The Radavist

I, along with a few other eccentrics, have been dreaming of the idea of a small wheeled bikepacking rig for years. If you have ever had to box up your 29+ or other fat-tired bike for international travel in a small box, under 50 pounds, then you understand how annoying and stressful that can be. In my mind’s eye, I saw a 20” minivelo with a massive triangle floating on 3”-4” tires, maybe even a Ritchey Breakaway style seatpost break if I was truly dreaming. Minivelos have been around for quite some time, but they have almost always had rim brakes which limited their tire clearance and thusly my interest. When Velo Orange dropped photos of their new bike, I was drooling, my mind racing with ideas.

This bike is the direct result of many experiences, beginning with my 44 Bikes touring bike and culminating with the Moots Baxter I spent a great deal of time on last year both fully-loaded and set up in what I could call expedition mode. After a lot of back and forth, I realized that I like 29+ bikes for bikepacking and yeah, titanium is really nice for desert riding. These mental musings came to the full realization after spending some time talking with Adam from Sklar Bikes this summer in Bozeman.

This year’s Chris King Open House chose 18 builders from all over the world to display their new colors for 2020: Bourbon and Violet. Thanks to ENVE, Santa Cruz Reserve, SRAM, Brooks, and Spurcycle. these bikes were built out appropriately for such a showcase. Below is a gallery of half the bunch, in alphabetical order for your enjoyment, with each builder’s description of the bikes. Make sure you comment on your favorite because there is some gold in these galleries!

Read Lael’s first Reportage at You Can’t Win a 1,700km Race in a Day: Lael Wilcox’s Silk Road Mountain Race 2019 – Part I

I open my eyes to daylight, take a couple of puffs of my inhaler, compress the air out of my sleeping pad and get out of my sleeping bag. A rider with bags cruises by waving, a reminder that we’re still in a race. I stuff my whole sleeping kit into a dry bag and strap it to my handlebar harness. I turn on my GPS and put the race track on and on goes my SPOT tracker, pressing the boot print to initiate tracking. I move a pastry from my framebag to my gas tank for breakfast. I chug a full water bottle and put on my socks and shoes. The whole process takes twenty minutes and I resent the time lost. This style of racing is all about economizing time. The valley is cold, even at low elevation. I’m still wearing my down suit and rain jacket and I’m back on my bike, pedaling washboard downriver. I pass a pulled over rider and he passes me back. We don’t talk.

When I started this trip through South America almost 3 years ago I had no idea what to expect. My bicycle “touring” experience could all be summed up in a tumultuous three week trip to Perú where I spent half of the time with my head hovering over a toilet while suffering from typhoid and a quick one week trip through Norway that resulted in an emergency room visit with frostbite on my toes that still affects me today. I was working on roughly a 5% success rate. Would I quit my “stable job” of almost ten years only to head off into the Andes all by myself and realize that this just wasn’t my thing? Come crawling back a few weeks later, asking for a do-over? I honestly had no idea and these were extremely realistic possibilities in my mind. All I knew was that I’d regret it if I didn’t try.

Last week, we looked at the new Juliana Quincy, through the eyes and words of Amy Jurries and today, I’ll be taking you through the new Stigmata, as someone who rallied and loved the last model. How does it compare? Read on below.

The Santa Cruz Stigmata was truly one of the first disc all-road bikes that opened my eyes to not only what an off-road bike could be, but what it should be. I loved it so much that it influenced the geometry of my Firefly, yet that initial Stigmata review was over four years ago. A lot has changed in that time and the Stiggy was long overdue for an overhaul, mainly in one specific area, the tire clearance!

Lilac Dreams and the Velo Orange Polyvalent
Photos and words by Morgan Taylor

Looks can be deceiving. The Velo Orange Polyvalent looks like a classic randonneuring bike, particularly when dressed in an all-silver build kit. But, after many miles and various tire and bag changes, a different story emerged for me. While its handling characteristics are markedly different, the Polyvalent is a peer – and interesting alternative – to the popular all-steel drop bar adventure bikes out there like the Soma Wolverine, Surly Straggler, Kona Rove, and so on.

Now in its fourth iteration, the Polyvalent for the first time gets disc brakes, and that’s exactly what prompted me to reach out to Velo Orange about doing a review. Over the past few years I’ve been exploring how the widely varying combinations of steel frames and wide tires manifest in ride quality. Yes, I’m still on the hunt for the elusive smooth-riding production disc brake bike. Could the Polyvalent Mk4 be the one?

I love bourbon but over a year and a half ago, I quit drinking, so my love for the brown Kentucky whiskey has been put on hold. Last year when I drove up to Portland to shoot the bikes of the Chris King Open House, the team there hooked me up with a set of their ultra limited Bourbon hubs and headset as a thank you for shooting 19 bikes for them. When this color was teased at NAHBS, almost three years ago, my head imploded. No matter what I could do, however, Chris King said that Bourbon wouldn’t be a color in their catalog. Something about not being able to get the color consistent. Bummer! They did however, have a small batch aging in their archives. When I was gifted the Bourbon parts, I had to make a bike worthy of such a kit.

