mighty Tenkara rods.
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.
Now, I’m not a religious person, but I did grow up in a Christian church, so I am well aware of the characters, entities, and symbolism that exists in the Bible. Using the word “Antichrist” in the title of this review will ruffle some feathers, but hear me out. If we look at the phrase metaphorically, the Antichrist is opposition to the status quo, said to appear before the end of the world. Now, reading the reactions to this bike online, many would have you believe it is the harbinger of doom for the gravel world and ya know what? If that is the case, burn it down because the Chamois Hagar is exactly what the gravel world needs…
Double-sided pedals usually don’t do it for me. While I appreciate the concept, most offer a sub-par riding experience. The clipless mechanism is usually too loose with no ability to tighten up and the platforms are typically small, offering little to no grip. Granted it only takes a few bad experiences to taint your opinion of double-sided pedals but something about LOOK’s Geo Trekking pedals piqued my interest. LOOK’s pedals are great. I’ve been enjoying riding on them since switching from Time ATACs to SPD pedals. Although these pedals intrigued me, it didn’t take long to see their faults and gimmicks.
“Where’s your Dreamer?” “What happened to the green Dreamer?” “Do you ever ride your Dreamer?”
Since posting up the gallery of my Crust Bikes Dreamer, it’s been the bike people email me about the most. I get various questions, ranging from the ones I listed above, to questions on the Microshift and how I like the Dreamer platform. When I first got the bike, Crust Bikes and Darren Larkin, the builder of the Dreamer frames, were working on a few details. What I ended up with was a bike that was in-between versions and a few things weren’t working out so well. This prompted me and Darren to talk about the bike in detail and him offering to take it back to update and fix a few things. Read on below to find out what happened between these two models.
I know this is a cycling site but over the years, we’ve covered so many events where car camping is a theme and have spent many a weekend in the wilds of the Southwest with MTBs in tow. I get a lot of questions about our setup, so I’m tackling a big part of it with this article. If you don’t like cars and think they have no place on a cycling website, no worries, you don’t have to read this…
For the past few years – since moving to California – I’ve traded the jet-set life for road trips. I used to fly two or three times a month out of Austin, Texas, all over the world. These days, I like to make longer, meandering road trips out of assignments, or events and spend the summer months almost exclusively living out of our truck, sleeping in the Go Fast Camper Roof Top Tent.
Not wanting to limit our traveling experience, we’ve tried a number of sleeping arrangements in the Cruiser, but the Go Fast Camper has really been the best overall. These rooftop tents are the best on the market and while it comes at a hefty pricetag, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Read on below for our in-depth look at these unique campers.
Crust Bikes gives the people what they want and that ranges from frames, to complete bikes, accessories, parts, and yeah, handlebars. Their small-time operation allows them to pivot easily to follow trends and in a lot of ways, set the trends themselves. With road bikes permuting into even more capable off-road machines, a lot of the ideologies of mountain bike design and technology have found its way onto drop-bar bicycles. Sure, the obvious moves are those shorter-travel suspension forks but something that not many people have touched on is bar width.
That’s where Crust Bikes and Ultra Romance have really influenced and inspired the question: what is the appropriate width for a drop-bar bicycle? We already looked at my Sklar with the Towel Rack Bars but after much demand – and my own curiosity – I decided to try out the Made in Japan by Nitto Shaka Bar.
Path Less Pedaled looks at bikepacking bags versus saddle bags used on the front and rear. Kind of like how I used the Moots Baxter versus my Sklar Pack Mule. Russ makes a lot of good points but I’d argue that I prefer a mix of the two, kind of like how I tourer on my old 44 Ute. Which do you prefer? See three examples below….
The Old Growth Classic took place this past weekend – 500 riders took to a grueling 55-mile course through coastal redwoods and old-growth groves. At the end of the day over 8,000′ of elevation gain would be throbbing through the legs of every person that crossed the start and finish lines. I had planned on bringing my Sklar with me to ride and photograph the course, but Ibis reached out and asked if I’d like to ride their Hakka MX with Shimano’s GRX drivetrain and a new ENVE spec build. Here’s what I thought about the build kit on this bike, specifically GRX…
Over the years, I’ve had the honor to throw my leg over many bikes, try them out, write a review, and then send them back. While the bikes return to their companies, the experience stays with me, and in the time I’ve been running this website, I’ve developed my own belief for what the perfect geometry for a hardtail mountain bike is. About a year ago, I began talking with Adam Sklar and Colin Frazer, who were about to launch a new production, US-made frame company called Mystic. We wanted to test the waters with a Radavist edition frame, dubbed the Alluvium. After chatting about numbers and branding, we felt like we were getting closer to releasing this frame. Then the reality of such an undertaking took hold and we killed the project.
I’m up in Ogden, Utah for the ENVE Bike Builder Open House and Summit, shooting all the custom bikes on display. If you’re able to come to the event on Friday, be sure to say hello. You can register (for free) for the showcase at Eventbrite. Check out the low-down below! See ya there!
