The Radavist

The seasons are dramatic in Montana. Long dark days of winter stand in stark contrast to the euphoric long and pleasant days of summer. As I near a decade of living in this place that once felt so quiet and remote, I sometimes wonder how life would be different if I lived in a more moderate place. Would I get used to it and only ride on the most perfect days? Or would I get out every day like I do when the weather finally turns in Montana, working myself to a point where snowed-in trails are almost welcome after five months of manic riding? Whatever the answer, it is hard to explain the motivation that comes after a 6-month long winter. The dreaming, planning, and longing for those special Montana Summer days just might be worth the wait.

Long Valley, the Volcanic Tablelands, Lake Crowley, Mono Lake, and in general, the graben known as Owens Valley hold timeless stories beneath the silty soil, sage, and rabbitbrush. This area has long intrigued me, looking past its main attractions: Instagram-famous – or infamous – hot springs and world-class fly fishing. The landscape is rugged and steep, with unsuspecting silt traps enveloping your wheels up to the hubs as winds flex their prowess as shape-shifting forces spanning eons. Yet its magnetism, beauty, indigenous, and geologic history make it prime for bikepacking, touring, gravel riding, and road riding. It will take some planning, the right equipment, and some determination.

The Carretera Austral is without a doubt South America’s bicycle touring capital. No place on this continent sees a higher influx of Ortlieb-clad folks from around the world looking to enjoy Patagonia’s natural wonders. With good reason too. There’s a more advanced tourist infrastructure, bringing more luxuries from back home more frequently along the way (toilets and hot showers are cool). The challenge-to-scenery ratio along the Austral is also extremely generous, and the road surface suits just about any bike you can strap a few bags to. You don’t have to suffer too much to have a good time in nature here.

We’ve had a busy year at the Radavist and it wasn’t until I combed through each month individually that I could finally realize all the hard work everyone put in over here for the past twelve months. While much of the site is focused on gear in the form of products and bike portraits, my favorite pieces are always photojournals from rides, tours, and trips. There’s something wonderful about peering through the lens of a cyclist and hitching a ride along with them while they pedal along their route.

Compiled in this gallery is a photographic sample from 12 months of content, in somewhat chronological order. It’s trippy to flip through the gallery and see all the unique perspectives. In many cases, a photo is worth a thousand words!

There’s also a list below of the top posts from the site this year, running the gamut from riding in the desert to the WTF Bikexplorers Summit, exploring Crete, mixing snakes and divas in Puerto Rico and much more. They’re in chronological order, so if you haven’t read these articles, you really should!

A few years back, you might recall a story that Radavist author and contributor Kyle Kelley wrote, regarding a trip called the Steamboat Ralleye. There was even a video! 2015 seems like a long time ago, but that ride operates as a segue into this morning’s tale.

“Come to Colorado, see the aspens, ride a Moots to Fort Collins” pretty much sums up how I got to this point. An invite surfaced from Peter Discoe, the founder of the Ramble Ride, coinciding with my friends at Moots, to take on 220 miles between Steamboat and Fort Collins, Colorado, via steep and daunting mountain roads. We’ve covered the Ramble Rides extensively on the Radavist before, but I wanted to sink my teeth into some Colorado dirt before summer was over.

Just a few, short years back, when people shifted their nomenclature from “bicycle touring” to include the term “bikepacking,” there weren’t many brands or shops for that matter, that catered to outings such as overnighters all the way through extensive tours. At least not compared to today’s offerings. Just about every day I read about a new product that claims to make our time on a loaded bicycle easier, or more pleasant, and as you can imagine, there is a lot of filtering that has to happen in order to cull this seemingly endless parade of new products.

That’s where the local bike shop model comes into play. My favorite part about visiting any city are the shops that make these places tick and in Portland, Oregon, there are so many shops around that specificity is the name of the game for survival in the ever-struggling retail economy.

One of the ways shops – and brands for that matter – have found the key to survival is by carefully cultivating a selection of products that have been thoroughly vetted by either the shop’s staff or close friends of the shop. The only way to determine the feasibility of a product is to actually use it, right? I’ve noticed this happening a lot, the culling down of the bike shop. In many ways, this makes for an easier retail experience, from the customer’s perspective and the owner’s.

We wanted to do something very different for this year’s Swift Campout. For the last three years, we’ve been dragging people up the steepest fire roads in the Angeles Forest on their fully-loaded touring bikes, carrying gallons of water. With each year getting hotter and hotter, we wanted to find water for people to cool down in. At first, we thought the beach, but after looking into it, we discovered that we’d have better odds of winning the lottery than getting a camping spot for 30 plus people at the beach.

The Road to L’Eroica: An Italian Honeymoon
Words and photos by Ultra Romance

We had been running from winter… riding from winter… actually hike-a-biking away from winter in the Swiss Alps for nearly 2 weeks now.  Snow, wind, rain, and low UV indexes had driven us out of the most verdant and bucolic panoramas I’ve ever eyeballed. Away from the abrupt mountaintops that rise from the undulating valleys like the jagged teeth of a gnashing puma eagle.  My hair was damp and lifeless, and our bodies were craving the sunlight and ACTUAL early September weather (fair and pleasant for those of you who live in the Swiss tundra).  In a split second decision, while climbing out of a cold and empty valley after hiking down a roots rock reggae slip n’ slide, we hopped a train south to Europe’s fashion capital, Milano. It just felt natural.

Ciao Italy!

Yesterday morning I had a date with a framebuilding legend from the American West. Like DiNucci, Strawberry, Bruce Gordon and others, Jim Merz was a key figure in promoting the production of custom frames in the ’70s and early ’80s. He was a machinist first, turned cyclist, turned builder. He was also an endurance cyclist, pedaling from Portland to Panama in 1970, logging over 8,000 miles. He also toured extensively in South Africa.

Jim brought his knowledge of loaded touring and trekking to his own operations, designing, fabricating and in a lot of ways shaping the world of touring bikes forever. So why haven’t you heard of Jim Merz? (Or perhaps you have, no assumptions here.) Well, Jim’s a unique guy and one that didn’t necessarily seek out the limelight like others in his day. That didn’t mean Jim wasn’t busy. In fact, in his ten years of solo framebuilding from 1972 through 1982, he built around 400 frames from Columbus and Reynolds tubing; he was the first US-builder certified to use Reynolds 753.