Dispatch From the Badlands
Photos and words by Carmen Aiken

On the dotted line to Sheep Mountain Table, I suddenly brake. Something tilts in my nervous system, tugs. The summer’s off-pavement riding has me forgetting the sweetness of an emptiness’s quiet when your contraption and all the nonsense it carries is, for a moment, still. What do you matter? The rocks rest as they wont to do, I suppose, the world ticks to its own endless motion, even as it’s stupidly being timed and quantified on devices it doesn’t give a shit about.

The Kids are Alright Y’all – Spencer Harding
Words and Photos by Spencer Harding

The Grupetto is a group of riders that have formed at the rear of the race, having either been dropped or having done their job for the team that day.

About a year ago, I was picking Colin Holmes’ brain about what he had in store for El Grupo in the future and he mentioned a youth bikepacking program. He needed not to say more, I was in.  This was even before my partner and I decided to move to Tucson. Once we moved down to the desert one of my first orders of business was to sign up to volunteer with El Grupo!

The kids we have in the El Grupo program, they ride their bikes every day, across town, into the mountains, and now even on bikepacking trips.  I can’t imagine where I’d be if I had known such a world of possibility in middle school instead of my late 20s.  Well, I now have the privilege to pass such knowledge and power onto the next generation of bikepackers.

The Holiday season is my favorite time of year. It gives me a chance to reconnect with friends, to travel, and to ride without feeling the need to take a camera with me each time. After a relaxing Christmas in Santa Fe, we headed South to the city of Tucson, where we spent five days Sonoran soaking! This gallery showcases a few of the places we rode and visited during our stay.

Fans of framebuilders, or at least those who have been visiting this website for a few years might remember the work of Cycles d’Autremont landing on these pages in the past. We’ve featured Hubert’s shop, as well as a few of his bikes in the past. Well, Huburt turned a new page in his career, when he moved to Tucson, Arizona two years ago to open a new operation, Madrean Fabrication. I had the pleasant experience of hanging out with this wonderful human for a few days while in Tucson and got to look inside his shop, as well as check out a few of his new bikes.

The Devil in a Dress; L’Eroica Celebrates Alfonsina Strada
Words and photos by Tenzin Namdol

“The act of remembering is about the future, not the past.” -Dr. Tashi Rabgey

There was a poster on the door of the Jolly Bar in downtown Gaiole In Chianti advertising a one woman play about and dedicated to Alfonsina Strada, the only woman to have competed in the Giro d’Italia way back in 1924. She was called “The Devil in Dress” by the press who sensationalized the story of a woman riding the Giro against pro racers of the time who were very well known and very male. Strada is no doubt a darling of the Italian vintage cycling social scene but completely unbeknownst to me. The play was one of the many official events organized for the L’Eroica weekend of ogling at relics that function as baseline vision for countless daydreams of bike builds, some looking much like the bike Strada rode for the Giro.

The Gods and the Goats: A Free Form Journey Into Crete
Words by Tenzin Namdol, photos by Ultra Romance and Tenzin Namdol.

“The real interest of the myths is that they lead us back to a time when the world was young and people had a connection with the earth, with trees and seas and flowers and hills… we can retrace the path from civilized [humans] who live far from nature, to [people] who lived in close companionship with nature.” -Edith Hamilton, Mythology

Andreas came to greet us on top of the hill where we had slowed to open a goat gate along our route. We were just a couple of miles outside the city of Heraklion where we landed just a day before. Where we saw Anarchist graffiti enough to fill my whole black heart. Where we ate a meal so sublime that we decided to ditch our plan of ferrying over to the mainland and opted to spend the two weeks we had in Greece right here on this island. Just a few miles up and out of the city sees the landscape change from the graffiti-ed buildings to rural, agricultural hollers. Andreas was checking in on his goats, pigeons, and rabbits when he sees us and approaches with twinkling eyes.

Words by Tenzin Namdol, Molly Sugar, Sarah Swallow, Jocelyn Gaudi Quarrell, Whitney Ford-Terry, and Mary Lytle, Founders of WTF Bikexplorers

Summit Photos by Gritchelle Fallesgon
Illustrations by Tessa Hulls
Ride Series Photos by Rie Sawada (Instagram + Website)

A few weeks ago one hundred cyclists from all over the country identifying as women, transgender, femme, and non-binary gathered in Whitefish, Montana for the first ever WTF Bikexplorers Summit. The Summit was organized to support, celebrate, and connect the community of W/T/F/N-B  who use their bicycles to explore and a collective effort for a movement away from patriarchy and toward a liberatory cycling culture.

“This Summit is about bikes, but it is not really about bikes.”  -Tessa Hulls